Giurgola, Romaldo (1920-2016), was an Italian-born architect best known for designing Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. The building is the home of the executive and legislative branches of the Australian national government. Giurgola designed the huge structure in a roughly pyramid shape, allowing visitors to walk around the building and also onto its grass-covered roofs. The structure, completed in 1988, is topped by a giant polished stainless steel flagpole 266 feet (81 meters) tall that flies a large Australian flag.
Romaldo “Aldo” Giurgola was born on Sept. 2, 1920, in Galatina, Italy. He studied architecture at the University of Rome, graduating in 1949. That year, he moved to the United States and received a master’s degree in architecture at Columbia University. He taught at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania before becoming chairman of the Columbia architecture department in 1966.
In 1958, Giurgola and American architect Ehrman Mitchell founded the Mitchell/Giurgola architecture firm in Philadelphia. The firm’s first important commission was the Visitor Center (1960) for the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The firm designed many buildings in the United States, notably the Penn Mutual Tower (1975) in Philadelphia.
In 1979, the Australian government invited Giurgola to help judge the design competition for a new parliament building. Giurgola declined and instead entered his own design for the project, which won the competition. With the construction of Parliament House underway in the 1980’s, Giurgola moved to Canberra. He became an Australian citizen in 2000. His other major projects in Australia include the St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church (1989) in Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, and the reconstructed and redesigned St. Patrick’s Cathedral (2003) in Parramatta, New South Wales. Giurgola died on May 16, 2016.
