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Preface   One of the areas that my Master of Architecture history/theory course, Popular Architecture and Design, which I teach at the University of Melbourne, looks at is “everyday architecture”. In previous years the students who did this course have researched kebab shops in Melbourne (2011), launderettes in Melbourne (2012) and painted garage doors in Read more

My wife, Tiang (who I call Ping), found the negative of this photo in some things she had stored at my parents’ house. It shows the three Khoo sisters and their father at Central Padang in Kuching in the 1960s. The surreal perspective has almost turned their father into a Ken doll. Weird! And Hoon Read more

Danius Kesminas recently asked me to write a libretto—in the form of a story board for a comic book—for the fourth part of a science fiction/surreal/punk opera, to be performed by the Lepidopters (Punkasila et al) at the Darwin Festival in August 2014. I had to more or less continue the storyline of the first Read more

Three suspicious-looking characters: me, Stephen Knight and Lucy Sussex. (I only got back from the USA that morning, so I wasn’t quite at my best!) In between us is the cover of the new edition of MURDER IN THE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE by June Wright, which was first published in 1948. Following is a press release Read more

On Saturday night, Ping and I went to Melbourne’s White Night Festival. I can’t recall seeing such a big crowd in Melbourne. It was a bit scary. Being an old postmodernist, the lighting up of the buildings reminded me of the importance of surface. Sometimes the most interesting architecture is only a quarter-of-an-inch thick. Read more

Derham talking to Radio New Zealand’s Jim Mora about Hopalong Cassidy’s Australian tour in 1954. https://derhamgroves.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/aft-20130815-1416-hopalong_cassidy-0483.mp3 Read more

Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai, and some Chinese movie star. Shanghai Grand Theatre designed by Jean-Marie Charpentier. Ningpo Museum designed by Wang Shu. Hangzhou Grand Theatre designed by Carlos Ott. International Convention Centre, Hangzhou, designed by Xia Bangjie. Brick mountain sculpture, Hangzhou. Dragon boat, West Lake, Hangzhou. A hardware shop in Jinxi. The Grand Canal, Jinxi. Read more

Produced by Bearcage Productions, 2012. Read more

Last year (2011) the students who did my Popular Architecture and Design course at the University of Melbourne examined kebab shops in Melbourne. This year they looked at another similarly “invisible” and seemingly banal building type — launderettes (the English term) or Laundromats (the American term) in Melbourne. Kebab shops and launderettes represent “third places” Read more