Former Victorian government architect Geoffrey London speaks at a public forum "City in Crisis?" in August. Photo: Darrian Traynor

Try this game: Picture AAMI Park, the eye-catching stadium that resembles the trajectory of a soccer ball. The Cox Architecture-designed stadium lifts the Punt Road perimeter of Melbourne's sports precinct, but contributes to the fabric of the whole city. Now imagine it as a bland rectangular stadium. According to former Victorian Government Architect John Denton this was a narrowly avoided architectural own goal.

"The Cox scheme was right on the cusp of being chucked out and gone to a cheap, minimal-cost standard, rectangular thing," Denton says. "[Until] we stepped in."

Next, picture the Royal Children's Hospital without all the kid-friendly, fun stuff - the aquariums, murals. And, more importantly, without its restorative views of Royal Park.

AAMI Park and the Royal Children's Hospital are just two of the many public buildings improved by the support and intervention of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect. Since it was established in 2006 the OVGA has helped procure everything from the Melbourne Recital Centre to the Melbourne Convention Centre.

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But after the resignation of Liberal premier and architect Ted Baillieu the OVGA lost one of its major supporters. Under the premiership of Denis Napthine the government architect's office was relegated toTransport, Planning and Local Infrastructure from the powerful Department of Premier and Cabinet.

While a shift to planning may seem an appropriate fit for an architect's office, it was perceived as a demotion.

"The moment you go into planning and become just an offshoot downstream of the process, you have to work harder to be listened to," Denton says. "It makes it harder work just at an operation of government level."

Now against a backdrop of divisive planning decisions such as the East West tunnel and Fishermans Bend urban planning academics question how much influence the office still has.

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Victorian Government Architect under threat

The Godsell house in Beaumaris.

"We lived in the weird house," says MPavilion architect Sean Godsell. "There was nothing really like it." The house designed by his father David in 1960 brought mid-west Americana to Beaumaris. A devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright, the elder Godsell translated Wright's vision of an ideal American suburban house to Melbourne's bayside.

The Beaumaris of the 1950s and '60s was itself an idyll suggesting what a bright suburban future might be, says Professor Philip Goad, who also grew up in the beachside suburb. "You had everything. The great modern house in a bush landscape, but you were still in the suburbs and near the beach. It was like 'holiday modern', but in the suburbs. It was one of those few suburbs where people were prepared to experiment."

For David Godsell that experimentation extended to Wright's Usonian homes, with their flat planes, projecting eaves and strong link between interiors and exteriors. From the street, Godsell's Beaumaris house is immediately defined by its cantilevered carport roof terracing down a slope. Designed as an everyman house there's a humility of scale, says Goad. "It's spatially and technologically lean and that's what Sean's work is as well. They're not about excess."

Athan House 1986-88 (Monbulk), one of Sean Godsell's favourite houses, will be open on November 30.

Architects are often reluctant to declare their influences and reveal the buildings that inspire them. It's too difficult. Centuries of architectural history offer so many references. Sean Godsell the architect responsible for such high-profile public buildings as the RMIT Design Hub has chosen six local influences for the latest Robin Boyd Foundation open house tour, including his family home.

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"I grew up in a house where the discussion was always architecture," says Godsell. "That exposure to architecture did two things. It made me want to do it. But it also made me query what it was at a certain critical point. That's where the work of architects like Robinson Chen were interesting. They were well-detailed, well-constructed buildings, but spatially in the sense of their materiality it's fundamentally different from what I only knew growing up."

For anyone familiar with Godsell's mature rational buildings and exploration of materiality, his choice of mid-century buildings will seem unsurprising. An admirer of clarity in architecture "It's a combination of skill and restraint" he's chosen Peter McIntyre's Snelleman house (1953), which snakes down a sloping site around a giant tree. "It's an interesting way to handle a very difficult site with a strong idea."

Several buildings reveal Godsell's interest in the experimentation between public and that most private of buildings, an architect's home. In the square, fortress-like exterior of Roy Grounds Hill house (1953) and its circular central courtyard we see the experimentation for the National Gallery of Victoria. Meanwhile Philip Goad sees in Robin Boyd's Walsh Street house (1958) and its suspended cable roof, evidence of the experimentation at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

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Architect Sean Godsell's childhood home included in Robin Boyd Foundation open house tour

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Santa Fe has its first mobile parklet.

Its called The Love Transfer Station and has been placed on a vacant lot just north of De Vargas Middle School on Llano Street. It was built out of an old dumpster by local sculptor Don Kennell, landscape architect Christie Green and students from YouthWorks, with seating as well as landscaping with appropriate plants like sand love grass and eversweet strawberries that will look a lot better in the spring.

Artist Don Kennell, right, shows of the parklet he helped build. Its called The Love Tranfer Station and has been placed on an empty lot on Llano Street near De Vargas Middle School (Eddie Moore/Journal)

PNM Resources Foundation has provided $50,000 for The Transfer Love Station and two other forthcoming parklets, part of the citys Re:Mike effort to redevelop the St. MIchaels Drive corridor. But trailers also can be used to move the parklets around town. San Francisco is cited as a place where parklets come from.

The Mix Santa Fe group is part of the project. Mixs Daniel Werwath said the parklets are intended as a way to make the area more pedestrian friendly. They could be combined, for instance, with a mini-retail business created in a shipping container and/ or a food truck to make something of an activity center, he said.

Mayor Javier Gonzales lauded the project as part of the effort to redo the St.Mikes area over 15 to 20 years. He said the corridor now is 73 percent parking lot and needs concepts like this to make it better.

Artist Don Kennell, left, and Christie Green, a landscape designer, take part in a ceremony on Llano Street Monday to open a parklet they built called The Transfer Love Station. (Eddie Moore/Journal)

The parket features lots of red color, hearts and arrows. It started with the bare essentials and then it got down to, love, said sculptor Kennell. It began with an idea that could bring the most people together in some form of agreement or participation in the project, something inviting- it was either that or green chili.

The parklet has a large red heart shaped water cistern that can collect rain water and also be filled with water to irrigate the plants.

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Santa Fes first`parklet transfers love to Llano Street

W. Maas (MI/ARCH 2014)
Winy Maas (1959, Schijndel, The Netherlands) is an architect, urban designer and landscape architect and one of the co-founding directors of the globally ope...

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Realtime Landscape Architect 2014 - Landscape Concept by Land Architect Studio - Video

It's time. After weeks spent accepting nominations and sifting through hundreds of talented designers, builders, and architects, Curbed is ready to announce the finalists of Young Guns 2014. All week long we'll be rolling out the nominees. Today: The Community Builders.

Today we kick off the revelation of this year's Young Guns 2014 finalists by introducing a group of designers whose work, be it housing and revitalization in rural areas or landscape design in places particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, directly impact the public. There's an agrarian housing pioneer, an urban dweller battling the perception that architecture is "an accessory professional pursuit" to be dismissed when funds aren't available, and an L.A. denizen looking to better connect architecture and academia with the communities they serve. For them, it's about building and nurturing society first and foremost.

Age: 28 Location: Green River, Utah What he does: Co-Founder, Citizen Architect, and Principal of Housing at The Epicenter

As someone with a design background, what are the nontraditional ways in which you serve your local community?

"Rural places always struggle with having enough resources, enough services, and enough people to attract businesses and professions. It's hard to promote a story without the big shiny building. A lot of what we do is not glossy images, it's getting business managers to sit down at a table and talk about how they can work together, what they can ask the city to do, and what we can do for them to make the economy improve. It's mentoring a youth from the high school."

His work:

Age: 33 Location: New York, New York What he does: Associate Landscape Architect at Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Landscape Design Instructor at The New York Botanical Garden

What is an overarching trend in landscape design that you think will become more prevalent over the next decade?

"A lot of people were woken up by Hurricane Sandy and the potential for damage and devastation that can happen in our urban environment. Landscape architects are really at the forefront of the circulation of all these conversations about resiliency and how to anticipate the next global challenge. We deal with land, we deal with water, and we deal with people and how to integrate communities. We educate them about the new solutions that are being developed, which are sometimes aesthetically not the same as conventional landscapes that they may be used to. They're fuzzier, or more naturalistic - which is a nice way of saying they may look like weeds. Natural spaces are actually really good for defending ourselves against the climate challenges that are coming."

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Young Guns 2014: Meet the Curbed Young Guns Finalists: the Community Builders

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday shared with his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott and U.S. President Barack Obama the fascinating story of Walter Burley Griffin, the well-known American architect who designed Australian capital Canberra and was buried in Lucknow.

Griffin, who died on February 11, 1937 at the age of 61 years, was a landscape architect who hailed from the U.S. He is known for designing Canberra, Australias capital city and has been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and an innovative use of reinforced concrete.

Influenced by the Chicago-based Prairie School, Griffin developed a unique modern style. He worked in partnership with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin.

Griffin came to India in 1935 to design a library for the Lucknow University. He stayed on to design several other buildings in Lucknow, including the headquarters of the famed daily, The Pioneer, for which he also regularly wrote. However, he passed away in 1937 before completing most of his assignments and was buried in Lucknow.

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Historian S. Muthiah explores the similarities in the two capital cities - Delhi and Canberra - which echo each other in appearances. Read here

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Modi shares story of architect Walter Burley Griffin with Obama, Abbott

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday shared with his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott and US President Barack Obama the fascinating story of an American architect who had an emotional link with their countries.

The discussion among the leaders who met for the G20 summit here centred around Walter Burley Griffin, the well-known American architect who designed Australian capital Canberra and who is buried in Lucknow.The prime minister shared with Abbott and Obama the fascinating story of Griffin, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin tweeted.A couple of photos of the three leaders engaged in the discussion were posted on the spokesperson's Twitter account.

A photo of the final resting place of Griffin at Lucknow Christian Cemetry was also among them.Griffin, who died on February 11, 1937 at the age of 61 years, was a landscape architect who hailed from the US. He is known for designing Canberra, Australia's capital city and has been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and an innovative use of reinforced concrete.Influenced by the Chicago-based Prairie School, Griffin developed a unique modern style. He worked in partnership with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin.

In 28 years they designed over 350 buildings, landscape and urban-design projects as well as designing construction materials, interiors, furniture and other household items.Through their contacts during their time at the Greater Sydney Development Association, Griffin won a contract in 1935 to design the library at the University of Lucknow in Lucknow.Although he had planned to stay in India only to complete the drawings for the library, he soon received more than 40 commissions, including the University of Lucknow Student Union building; a museum and library for the Raja of Mahmudabad; a zenana (women's quarters) for the Raja of Jahangirabad; Pioneer Press building, a bank, municipal offices, many private houses, and a memorial to King George V.

Griffin also won complete design responsibility for the 19361937 United Provinces Exhibition of Industry and Agriculture. His 53 projects for the 160-acre site featured a stadium, arena, mosque, imambara, art gallery, restaurant, bazaar, pavilions, rotundas, arcades, and towers.However, only part of his elaborate plans were fully executed.Griffin was inspired by the architecture and culture of India, modifying forms as "he sought to create a modern Indian architecture."His wife Marion traveled to Lucknow in April 1936 to assist and contributed to several projects.Griffin died of peritonitis in early 1937, five days after gall bladder surgery at King George's Hospital in Lucknow, and was buried in Christian Cemetery in the city.He spent the last 15 months of his life in Lucknow.

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PM Narendra Modi shares fascinating story of American architect with Barack Obama and Tony Abbott