Snapshots, Melbourne Uni

I was waiting for someone outside the 1888 building at Melbourne Uni the other day. I have been there so much over the past decade as a student and as staff but because I work there I tend not to take many photos. I had some time on my hands, and a camera and the sun was shining so here a few snaps.

 The 188 building itself. I like all it crowded ornament set against the red brick. There is always something about brick as a material on a façade that helps to tone down crazy ornament in a way a stucco or rendered façade wouldn't. There is something almost mannerist about the ornament, the crowded banded columns and the strange spiky pyramids. Though it lacks the elegance of more sophisticated mannerist architecture, everything is a bit crowded, a bit squeezed, but I still like it. 

I have to admit to never taking much notice of this pub, I don't really like it as a place to go (the interior is pretty awful, blonde tiles etc). But in the afternoon autumn sun the outside looks pretty good. I am guessing it was built in 1926 as the date above the door suggests, it has been designed to look older unlike a few of the other deco style pubs around this area.

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.