Canberra's Future on Show at CAPITheticAL Exhibition

Much like Walter Burley Griffin submitting a design for Australia’s capital city over 100 years ago, the best minds of today have had their designs for a city of the future on show at the CAPITheticAL exhibition at the National Gallery of Design.

The exhibition, part of Canberra’s centenary celebrations, showcases the hypothetical plans for a modern capital city designed by architects, town planners, urban designers and students from all over the world. The designs are all both fantastic and practical and use drawings, videos and models to intrigue and entertain all those who enter the Gallery.

The twenty best designs are currently on display and the winning design will receive a price of up to $70,000.

Professor Barbara Norman, Chair of the Jury that will decide the winner, stated that the event has been a huge success for the Gallery and Canberra.

“The event has

generated an enormous amount of international interest, 114 entries from 24 countries right around the world, and there is such a richness and diversity of ideas.”

Callum Morton, a member of the jury, stated that there were many different themes explored by the finalists.

“One proposed a mobile city; there were a number that left the capital here but proposed a new capital better positioned to deal with Australia in the Asian century, there are a number that analysed key things like transport and sustainability, indigenous considerations and the role of a capital as being important to all Australians.”

The idea of liveability and a city for the people was a key theme throughout. Many people walking through the exhibition were interested in the many designs with communal parks and open spaces. One of the finalists, local architecture student Sarah Herbert, had a city with a centralised ‘People’s Park’ while another was designed with 85% of the population within a 10-15 minute walk to a park or waterfront. Another city, named Alterurban, was a mix of urban development with parkland littered in between.

The sense of excitement at the wide range of ideas was obvious in the Gallery and Professor Norman backed up these feelings.

“There is indeed a sense of excitement and I think the exhibition suggests that there is a whole diversity of responses that can be made to some of contemporary challenges.”

Mr Morton meanwhile believed that, despite it being a hypothetical competition, there was much that people could take away from the event.

“It’s imagining a future and a very possible future but it’s mediated by a kind of reasonable idea about our generation.”

The CAPITheticAL exhibition is free of charge and will be on display at the National Gallery of Design until May 11^th.