Australia’s Parliament House is hosting a series of behind-the-scenes tours highlighting the design of the building during the Design Canberra Festival in November.

The Geometry of Democracy tours will focus on the “geometric brilliance” inherent in the vision of the House’s principal architect, Romaldo Giurgola.

The Italian-born Giurgola wrote of how he was inspired by the geometry of Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin’s plan for Canberra. “Like Walter Burley Griffin, before me, I had never been in Australia before starting work on the competition entry,” he wrote, after the fact. “However, in 1946, as a student of architecture I saw Griffin’s plan of Canberra. The magic relationship between geometry and land configurations of that plan, after that, often became the object of my architectural dreams.”

Parliament House, designed by Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp, with Romaldo Giurgola at the helm, was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May in 1988. Giurgola was awarded the 1988 Gold Medal by the then-Royal Australian Institute of Architects and The House was awarded the Enduring Architecture Award at the 2013 National Architecture Awards.

The building celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year.

Tours

The hour-long tours will run at 11.30am-12.30pm and 2pm-3pm on Saturday 10 November and Sunday November 11, Saturday 17 November and Sunday 18 November, Saturday 24 November and Sunday 25 November.

To book, head here.