Eternal architecture of the dome

Kevin Childs is researching a book on Aboriginal warriors so his life is often dominated by hours of tracking down obscure tomes of early Australian history. He was a Creative Fellow at the Library in 2011. 

There is nothing like a dome – the pun must be pardoned here for the birthday of the grand old dome inspires levity and lightheartedness. I would love to see a choir brought in to celebrate by singing the Hallelujah from where the shusher used to hush feckless voices, or a tightrope walker to stride across the great space to the triumphal march from Aida. Such musical notes are born out of Goethe, who called architecture frozen music.

The dome’s design calls for a grand fanfare, trumpets soaring, an Ode to joy perhaps?

Having been lucky enough to have a Creative Fellowship at the Library, I was able to walk into the dome before it opened to the public and when it was empty of the usual scholars, snoring students, irritating iPhones and occasional writers – such as the estimable Arnold Zable. As my footsteps echoed l gaped, still in awe of the soaring majesty of the ceiling and studied the engraved 'ribbon of words', just ten years old. Not for the first time I wondered what it must have been like on that day three years ago when 10,000 paper planes were released from the balconies. I have seen the marvellous photos of the moment and read that they sounded like whirring insects.

That genius Frank Lloyd Wright considered architecture to be life '... or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.' Reading that brings to mind the untold number of people who plonked themselves on those hard wooden chairs to read or write – as Ray Lawler did with his classic Summer of the seventeenth doll – or perhaps to just gaze about, for the dome is a gazer’s version of heaven.

When it opened it was, of course, the largest ferro-concrete dome in the world. Jealous critics who predicted its collapse were confuted, wrote the Argus, which marvelled at the place. Almost everything, down to the Queensland siky oak desks and chairs, was Australian – which must have astounded the 1600 English migrants who arrived here that month. They beheld a dome 38 metres larger than their beloved St Paul’s, just four metres less than St Peter’s in Rome and three metres less than the Panthéon in Paris (then said to be the world’s largest dome).

In 1913, before the world slid into the nightmarish horrors of war, the dome was inspirational, providing the nation with confidence and self-belief. It still does, but now it also brings awe and a justifiable pride.

I leave the last word to another genius, Christopher Wren, designer of St Paul’s: 'Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth... Architecture aims at Eternity.'