Education
Grounds was educated at Scotch College and then Melbourne University.
National Gallery of Victoria
Wrest Point Hotel Casino, Hobart, Tasmania Awards
Shine Dome, Australian Academy of Science
Grounds was educated at Scotch College and then Melbourne University.
Grounds worked for the architectural firm of Blackett, Forster and Craig. In 1932 he won an award from the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) and left Melbourne to work in England and the USA for two years, gaining exposure to contemporary architectural developments. On his return to Australia, Grounds went into partnership with
Geoffrey Mewton, and they introduced the international style to Melbourne. Grounds ended this partnership in 1936 and travelled in England until 1939, when he returned to Australia and worked on defence buildings during World War II. Grounds practised by himself between 1939 and 1942 and designed a series of houses and flats (including Moonbria, 1940–41) which established his reputation. After the war, Grounds was involved in setting up the curriculum for the School of Architecture at Melbourne University and lectured in design. He resumed his architectural practice and became interested in formal, geometrically based designs. When Grounds, Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd formed their partnership in 1953 all were well established in Victoria. Each brought substantial work to the practice and the firm became very successful.
Grounds first large commission was for the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. The construction of its reinforced concrete dome was a considerable technical achievement. Opened in 1959, it won the Meritorious Architecture Award of the Canberra Area Committee of the RAIA and the Sulman Award for Architectural Merit. The Academy building also led to other work in Canberra, initially for the firm and later Grounds himself. Grounds opened a Canberra office in the Forrest Townhouses (1959), which he partly financed. In 1959 the firm was awarded the commission to design the National Gallery of Victoriya and Cultural Centre, with Grounds named in the contract as the architect in charge. When Boyd and Romberg were mildly critical of the preliminary geometric designs that Grounds showed them, relations between the partners became strained. In 1962 Grounds left the partnership, taking the commission with him and setting up his own company with Oscar Bayne. Under a building committee chaired by the philanthropist Kenneth Myer, he devoted the next twenty years of his life to the completion of the arts center. His longest-serving architectural associates throughout this period, which included Monash University's Robert Blackwood Concert Hall, were Alan Nelson, Fritz Suendermann, Lou Gerhardt and Allan Stillman. While the gallery was brought in on time and budget, the complicated Yarra River site for the concert hall and theater complex resulted in building delays and criticism. Unlike the fate that befell Jorn Utzon on the Sydney Opera House project, Grounds managed to hold on to his commission from the Victorian Government despite tumult within his company in the late 1970s. Grounds showed Queen Elizabeth II the massive excavations shortly before his death. Much of the theaters' interior designs were completed by John Truscott.
Grounds was awarded the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1968 and knighted in 1969. In 1969 he was elected a life fellow of the RAIA. One of his last great design successes was Hobart's iconic 18-story octagonal tower that is the main part of the Wrest Point Hotel Casino complex. He died in Melbourne in 1981.
In 2010, an original Grounds plan for a library will be completed at the Moorilla Estate and entrance for the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.
Key works:
Shine Dome, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra (1959)
Botany Building Australian National University, Canberra (1968)
National Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Road, Melbourne (1959–68)
Art School attached to National Gallery, St Kilda Road
Robert Blackwood Concert Hall, Monash University, Victoria (1971)
Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement & Folk Museum expansion, Victoria (early 1970s)
Wrest Point Hotel Casino, Hobart, Tasmania (1973)
Shrine of Remembrance reconstruction, St Kilda Road (1977–78)
Myer and Nicholas families homes, Toorak, Melbourne (1970s)
Victorian Arts Centre, St Kilda Road, Melbourne (1969–84)
Quotations:
By night, I’m trafficking in the black arts. Nixon’s people were obsessed with intelligence.
So I think and hope that people will be able to say: 'Hmmm, it's more complicated than I thought. I didn't realize that tax policy was essential to the passage of Prohibition and the repeal of Prohibition.
It's not just a bunch of nasty, pinched-faced ladies who don't want their husbands to have any fun.
