Updating the Griffin model

Walter Burley and his architectural partner, Marion Mahoney, moved into their own house on the Castlecrag Estate in 1925. I will show you their house in a later post. My point is that 1925 is a while ago, and only 15 of their designs were made manifest. So, was it a vision, or a mere fancy?

What I am endeavouring to do, is to show you how the Griffins imbibed - for folk from Chicago - a foreign landscape, and made it their own. I have shown you the prestigious 15 The Citadel, and teased you with smears of landscape. Today, I want to show you how glimpses of the Griffin legacy can still be seen in architecture around Castlecrag through the decades since the Griffins moved to India in 1935. Did I mention that the suburb that is Castlecrag today, was originally three development estates - Castlecrag Estate, Sunnyside Estate, and Wireless Estate - with decreasing levels of involvement by the Griffins or by their business partners? Needless to say, I live on the old Wireless Estate. The median house price in Castlecrag is $1.75m.

Anyways, to my untrained architectural eye, there is an whiff of Griffin to each house illustrated. What is missing is a splash of humility, even in the face of natural beauty. But humility is a sparse commodity nowadays.