To celebrate this year’s Heritage Festival and its theme of ‘Our Heritage for the Future’, the Walter Burley Griffin Society has organised a guided tour led by landscape architect James Smallhorn at Castlecrag. It will meander through Sydney’s original bushland estate revealing the restoration efforts that have taken place on some of the unique Griffin house exteriors, reserves and landscapes and how they have stood the test of time.

Bookings essential:

https://www.trybooking.com/BIEYG

Adult $20; Concession/Student $15; Child $0, Family $40

Meeting place provided on booking.

Please bring hat, walking shoes and water.

2.00pm to 3.30pm History House auditorium, 133 Macquarie Street, Sydney

American architects, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin had a dream of creating an “ideal suburb” in Sydney. They founded Castlecrag in the twenties and created a very different community from any other in Australia with their vision for community, their love of children, music and dance and their passion for the environment. They left in the thirties but their ideals meant the suburb continued to attract a unique group of people.

To celebrate History Week and its 2017 theme of ‘Australian popular culture’, the Walter Burley Griffin Society is organising a panel of former residents to discuss living in Castlecrag in the early years of the Griffin-inspired community, covering aspects such as entertainment, fashion, the motor car and public transport, play and toys. To accompany the discussion there will also be a slide show of photographs taken by Hermann Junge during the 1920s and 30s and further photographs from the 40s and 50s.

When: Sunday 10 September, 2.00pm to 3.30pm
Afternoon tea will be served afterwards in History House’s grand Victorian reception rooms.
Cost: Adults $20; Concession and Members (Walter Burley Griffin Society) $15; Child $0
Limited spaces, bookings essential
www.trybooking.com/QVRX

Further information: info@griffinsociety.org

10.00am to 12.30pm

To celebrate the Australian Heritage Festival and its 2017 theme of ‘Having a Voice’, the Walter Burley Griffin Society is organising a guided walk at Castlecrag.

The internationally renowned suburb of Castlecrag was designed by Walter Burley Griffin in the 1920s as a residential community inspired by the ecological and aesthetic qualities of the landscape of Middle Harbour and its foreshores.

You are invited to take a guided tour past Griffin houses and through some of the reserves and walkways at Castlecrag and hear, in Griffin’s own words, the special qualities and aspects he implemented at Castlecrag.

Please bring hat, walking shoes and water.

Cost: Adult $20; Concession/Student $15; Child $0
Member (Walter Burley Griffin Society and National Trust) $15

Bookings essential at
https://www.trybooking.com/OMYW

Further information: phone 02 9958 4516 or email info@griffinsociety.org

Meeting place for the walk – nature strip outside 136 Edinburgh Road, Castlecrag.

The Concourse, Chatswood, Sydney, Australia

Special performances of The Carnival will raise money for the Haven Amphitheatre reconstruction project.

Described as “circus opera” The Carnival debuted on London’s West End in 2011 and is composed by very talented Castlecrag-born Chloe Charody.

Another of Chloe’s operas is currently on tour in Europe where she is rapidly becoming a leading female composer.

Soprano Valda Wilson will be The Carnival’s leading lady. Valda, also Castlecrag-born, won Opera Foundation Australia’s scholarship to train at the National Opera Studio, London. She has been a principal soprano at the Oldenburg State Theatre, Germany since 2014 and in December 2016 sang the title role in Handel’s Theodora for Pinchgut Opera in Sydney.

The Carnival will be an amazing performance, and you are encouraged to purchase tickets so as not to miss this fabulous and innovative circus opera and to help fundraising for the Haven Amphitheatre reconstruction project.

The performances are being organised by Haven Promotions Inc. Book now:
www.havenpromotions.com
Box office (02) 8075 8111
www.theconcourse.com.au
Ticketek 1300 795 012

(see website below for times)
Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne

This amazing project by the Melbourne School of Design’s Master of Architecture students led by Philip Goad at the University of Melbourne, is open until 23 October 2016. The students have manufactured over 2300 full-size Knitlock tiles in plaster of paris for this 1:1 reconstruction of the Griffins’ own tiny Eaglemont home.

https://www.festival.melbourne/2016/events/pholiota-unlocked/#.V9FbJyN97ax

View video clips (one in fast motion) of the students assembling the tiles to build the replica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlSo-qW0QDw

The Pholiota Unlocked exhibition is on the ground floor (actually down steps to a lower level) of the Melbourne School of Design, located a few buildings away from Newman College. FREE exhibition.

(see website below for times)
Newman College Dining Hall, University of Melbourne

Jonathan Mills’ musical homage to the Griffins to be performed in their Newman College Dining Hall along with stunning projections onto the hall’s magnificent domed interior. Projection artist Ian de Gruchy, plus dancing by Leigh Warren and Delia Silvan. Tickets are $28 and can be booked at https://www.festival.melbourne/2016/events/ethereal-eye/#.V_t7tiN97aw

(see website below for times)
The Arts West Atrium, Professors Walk, University of Melbourne

Immersive projections exploring Newman College Dining Hall and the ceiling of the Capitol Theatre on an ultra-high-resolution 6 metre wide projection dome, by two of the world’s leading new-media artists, Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw in collaboration with the University of Melbourne’s Transformative Technologies Research Unit. FREE exhibition.

https://www.festival.melbourne/2016/events/inside-the-ethereal-eye/#.V_uFACN97aw

National Archives of Australia – Queen Victoria Terrace, Canberra

The Walter Burley Griffin Society Inc. invites you to the 7th Marion Mahony Griffin Lecture.

The guest speaker Peggy Bang, visiting retired Visual Arts Professor from the USA will give an illustrated talk entitled The Melson House Revealed: An Owner’s Perspective which will detail the history of this highly significant and unusual house designed by Griffin and built in Mason City, USA in 1912.

Peggy served as president of Wright on the Park Inc and was instrumental in saving and restoring Frank Lloyd Wright’s Park Inn Hotel and Wright’s Stockman House in Mason City, Iowa. She and her husband Roger, businessman and former Mayor, own the historic Melson House in Mason City. Copies of her richly illustrated book about the Melson House will be available for sale on the night.

Cost: Adult $10; Members $5; Student/Concession $5
Bookings essential
Tickets: www.eventbrite.com

The talk will follow a specially designed coach tour of Griffin related sites in Canberra. The tour details will be finalised shortly. If you would like to take part, please contact info@griffinsociety.org

PARKING: The Main Entrance doors are not open after 5pm. There are two areas available for parking. There is an entry to a large carpark on the old Parliament House side of the NAA, off Queen Victoria Terrace. From that place there are some stairs down to the midway doors of the building. The other parking place is also off QVTerrace, but nearer Kings Ave, with a street level entrance midway along the building.