elegant fountain at University House hotel, Canberra (© Alan Benson)
Like Brasilia, Canberra was a purpose-designed capital city but it is generally underappreciated as a hotspot for modernist and brutalist architecture. The modernist University House hotel is a great place to start soaking up the atmosphere of architects Walter & Marion Burley Griffin’s ideal city. We’d guess that most tourists who stay here arrive by accident; it largely attracts repeat and academic visitors who like the genteel atmosphere and rubbing (tweed-clad) shoulders with spunky post-grads over cut-price drinks at Friday happy hour. (Cheese and nibbles, anyone?)
Canberra's most academic hotel: University House (Image by HWL)
Designed in the late 1940s University House was originally constructed to provide housing for unmarried professors at the Australian National University (aka the ANU) and it’s now considered an outstanding example of Australian modernism. In recent times it opened its doors to the public and now operates as a hotel, as well as providing accomodation to academic residents.The hotel has retained its original parquetry, terrazzo floors, simple timber furnishings designed by Fred Ward and art work by the likes of Leonard French (who designed the enormous glass ceiling at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne). It was designed as a faculty club and it retains a sleepy ambiance left-over from a time when the role of universities was to educate, not turn a profit. (What a quaint notion.)
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