Keeping up the facade: new photographs of the War Memorial’s big build

Our photographers have been active around the Australian War Memorial, updating us on the $548m (and counting) redevelopment program. Photographs were taken 26-30 June, early August, early September, and December 2024, February 2025, April 2025, May 2025, June 2025, September 2025.

Update 31 October 2025: a visitor reports

We get the impression from surveying available evidence that lots of folks don’t know what has happened to the War Memorial since they last visited, perhaps as schoolchildren.

A long-term Canberra resident and Honest History and Defending Country supporter has sent in her views about some of the new public parts of the memorial’s Big Build :

On the topic of value for money so far, in early winter we were at the Memorial late one afternoon for a play in the theatrette; three of us were totally underwhelmed by:

• the design so far, i.e. lack of it and lack of ease of mobility and the poor visual impressions/landscaping amenity for anyone approaching the main (only?) eastern entry way from the covered eastern carparking area, i.e.  along to the doorway onto the new foyer (is this the only entry way ?);
• same applies from the higher-up level on that eastern side; ditto poor signposting all the way from these locations to the atrium.  You feel like you are entering from a loading bay area or tradesman’s entrance;
• the new atrium/foyer and the ‘view’  directly south – that vast expanse of wall (window??) was  covered up with some sort of boring Memorial floor to ceiling imagery [our post HH]; new visitors would not know about, let alone be able to see down Anzac Parade; we had to seek out a side window there to peer out, and could  not go outside there. Why is such a vista so closed off and not taken advantage of ?
• lifts to area looking over the Pool of Reflection/Last Post location and doorways to same: all are all very nicely finished but totally inadequate; lifts  are far too small and too few for any grouping of people let alone groupings to move from A  to B and back easily; doorways and linked ‘corridor’  areas to the outside are awkward and narrow, hard to move through especially when quite a few others are trying to do the same from the lift;
• the much talked about and promoted overhead installation (the oculus) in the atrium: it would have benefited from more height there; all seems a bit pokey;
• the diorama of the Memorial redevelopment in the atrium: it has poor interpretation and looks a bit tacky and unfinished for such an expensive project.

All of us came to these conclusions. The friend with us was frothing at the mouth by the time we settled into the theatrette about what has transpired with the project $$$ so far. Her entry experiences and the blocking off of the southern viewpoints ‘got’ to her in particular.

Update 7 September 2025

Our Canberra snapper sent these to us.

1 September 2025: ‘Out the back’ behind the new Anzac Hall. An unwelcoming aspect for those – many – who drive along Treloar Crescent behind the Memorial. Redeemed only by that blue Monaro sky.

4 September 2025: Major works in the new parade ground. It seems that the main water pipe (probably for site drainage) running east-west is leaking. Again, not a good look.

Update 15 June 2025

The 6 June photo below hit us so hard that we dug into the files to find some history.

Statement of Reasons by the then Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, for her decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to approve the Memorial redevelopment, 10 December 2020

The paragraphs below quote ‘Updated Advice’ (21 September 2020) from the Heritage section of the then Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. This advice was in the papers available to the Minister when she made her decision and was included in her Statement of Reasons.

Impact of the Glazed Link: Updated Advice

[Summarises changes following consultation during the design process then goes on as follows]

The NHL (e)* values note the Memorial’s ‘relative visual isolation’ in the landscape. There have been no mitigation measures provided to address the impacts from building accretions (such as the Glazed Link abutting the memorial) on the Memorial in its landscape setting. The construction of the Glazed Link will still have a semi-permanent, high intensity impact on the Memorial’s ‘visual isolation in the landscape’.

Overall, despite the changes made, the Glazed Link will still have a predictable, semi-permanent, high intensity impact on the heritage values of the AWM. This is because the ability to interpret the heritage values of the Memorial’s ‘relative visual isolation’ through the Glazed Link’s fabric will still be obscured to a moderate degree. This value will not be lost; however, it will become harder to interpret within the AWM setting.

[* NHL values are intended to justify the inclusion of the Memorial on the National Heritage List.]

Letter from Geoff Ashley, Principal, Ashley Built Heritage, to Major General Steve Gower, former Director of the Memorial, and Stewart Mitchell, former Head of Buildings and Services at the Memorial, 17 August 2021

The paragraphs below (pages 2-3 of the letter) summarise Mr Ashley’s remarks presented in tabular form later in his letter. The remarks comment on the Minister’s Statement of Reasons quoted above.

Glazed Link
In my opinion, combined with the changed visitor experience of memorial/commemoration and the hardening of the overall landscape setting of the Memorial, it is the huge glazed addition and the resulting loss of the free-standing form of the Memorial and its function as a national shrine, that will most damage its National Heritage values.

While the Statement of Reasons acknowledges a loss of ability to appreciate the relative visual isolation of the Memorial in its cultural landscape and that this is a high intensity impact, it claims that the visual isolation will only be obscured to a moderate degree. In my opinion the visual isolation and an ability to see the full form of the Memorial ‘in the round’ externally will be obscured totally, not to a moderate degree. In addition, both the new Anzac Hall and the Glazed link will add significant bulk that exacerbates the loss of these ‘visual isolation’ and ‘in the round’ aspects. The mitigations proposed do not reduce these impacts.

The Statement of Reasons also neglects to identify an impact of the visibility of the roof of the Glazed link from Anzac Parade, although in mitigations for this area it does suggest there will be a mitigation from a slightly increased area of transparent glazing to the roof — this will not reduce this impact which is from the visibility of the roof from down Anzac Parade, not whether the glass is transparent or obscure.

Commentary (February 2021): Heritage Guardians/Honest History; Tom McIlroy of the Australian Financial Review.

So, there you are: experts at the time reckoned the Glazed Link wings were very much a questionable option. Years later, the photo below confirms their opinions.

Update 6 June 2025

Wings over Campbell. This recent photo (6 June 2025, from our resident snapper) from down Anzac Parade to the south of the Memorial, shows the roof of the new Glazed Link protruding on either side of the iconic dome. This new view will startle visitors to Canberra and even people who live there. (Another view: the video at mark 1.42.)

Update 10 May 2025

A beautiful Canberra May day throws sharp light on some odd juxtapositions (photos supplied by our resident snapper).

Simpson and his donkey throw a nice shadow – but where are the visitors?

The Memorial dome lurks behind the lift conveying visitors from the carpark to the entrance level.

Concrete and pebbles – and a distant dome.

Simpson, donkey, lift and hydrant.

Update 8 May 2025

View from the north-east, showing the new Bean Building, including green walls to mimic eucalypts, and, to the right, the new Anzac Hall, with roof mimicking the AIF’s Rising Sun badge. The iconic dome is still there. By our Canberra snapper. The Canberra sky is unchanged.

 

Update 29 April 2025

Some more pictures from our Canberra snapper.

Update 19 February 2025

Director spruiks the Big Build to the tourist industry. A special emphasis on recent veterans.

Update 8 February 2025

The Memorial’s new entrance area is opened by the Prime Minister. He also spoke at the Last Post Ceremony. ABC interview with Memorial Chair and Director. Memorial media release with detail about the new entrance and videos.

Shane Wright piece in SMH and The Age with mostly unfavourable comments from readers. Most of the unfavourables focussed on the extravagance of the project and that the money could have been better spent on veterans’ welfare. Rossco, for example, said, ‘Surely the money could have been allocated to the welfare of returned soldiers instead of this extravagant remake of an already beautiful monument’ (Respect [thumbs up] 30).

Honest History (with handle ‘admin’) was one of a few asking about the Frontier Wars:

Meanwhile, the Memorial backpedals quietly from its previous commitments to properly recognise and commemorate frontier conflict, in which possibly as many First Australians died defending Country as there were uniformed Australians who died defending their country in our overseas wars. The new entrance continues the old Anglo-Celtic ‘remembrance of our brave Diggers’ trope [Laurence Binyon Ode, Napier Waller 15 values, pictures of war memorials across the country] that has been pretty much unchanged since 1941. We know more about our wars now than we did then and the Memorial should reflect this front and centre. What some of us have called the Frontier Wars are better called The Australian Wars – the wars of dispossession on which modern Australia was built – while our other wars are better called Australia’s overseas wars. (Respect [thumbs up] 19)

***

4 February 2025

Work in progress on the new Anzac Hall at the rear of the main building (supplied)

December 2024 (updated 8 February 2025)

Honest History is now based in Melbourne but we had a quick visit to Canberra on 30 December and took photos.

We trudged across this space from Limestone Avenue towards the Memorial then took the photo looking back. The overwhelming impression from this perspective is the breaking of the old link between the building and the forecourt. This is broad, treeless space, with the Memorial appearing as an afterthought, half-hidden from below by the new bladed wall, behind which is the new underground entrance.

The proportions are all wrong: too much concrete, too much red gravel, too many banks of seating space, not enough Memorial. The Stone of Remembrance (‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’) sits isolated in that broad space like a pie-cart outside the MCG; that’s it in the middle left of our snap.

The downgrading of remembrance in favour of performative commemoration, even celebration, is the clear result. Dignitaries and the hoi polloi mobile phone snappers will have uninterrupted (apart from waving flags) views of the Anzac Day and other marchers, to the lively beat of various bands.

Military buffs and Australian Defence Force recruiters short of recruits will also love all that space for marching and display. But less visitors than previously may find their way from performance outside to remembrance inside.

Tourists will love the parades but if they turn up on a day when there are no parades they will wonder why there is so much space. Perhaps new parades will be put on specially for them. There are lots of possible days.

The Oculus from above (October 2024)

If visitors go inside, it will mostly be via the new underground entrance. Above, the original doors (redesignated the ‘ceremonial entrance’) now look rather like the tradesman’s entrance. The traditional first view through this entrance of the Memorial courtyard –  Pool of Reflection, Roll of Honour, Hall of Memory, and Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier – will be replaced by a first view through the new underground entrance of lots of space and features as described in the Memorial’s media release of 5 February.

Once inside, visitors on that lower level will be able to look up through the oyster-like oculus, a structure which viewed from below is a mathematical inversion of the Memorial’s dome but which from above provokes the question, ‘However will the Memorial keep it clean?’ The stairs leading from the Parade Ground to that upper, ‘oculus-looking-down’ level have a narrow and slippery tread and look and feel hastily or cheaply finished, with crosses here and there marking flaws needing remediation.

Further out, the grass between the areas of concrete has the occasional weed. The replacement trees will look great in a couple of decades, if they survive. It will be a hot, broiling space on Remembrance Day and windy and cold at the Dawn Service. Perhaps the Memorial will supply (sponsored) cabanas for the former and heaters for the latter.

Our Canberra photographer had visited earlier in December and found areas clearly in need of tidying up, building works notwithstanding: oxidisation and faded poppies on the Roll of Honour; ugly railings and plywood covers here and there; netting obscuring detail in the Hall of Memory. Here’s a snap.

Remediation needed to Memorial roof

June-September 2024

The Anzac Parade facade of the Memorial, lit up in a garish way never envisaged by CEW Bean*, and rather reminiscent of Brasilia Airport at night or perhaps of Leni Reifenstahl’s visions of Germany in the 1930s.

View from Mount Ainslie, showing new Anzac Hall taking shape

Memorial management has always insisted (for example, here) that the southern facade of the Memorial will remain unchanged by the redevelopment. Really? Compare that with the pre-redevelopment facade in the next picture.

 

Work on the Bean Building, to the right of the main entrance.

‘Pull up a bollard!’ A famous line from The Goon Show (BBC Radio) of many years ago; some elements of the Memorial’s Big Build have been a worthy subject for satire.

Beyond the bollards.

David Stephens

*‘[It should] … not be colossal in scale but rather a gem of its kind’ (Bean and the Australian War Museum Committee, 11 October 1923, on the proposed building and collection).

5 July 2024 updated