Frank Lloyd Wright Lego

I kid you not. What could be more delightful that constructing your very own lego version of the "Fallingwater" house in Pennsylvania?


The kits were designed by Adam Reed Tucker in collaboration with Lego. See the website here.

Other options include:

And the Empire State Building, which I find a little underwhelming.


All images via the Brickstructures website.
I found out about these via 'A Daily Dose of Architecture.'

Calls for prime ministerial vegies

An article from the Australian yesterday caught my eye

Until we make Kev a garden variety PM, he won't be a patch on the Obamas - Michelle Rowe, May 23, 2009.

IF it's good enough for the Obamas, it's good enough for our Kev.

Australian food doyenne Stephanie Alexander has challenged Australia's "first family" to set up a vegie garden at the Lodge following Michelle Obama's much-publicised move to introduce paddock-to-plate eating at the White House.

Hot on the heels of winning the Vogue Entertaining + Travel Outstanding Contribution to Australian Food award for her most recent initiative, the Kitchen Garden Foundation, the restaurateur and author tells Food Detective that a vegetable garden at one of the PM's official residences would be a potent symbol of the importance of eating fresh, seasonal food.

Full article - click here.

I absolutely agree, I think everyone with some dirt should be growing something. It soothes the soul. Just imagine how this could help world peace if leaders could go outside and do some pruning when things weren't going so well. Always worked for my Dad.

Friday Fog Snapshots

I enjoyed my walk through the fog this morning. Seems proper wintery now.

Eureka BOO!

A new game we can all enjoy. Simple rules. Whenever you suddenly catch a glimpse of the Eureka Tower leering down a laneway or popping above the skyline just yell out 'EUREKA BOO!'

Good times.

Here is one I prepared earlier.

A snapshot, a gallery, a lecture

I have been a bit slack with the ole bloggy blog this past fortnight. I have been scrambling to finish the drafts of three chapters and start editing another. Plus a lot of reading for another project. But I don't wish to let my virtual Bosco languish from lack of cultivation so here are some bits and bobs that have taken my notice...

A Melbourne snapshot. The back of the Windsor Hotel in late afternoon Autumnal sunshine,from Lt Collins St. I just liked the patterns and textures.


A Gallery Re-opening. Uplands Gallery in Prahran has moved round the corner into High St. Re-opens tonight with a group show.

Image Uplands Gallery Website.

An upcoming lecture by Heide Museum of Modern Art director Jason Smith on the artist Francis Bacon.

Jason Smith -Director, Heide Museum of Modern Art

Dark Thoughts and Erotic Intensities: some thoughts on the works of Bacon,
Henson, Booth and Boynes

6.30 pm Tuesday 26 May 2009

Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre, University of Melbourne
Presented by the Fine Arts Network in collaboration with the Art History Discipline, School

of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

All Welcome

FAN Members Drinks from 6.00 pm in foyer

Snapshot, Saturday

Two photos from my walk yesterday.
Good window, bad air-conditioner. Corner of Hodgson and Smith St (you can notice it as you leave the Smith St Safeway). I like the massing of forms in this door frame. The two layer pediment and stocky pilasters seem to float, held up by nothing. Very mannerist. Actually I have been noticing a lot of mannerist-style architecture (Melbourne Mannerism?) in Melbourne buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, it isn't a often discussed in descriptions, just generally referred to as 'Italianate' or 'Classical'.
This door frame is a sculptural mass of classical framing motifs that have been reduced to stocky simplified versions. The pilasters flanking the sides of the door have become thick strips with three simple ridges. The scrolls on the front pediment are reduced to egg shapes. The front pediment also looks like it is precariously balanced on a tiny sliver of the side pilasters.

Trees and shadows on a white house on Gore St.

Image Databases

I have added a new link list on the far left of image databases, only three at the moment, but I will add to it as I go. A good place for browsing images of all sorts of things from architecture, to paintings, to drawings, fashion and so on.

Snapshot, Melbourne

Corner of Coates Lane and Lt Collins St. The Naval and Military Club was built around 1967, though the club itself has been around since the 19th century). It was put into administration back in February. I don't know anything about the architect, I liked the effect of the light and shadow playing across the façade. I was thinking that without the sharp sunlight and the shadows cast by the buildings opposite the facade would be infinitely less interesting, This 1960s brutalism is not my favourite style of architecture, but I do like the way the better examples use basic light and shadow contrasts. The repetitive angular geometry, such as the thin vertical lines of the example above, can be very satisfying to look at, depending on your mood.

Snapshot, Melbourne

The Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston St and Flinders Lane. Designed by Harry Norris for Alfred Nicholas, the 'Aspro' king. Dates to 1925-26 and is Norris's most classicising Melbourne building, his other designs include Majorca House just down Flinders Lane and the Coles (now David Jones) building in Bourke St. His career captures the essence of early 20th century architecture, jumping from classicism to art deco and moderne and finally even to the stripped back modernism of the 1950s. This building was actually clad in Wunderlich Granitex, a very modern material that was supposed to wash clean in the rain. Either the drought has got the better of it or that was a slight furphy. Nonetheless one of my favourite buidlings in the CBD, the interior is well worth having a wonder around as well.

Snapshot, Rome.

I'm not in Rome, unfortunately, but I have a lot of snapshots from the past few years. This is the entrance to the cafe beneath the studio of Antonio Canova, an eighteenth-century sculptor. It is on Via del Babuino, between the Spanish Steps and Piazza del Popolo. As you can see it is crammed full of plaster cast 'sketches' for sculptures, and a few marble busts as well.