Walter Burley Griffin Project: University of Melbourne

Encouraged by the Australian Consul in Chicago, the Walter Burley Griffin Project began as an exchange of design faculty between the School of Architecture and its equivalent at the University of Melbourne in the late eighties. Jeff Turnbull visited from Melbourne during the spring of 1988 and taught design.

The Griffin Exchange changed course in 1991 when the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. asked the School of Architecture to create a traveling show dedicated to Walter Burley Griffin—an Illinois alumnus and masterplanner/architect of Melbourne. Thus, with the participation of architectural history professor Paul Kruty (an international authority on Griffin) the exchange between the two institutions focused on historical research on Griffin’s work. With the creation of a Griffin Committee, a major exhibition on the architect was organized between the two institutions. Professor Kruty visited Melbourne in two opportunities (1992 and 1994) and Professor Turnbull visited Urbana-Champaign for the second time in 1993.