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Donat-Alfred Agache | No. 4
Donat-Alfred Agache | No. 4
Donat-Alfred Agache
Illustration: Tiffanie Brown
Entrant No. 4, Donat-Alfred Agache (1875–1959), was awarded third place in the Federal Capital City Design Competition. He was a French architect–urbanist, and is best known for his 1930 master plan of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Agache was a graduate from the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1911 – the same year he entered the Federal Capital City Design Competition – he set up the influential Société Française des Urbanistes.
Agache recognised the relationship between the culture of a society and its physical surrounds. His goal as an urbanist was to design a city to promote certain social ideals. For the urbanist, good urban form would be transformed into good urban behaviour.
In his plan for Canberra, Agache divides the city into quarters along social and occupational lines. Industrial workers are housed next to the gas and power station, with their own 'people's palace' and gardens. On low-lying ground by the river, the industrial quarter stood at substantial risk if the Molonglo River flooded.
Enumeration of the Public Buildings
Itineraries
The Quarters
Prospect View Number I
Prospect View of Aerostatic Station
Prospect View Number II
Section of Political and Administrative Quarters