Save the Windsor Rally

I was at the rally yesterday and there was a decent turn out. I'm terrible at guessing crowd numbers but maybe 150 people? Enough to fill the steps and crowd the pavement. Rod Quantock MC'ed, and various people spoke including Bob Brown. Who promised to make it a national issue. I also hope that The Greens make it an election issue. They came very close to winning the seat of Melbourne in the last election and I hope that if they could campaign on issues like this then maybe they would unseat Bronwyn Pike. Some of the liberal members also spoke but I am a bit cynical about their motivations, they were more focused on the corruption in the planning process and one man in particular seemed to be very obviously avoiding stating that he was against the proposal for The Windsor.

I am very against for a few reasons. I believe that a huge tower tacked on the back of The Windsor will ruin its appearance, the way the the sun shimmers over its facade will be lost and the grand hotel will sit uncomfortably in the shadow of a glass monolith.  I think the design itself is boring and completely insensitive to The Windsor, it speaks of an architect who wants to dominate a low rise area with a  statement building, not try and work sensitively with what is already there. The issue here is not simply about a single building but about good urban planning, about how buildings sit in relation to one another. Tall buildings in Melbourne's grid plan create wind tunnels and shade streets for much of the day. Lonsdale St beside the QV is a good example, the BHP billiton building funnels the wind along the street and keeps the street cafes in shade almost all day.  It's all a bit depressing. Melbourne has places for high rise buildings, like docklands and Southbank and the other end of the CBD, we need to retain low rise areas as well. Many cities have very successfully kept strict height limits, and these have led to very creative and inventive pieces of architecture. Anyway here are some pictures, I particularly like my one of the Madden Mad Hatter towering over the Windsor so I have made a new badge to replace my now defunct Save Lonsdale House Badge.

The relevance of the Alice in Wonderland characters is that Madden is the Mad Hatter (naturally). Brumby is the March Hare and Heritage Victoria is the Dormouse, asleep at the table. Alice represented the public, confused and treated with contempt.

British Archive of Old Signs

Remember that old sign I posted a few weeks ago? Well I was reading in The Guardian about an archive of 'Ghostsigns'.

Painted signs were once common but have been replaced by printed billboards, and those that survive are fading fast, or being demolished during building work.
Project manager Sam Roberts has documented over 650 painted 'ghostsigns' around the country, with the help of interested photographers through the Ghostsigns Flickr group.

A flickr group seems like a good idea, maybe the Melbourne map of old signs 'Our Fading Past' should also have a flickr group. Thoughts?(Possibly there may be something like this already that I have missed!)

Some of the signs I have photographed...

Lt Lonsdale St, Melbourne

 Gertrude St, Fitzroy

Gore St, Fitzroy

Snapshot, Carlton.

Photos of a slightly damp Carlton Gardens. It is closed off now for the STUPID Flower and Garden Show, which is so commercial and all about selling boring patios and watering cans. I really don't see why most of the exhibits couldn't be set up inside in the Exhibition Centre, or the Exhibition Buildings. It is basically a trade fair. There is a good piece here from The Greens about it back in 2008 and the same points still stand. I ranted about it last year. It mainly makes me cross because it damages the gardens so much. A lot of the grass still hadn't recovered from last year and it is now being covered in bricks and pavilions. Plus it is a public space, so many people walk in those gardens every day, or sit and eat lunch. for people in the inner city these are our green spaces, we don't necessarily have backyards. The gardens are closed off from Wednesday 17th March till Wednesday 31st. I might work up a longer post about it later, or I might write about Chaumont, which is a proper garden festival rather than just a glorified gardening shop. Actually the fact that it is such a rubbish event annoys me too. Other festivals like the Food and Wine festival encourage creativity and celebrate really interesting chefs and whatnot, but the garden festival doesn't do that, it celebrates very mediocre mass market gardens.

Telstra building in a puddle.

Snapshot, Sydney

The old Police Court on Liverpool St in Sydney. It was designed by W. L. Vernon and completed in 1892.

'Garters and Petticoats' - Portraits of Victoria and Albert

A talk coming up at Melbourne Uni that might interest some of my readers.

Click the image to see the full size poster. You can also view the original post here: http://fineartsnetwork.org.au

I should say that I help run the fine arts network website and I recommend it to you if you have an interest in art history. It includes details of art history events (focused on Melbourne), new research databases, funding, conferences and journals.

Fitzroy Snapshot

The old Ace Billiards factory on Charles Street, now apartments. Not sure if it was always a Billiard Table factory or not. Anyone know?

 

 

Alfonso Parigi set designs

More sets I'm working on and thought I would share. These set designs are by Alfonso Parigi for the opera Le Nozze degli Dei (The Marriage of the Gods). It was performed in 1637 in Florence at the Palazzo Pitti in the courtyard. The images are from the British Museum website.

Hard at work with Ludovico Burnacini, 17th century set designer

I am busy working away on the last section of one of my chapters. It is about Ludovico Burnacini's (Mantua 1636 - Vienna 1707) set designs for the festa teatrlae (theatrical opera and ballet) called Il Pomo d'Oro (The Golden Apple). It was performed in Vienna to celebrate the marriage of Emperor Leopold I to the Infanta Margherita of Spain. I was flicking through my photos of the sets and found several I had taken in the Biblioteca Livia Simone (the library section of the Museo della Teatro della Scala). The library itself was an interesting experience, housed on the top floor of a palazzo that was otherwise used as an auction house. I was the only person using the library and the head librarian would escort me through the store rooms of the auction house (think paintings with gold leaf rococo frames stacked against walls, various marble busts of notable persons and piles of 18th century carved walking sticks). Upstairs it was all very utilitarian and I sat at a simple table flicking through the libretti (literally small books) that contained engravings and texts of 17th and 18th century operas. When I wanted something I would have to go and knock at the door of the librarian who was listening to very loud opera (naturally) and photographing piles of huge marionette puppets from the 19th century. Anyway the photos are good as they give an impression of the small size of these books.

The opera/ballet was very spectacular. Burnacini first had to build and decorate the theatre (this took several years) and it some sources suggest it sat 5000 spectators, though this may be an exaggeration. There were twenty three sets and a variety of special effects to create storms, earthquakes, fire breathing dragons, thunder and lightening. The sets were engraved and distributed widely across Europe. Burnacini's sets are typical of the late seventeenth-century. The sets have a focus on one point perspective that creates the illusion of far distant perspective that disappears into the background.

 

The title page and some of the list of scene changes.

 

Woodland scenes, even wild nature was symmetrical and ordered.

Note the repetition of the same architectural form to create an exaggerated perspective.

A garden scene, although the symmetry and architectural structure is exaggerated, it is not dissimilar to the actual gardens of the period.

A cave and a rocky landscape, both common settings in Baroque opera, in part because set designers and librettists often aimed to represent the four elements (earth, fire, water, air) and the whole range of earthly and heavenly realms in each production.

Set designers were usually also architects and the designs they made for the stage allowed them to have free reign on their imaginations and create elaborate and fantastical buildings and interiors that were not possible in the real world.

The storm scene, another favourite setting, usually marked in the narrative by the hero having to make a difficult decision. Also a chance to show off elaborate special effects that created lightening and thunder and even real rain on occasion.

 

  

 A few more settings with elaborate architecture.

Thames Town

View of Thames Town (from www.building.co.uk )

 

from www.thamestown.com

This strange town is just oustide Shanghai in China. It is a replica of an English Town. So strange. the website describes it as 'Authentic English Town'. It looks like a film set, old, yet not. I wonder what the buildings are like, are they all created from brick, sandstone, marble and so on or are they more cheaply constructed?

This video shows a good range of views of the town.



I first saw Thames Town on that Paul Merton documentary on China that screened on the ABC recently (if your quick the last episode with Thames Town in it is still on iView). Apparently almost all the houses are sold but very few are actually lived in.

The illusion, such as it is, would appear to crumble a little at the edges.

I find places like this so intriguing. Thames town reminds me of several places. the film sets I visited at Cinecitta in Italy, the reconstructed town centre of Warsaw and even the odd but delightful Italianate town of Portmeirion in Wales built by the eccentric Clough Williams Ellis. All places I should do a post on at some point. Do you know any other slightly surreal towns that look like film sets or at least an architectural duck out of water?

Snapshots - Kyneton

Cast iron verandah on Mollison St.

I stopped in Kyneton briefly on Saturday. I don't think I had ever been there before, as far as I can remember. There are some lovely old buildings, particularly on Piper St.

The Mechanics Institute, built in 1858 to a design by William Douglas.

The old flour mill on Piper St, now a curry house and wine bar.