Lantern Avenue Restaurant, Lucknow, India, Plan and Elevations

After spending the early years of his career in Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio, Walter Burley Griffin and his wife and partner, architect Marion Mahony Griffin, left the United States in 1913 to oversee the execution of their master plan for Canberra, the new capital city of Australia, eventually establishing practices in Melbourne and Sydney. In 1935, Walter left his adopted country for the city of Lucknow, in northern India, where he had been commissioned to design a new university library. Although the library project stalled, the following year he was invited to prepare a master plan for a major trade fair in Lucknow, including the exposition park space, pavilions, and two large towers. During the two years before his untimely death in 1937, Griffin created a large body of new motif and pattern for designs in India, including this drawing for the facade of a restaurant in the Lucknow exposition, which features a modern take on the classical Mughal arch.