Derham Groves – Page 8 – His Wunderkammer

Views of Rochester NY, Minneapolis, London, Tbilisi, and London Again—Posted on the Run

November 16, 2009

London: St. George’s (Nicholas Hawksmoor); St. Mary Woolnoth (Nicholas Hawksmoor); British Museum (renovation by Norman Foster); a post modern bank building (perhaps by Leon Krier?); Gherkin (Norman Foster); Lloyds building (Richard Rogers); Christ Church (Nicholas Hawsmoor); Gilbert and George’s house, Fournier Street, Spitalfields; Gilbert and George shopping at Spitalfields Market; Sherlock Holmes statue in Baker Street; Portsmouth Harbour (2 images); Richard Lancelyn Green’s Sherlock Holmes collection at City Museum, Portsmouth (2 images); Reconstruction of a typical 1950s English living room at City Museum, Portsmouth; St. Pancras Station (William Barlow); National Gallery (addition by Robert Venturi); St. Martins in the Fields (James Gibbs); John Soane Museum (renovation by John Soane); Big Ben (Charles Barry); London Eye (Mark Barfield); Sherlock Holmes pub; British Library at St. Pancras (Colin St. John); Millenium Bridge (Norman Foster); St. Paul’s (Christopher Wren). Tibilisi: House; Brickwork; Shoe repairer’s sign; Graffiti; Cafe; Balcony; Coke advertisement; Mtskheta, the old capital of Georgia; Old churches near Mtskheta (2 images). London again (Kew Gardens): Chinese Pagoda (William Chambers); Temperate House and Palm House (both by Decimus Burton, 3 images). Minneapolis: My buddy, sculptor Andrew Leicester. Rochester NY: Clock of Nations (Dale Clark); Highland Park Diner (2 images); my mentor Karal Ann Marling’s house.

London

PB280025 PB280004 PB280011 PB280010 PB270002 PB270009 PB2700173 PB270021 PB270020 PB270029

Portsmouth PB260002 PB260001 PB260005 PB260007 PB260010

London PB250001 PB250008 PB250013 PB250003 PB250020 PB250023 PB250024 PB240001 PB240003 PB240006

Tbilisi/Republic of Georgia PB190016 PB190029 PB210003 PB210006 PB220011 PB190015 PB210005 PB210017 PB210032 PB210031

London PB160106 PB160102 PB160101 PB160100

Minneapolis PB150098

Rochester PB120092 PB100089 PB100088 PB100090

For the Third Grand Final in a Row: Go Cats!

September 22, 2009

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Grand Final postscript: How good was that! What a great team Geelong is. Two out of three premierships on the trot. Absolutely fabulous. GO CATS! Let’s make it three out of four in 2010.

Forthcoming Talk at the American Institute of Architects’ Conference, Minneapolis

September 11, 2009

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Anna May Wong in Australia

August 30, 2009

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Elaine Mae Woo, the director of Frosted Yellow Willows (2007), a documentary about the career of Anna May Wong, visited Melbourne last week for the Anna May Wong retrospective at ACMI. Pictured are moderator Philipa Hawker (above, left), Elaine and myself on stage following the screening of Frosted Yellow Willows on Thursday night at ACMI. Elaine and I spoke about Anna May Wong at the Chinese Museum on Saturday afternoon (below), and then I introduced Shanghai Express (1932), one of Wong’s best and most memorable films, at ACMI on Saturday night.

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Vale Dominick Dunne, 1925 – 2009

August 28, 2009

Dominick Dunne

Dominick Dunne and the grave of his daughter Dominique at Pierce Brothers cemetery in Los Angeles. Dominique’s tragic murder started Dominick’s second career as a ‘celebrity’ crime reporter and a crime fiction author.

Brick Walls

August 15, 2009

I’ve designed a couple of brick walls for the apprentice bricklayers at Holmesglen TAFE to build. One is based on eating a vanilla slice and the other is based on Tintin’s rocket in Destination Moon by Hergé.

PA270077 Apprentice bricklayer Brett who built the Vanilla Slice Wall

Students in my Popular Art, Architecture and Design class also designed some brick walls for the bricklaying apprentices at Holmesglen to build. Here is a small sample of them:

Brendan Pope 115685 - Brick Wall.pdf James Bond Wall—Brendon Pope

abbreyk road wall copy

Abbey Road Wall—Mohamad Khalid

AiCiLow(Laney)_224398_Assignment1_Brick copy Super Mario Wall—Ai Ci Lo

JoanneNataprawira_ShadowWall copy

Scary Wall—Joanne Nataprawira

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Music Wall—Melika Mehdizadeh

PA270069 Red Violin—Melika Mehdizadeh

SANDALIE_BRICK WALL copy copy

The Joker/Heath Ledger Wall—Sandalie Seneviratne

takuya copy

Gift-Box Wall—Takuya Matatsumoto

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Michael Jackson’s Feet—Kathryn Ko

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Hitting a Brick Wall—Georgie Stokes

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Optical Illusion—Marc Cheeng Ming Ern

Throw a Steak on the Barbie

August 15, 2009

Wattle Path Palais De Danse

July 27, 2009

Last week I spoke at the St. Kilda Historical Society’s ‘Memories of St Moritz’ evening at the St. Kilda Public Library. The St. Moritz ice skating rink was a famous St. Kilda landmark. However, the building was originally a dance hall called the Wattle Path Palais De Danse, which was designed by Arthur Purnell in 1923. Purnell’s initial design (the first and second images) was influenced by Islamic architecture, which I prefer to his final design (the third image and the model). Nevertheless, it was yet another iconic Purnell building.

Barlow Motors

June 3, 2009

Purnell’s 1924 sketch of Barlow Motors, 20 – 28 LaTrobe Street, Melbourne.

Newspaper advertisement of 1927 for Barlow Motors.

One of the most colourful clients of Melbourne architect Arthur Purnell (1878 – 1964) was Alexander George Barlow (1880 – 1937), a highly innovative—if slightly shady—businessman, who was a pioneer of the car retail industry in Melbourne. After his new car dealership Barlow Motors failed in 1930 during the Great Depression, he leased the Lower Melbourne Town Hall and installed a miniature golf course. Alas, this business went bust too. When things finally got too much in 1937, tragically Barlow killed himself. A.G. Barlow’s son Alexander (‘Alec’) Arthur Barlow (b. 1908) worked for Barlow Motors. In 1926 the company sponsored him and the Australian adventurer Frances Birtles to drive a Bean sports car from Darwin to Melbourne in the shortest possible time. They completed the 3391-mile journey in 205 hours, with many adventures along the way. If that wasn’t enough, Alec Barlow was also an aviator. In 1929 he crashed his plane on its maiden flight and then matter-of-factly bought a new plane a fortnight later.

This past semester at the University of Melbourne, where I teach, I asked a group of third year architecture students to imagine that A.G. Barlow and A.A. Barlow were alive today and needed a new building for Barlow Motors—consisting of a car showroom, a car service centre, a car park, a ‘bachelor’s apartment’ for A.A. Barlow, and a rooftop miniature golf course—which reflected the adventurous spirit of the Barlows. Since the types of cars sold by Barlow Motors no longer exist, the students had to choose a current brand for the company to sell. Following is a sample of the students’ buildings:

Victims and Villains

May 22, 2009

Following is the front cover for my next book, Victims and Villains: Barbie and Ken Meet Sherlock Holmes, and the text for the back cover. It will be published by Ramble House (www.ramblehouse.com) later this year.

BARBIE’S DEAD, at last!

On March 9, 2009, the infamous Barbie doll turned 50. As for her companions, the curiously asexual Ken and the forgettable Skipper (what kind of name is that for one’s baby sister, anyway?), nobody seems inclined to bake cakes with candles for either one of them. Barbie’s the star, at least for feminists and professors with time on their hands who have argued ad infinitum that this doll is turning our daughters into prepubescent sex maniacs, enthralled by her perky and anatomically impossible physique. But less hysterical researchers have recently noticed that little girls don’t seem at all inclined to emulate Barbie. They do, instead, hack off her oh-so-perfect hair, melt her dainty fingers over purloined cigarette lighters, and generally use her and her cohorts as subjects for grisly acts of mayhem. Kill them! And make ‘em suffer.

The innocence of childish impulses toward the dastardly is, of course, the real charm of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Hanging. Stabbing. Poisoning. Death by snake. One poor fellow even “blanched.” To read the most famous of Holmes adventures through at a sitting only increases one’s admiration for the ingenuity of the author who finds such varied and engaging ways of tumbling his victims into the hereafter. How much more gruesome pleasure is thus afforded by the sight of Barbie and company done to death over and over again in living color and three dimensions. It’s almost as delightful as spending an afternoon mutilating Barbie—or the truly dreadful Ken—with lighters and scissors! Sex? A passing fancy. Violence? Ah, that’s the ticket!

Karal Ann Marling
Professor Emerita, American Studies and Art History
University of Minnesota