The Search for a Self: A Global Practice on the Margins. Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin. 1912–1937

Marginal personalities, pioneers in search of an alternative social model based on architecture as a tool capable of uniting human beings and nature as an interdependent duality, Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin belong to that group of architects not recognized as leading figures, whose mixed-race heritage makes them difficult to classify. Through the analysis of works such as Rock Crest/Rock Glen in Iowa, Castlecrag in Sydney, and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh Exhibition of Industry and Agriculture in Lucknow, completed between 1912 and 1937, we address the hypothesis of this research, which values ​​them as those that define a distinct architectural language, as well as an alternative social model based on the relationship between culture, leisure, and nature. Their interest lies in their capacity to condense philosophical and architectural principles, reflected both in the urban scale of their projects and in the ultimate definition of their finishes and symbolism, a result of the influences received from their training until then.