Derham Groves

Brick Letterboxes

The following 14 brick letterboxes are just a sample of those designed in my Popular Art, Architecture and Design course at the University of Melbourne.  A selection of the students’ letterboxes will be built by apprentice bricklayers from Holmesglen Institute of TAFE later this year.

Audrey Zerafa

Kate Fitzgerald

Claire Welsh

Ying Li

Alexandra Wall

Chris Berzins

Kim Peeters

Amanda Tan

Lavanya Arulanandam

Linna Zheng

Zoe Lewis

Justin Bolton

Rebecca de Haas

Rubina Barooah

Forthcoming Talk at the Melbourne Chinese Studies Group

Next MELBOURNE CHINESE STUDIES GROUP seminar
Date: Friday 3 September 2010, 6pm
Admission $2   All Welcome
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets)
Topic: The forgotten Chinese architecture of Arthur Purnell
Speaker: Derham Groves

Arthur Purnell was an Australian architect who lived and worked in Guangzhou, China, between 1900 and 1910. In 1904 he and American engineer Charles Paget established an architectural and engineering firm over there. Purnell & Paget designed a number of important buildings in Guangzhou, including a marvellous cement factory that became Chinese political leader Sun Yat-sen’s headquarters. Almost all of the firm’s buildings in Guangzhou were European-style.  Purnell returned to Australia in 1910 and maintained a busy architectural practice, working either alone or in partnership, virtually up until his death in 1964. He designed hundreds of buildings in Melbourne, ranging from humble garages to huge grandstands. A significant number of these were influenced by his years in Guangzhou: some buildings were for local Chinese clients, some had Chinese-style elements, and some had Chinese names. Unfortunately Purnell has been totally forgotten in Guangzhou and largely forgotten in Melbourne.

Views of Portugal—Posted on the run

Evora: Town wall; Igreja de Santo Antao on the town square; Cathedral of Evora; Igreja de Na Senhora da Graca; the Moorish church on Avenue Dr. Barahona; storks nesting on the steeple of the church on Rua D. Augusto Eduardo Nunes; the Roman viaduct (and houses) on Rua do Cano (2 images); house with chimney on Rua do Raimundo; the Roman temple; Neolithic standing stones; a dish of snails; faux Disney ride at the Feira de Sao Joao (2 images). Sintra:

Evora

Sintra

Lisbon

Views of Tokyo

Sensoji Temple (2 images—the temple being renovated and a giant sandal hanging on a temple gate); Hama-rikyu Garden (2 images—struts supporting a tree branch and two 18th century duck hunting hides); Odaiba Seaside Park (2 images—the Fuji TV building designed by Kenzo Tange and a small version of the Statue of Liberty); ‘crazy’ Japanese billboards (2 images); the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building designed by Kenzo Tange; a building with a wavy facade; the Cocoon Tower designed by Tange Associates (3 images); a building with a cracked facade; the Asahari Super Dry Hall designed by Philippe Starck; the De Beers building designed by Jun Mitsui; a building with a folly on the roof; the Mikimoto building designed by Toyo Ito; the Imperial Palace’s East Garden (2 images—amateur photographers snapping irises and a stone rampart); Ping considering the menu; me lost in translation; Tokyo Disneyland (10 images—the suitcase-shaped shops outside the park, the main entrance, World Bazaar, Fantasyland (3 images—Sleeping Beauty’s castle and It’s a Small World from the outside and the inside), Westernland (3 images—Mark Twain Riverboat, Fort Sam Clemens and the Indian camp), and Mickey and Minnie icy-poles).

Views of Los Angeles and St. Louis—Posted on the Run

This year the Popular Culture Association conference was held in St. Louis, but I had a few days in Los Angeles beforehand. Anaheim: Disneyland (7 images— Disneyland’s entrance and railway station; the Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue; Sleeping Beauty’s castle; Storybook Land and the Casey Jones train; It’s a Small World After All building; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride; the Thunder Mountain ghost train). Los Angeles: Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank O. Gehry (5 images—the last being the ‘plaque’ on Gehry’s Delft rose sculpture dedicated to Lillian Disney); the Museum of Contemporary Art designed by Arata Isozaki; Watts Towers designed and constructed by Simon Rodia (6 images); the house directly opposite Watts Towers; the Anna May Wong caryatid, part of the Hollywood Walk of Fame statue designed by Catherine Hardwicke (2 images); Basil Rathbone’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (1926) designed by Meyer & Holler (3 images); Capitol Records building (1956) designed by Welton Becket; Clifton’s Cafeteria (2 images); Piece Brothers cemetery (8 images—the graves of Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Rodney Dangerfield (with the ‘ghost’ of Derham Groves in the background), Bob Crane and Sigrid Valdis (Colonel Hogan and Hilda from Hogan’s Heroes), Don Knotts (Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show), Billy Wilder, and Jack Lemmon). St. Louis: Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts designed by Tadao Ando (2 images); Sun Theatre (1913) designed by Widman and Walsh; the Pruit-Igoe site—which has remained vacant since the disastrous housing project designed in 1950 by Minoru Yamasaki was progressively demolished between 1972-1974 (2 images); Compton Hill water tower (1898) designed by Harry Ellis (2 images); Bissell water tower (1886) designed by William S. Eames (the uncle of Charles Eames); Grand water tower (1871) designed by George I. Barnett; Yit Mei and Javier; model for the ceiling of the lobby at the Magic Chef appliance factory (1947) designed by Isamu Noguchi, in the St. Louis Museum of Art; Gateway to the West (1963-1968) designed by Eero Saarinen (2 images); sample Gateway to the West elevator car; and Union Station (1894) designed by Theodore Link.

Anaheim

Los_Angeles

St._Louis