Romaldo Giurgola, the internationally renowned architect who designed Canberra’s Parliament House, has died at the age of 95.
Giurgola, born in Italy and better known as Aldo, was initially asked to judge the 1979 competition to design Parliament House, but declined and instead put forward an entry with his US-based firm. The Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp design beat 329 other entries.
The iconic structure was the clear winner of the Australian Institute of Architects 2013 National Enduring Architecture Award, with the jury citing that Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp “demonstrated the power of architecture to respond to significant purpose with the best materials and craftsmanship of Australia, creating a significant place representative of who we are as a nation.”
In 1988 Giurgola was awarded the Institute’s highest honour, the Gold Medal. The following year he was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia “for service to architecture, particularly the new Parliament House, Canberra.”
Beyond the built works Giurgola is renowned for, he contributed to the architecture profession as a professor at both Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. He was later appointed as the Ware Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Columbia.
The Institute’s national president, Ken Maher, expressed his condolences following Giurgola’s death, noting that he was an architect of immense talent and international stature with a prodigious body of influential work.
“His most recognized project in Australia, Parliament House in Canberra, has become a symbol of our democracy and is also remarkable for its integration of the work of Australian artists,” Maher said.
“The many accolades he has received both from the Institute and further afield is testament to the life-long contribution he has made not just to architecture but for our national identity.”
Architect and senior lecturer at the University of Canberra, Ann Cleary, worked with Giurgola from a young age and remembers him as someone of incredible humility and clarity of thought.
“Aldo was very kind, very generous, imparting a concern for the human condition as foremost in all considerations. He saw architecture as part of a continuum in which the qualities of the public realm are pervasive and inscribed in the cultural landscape of a place,” Cleary said.
Maher said the legacy of Giurgola would continue through the Romaldo Giurgola Award for Public Architecture, awarded annually for the best public building at the ACT Architecture Awards.
