Art Deco Plaques in Calais

When I vist a town I really enjoy exploring the streets just to see what I can find. In Calais, I found this apartment. It is not much from a deco point of view but if you look carefully you'll notice there a couple of relief panels in the red brick facade.

On closer examination they turned out to be a a male head and a female head in an art deco style. I don't know if they were incorporated when the apartment was built or whether they were added later.

I'm sorry I can't tell you any more about them. I think it was in a street facing a river or canal but I wouldn't swear on it. I'm just happy I found them.

Change Rooms, Fawkner Park

The main sports in Melbourne are cricket in the summer and football in the winter so it is not surprising that the change rooms in Fawkner Park carry panels representing these two sports. What is marvellous for me is that these panels have been done in an art deco style.

The cricket panel shows a batsman under a blazing Australian sun completing a fabulous shot to the boundary. The fieldsman, with his collar up, hasn't even moved.

The footy panel is my favourite. It is rare to see Australian Rules Football represented in deco style and this shows one of the most exciting aspects of the game. Under ominous clouds a player leaps for a high mark while the defender tries to punch the ball away. He almost takes on a ballet pose as he attempts to spoil the mark. Behind him, in the distance, the unmistakable four posts of an Aussie Rules goal.

Cricket, footy and deco perhaps there is only one city in the world where this could happen ... sports mad Melbourne.

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra Headquarters, Adelaide

In 1908 TJ West opened the Olympia cinema in a former ice skating rink in Hindley St, Adelaide. For the next 30 or so years it hosted films and vaudeville acts until West decided to rebuild it as a modern cinema using architects Evans, Bruer & Hall in association with Sydney ‘cinema specialists’ Crick & Furse.

The new cinema opened in December 1939 and now serves as the headquarters for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO).

The exterior of the building is dominated by a rectangular tower and bears little external decoration. The tower has a series of 4 horizontal bands providing a somewhat aerodynamic look. The windows on the facade are separated by vertical fins showing simple stepped decoration and rounded tops.



The foyer inside is a wonderful circular space. The ceiling has a large round feature with hidden lighting showing off the blue and pink colours.

Curving staircases hug the walls leading up to the mezzanine level punctuated by matching mirrors on each side which reach almost from floor to ceiling. The mirrors are etched with a series of wavy lines that echo the wave of the staircase banister.

The ASO run their Tea and Symphony series from the Grainger Studio in this wonderful art deco building.

Bank of Ireland Buildings, Belfast

The Bank of Ireland Buildings dominate the view along Royal Avenue in Belfast. It dates from 1928 by architects McDonnell and Dixon.

A clock tower with the main entrance to the bank set in the base at street level dominates the corner. The green oxidised copper dome on top goes well with the darker green under the windows and the main doors.

Asymmetrical wings stretch out from the tower perhaps to make the best use of an irregular shaped city block.

The metal work on main doors to the bank offer a pleasant art deco pattern. Simple rectangles supporting a vertical line of chevrons with a gold coloured piece at the bottom of each one.

The design is repeated in the transom window.

Above the doorway, the name of the buildings is shown in relief highlighted in black.

Another doorway along the side of the buildings is identified by the name of the bank shown in relief above it and again, like the main entrance, the name is highlighted in black. Further above the name of the bank, a relief of a stylised face provides further decoration.

The Belfast Daily Photo featured this building in September 2007 indicating that it was empty at that time and worried about its future. I add my concern and hope that a suitable use can be found for this gem.

South Melbourne Art Deco Walk

One of my photos was published in The Age newspaper last Saturday. It was the size of a postage stamp but it was still give me a quite thrill to see it. It wasn't credited because it wasn't that sort of item. It was a promo for an Art Deco walk in South Melbourne organised by the Art Deco Society and the local Port Phillip Council.

The walk was very popular with over 70 people attending so while it is a bit too many for a walk it does show the popularity art deco is gaining. Of course it could be that it was reasonable autumn weather and there wasn't much else to do on a boring Melbourne Sunday. I prefer to believe the former.

Getting back to the picture. It shows a beautiful antelope which is part of the fence at the former Army Band Building in Albert Park. It is pure deco and an ideal way to promote the walk. I was happy to send one of my photos with the press release and even more happy when they printed it.

Electricity Sub-station, Port Melbourne

Electricity came to Port Melbourne around 1911 and the local council set up their own Electricity Supply Department. Even when the State Electricity Commission (SEC) ran most of Victoria's supply, Port Melbourne along with several other inner-city municipalities continued to run their own departments until the early 1990s when the statewide Electricity supply was privatised.

The result is that Port Melbourne has a couple of little electricity sub-stations dotted among the residential streets. This one is at the apex of Nott and Princes Streets behind the Bowling Club.

The decoration simple but stylish. The bottom part of the structure shows thin brown bricks while the top has been rendered and painted a nice cream colour. The roofline is stepped and a spaced row of bricks have been embedded in the render.

The facade itself is also stepped. Two symetrical columns protrude from the wall with four double-height bricks as decoration on each. The central section is set back from the columns and is topped with another configuration of vertically placed bricks.

This simple building demonstates to me how even purely functional buildings were built to be pleasing to the eye.

Labworth Cafe, Canvey Island

The Labworth Cafe on Canvey Island is a wonderful modernist concrete building overlooking the Thames.

With a large round central section, 2 storeys tall, and symmetrical wings supporting rooftop terraces surrounded by simple metal railings, it resembles the bridge of a ship.

The building was designed by engineer Ove Arup in 1932, one of his few architectural projects.

Arup, the son of Danish parents, was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He studied and worked in England and Denmark before settling to London. In 1934 he was structural consultant to Tecton for Berthold Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool at London Zoo.

In 1946 he formed Arup & Partners and later worked as design engineer for the Sydney Opera House from 1957-1973.

Although he died in 1988, the company he founded is still active in international construction projects including the main stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

A House in Adelaide

On my recent visit to Adelaide I was lucky to be invited to this amazing Art Deco house. This photo shows the large porch area at the front of the house. It is certainly a very striking feature and provides a large balcony area from the upstairs rooms.

It was designed by architect Chris Smith as his personal residence and he operated his architecture business out of offices above the garage at the rear of the property.

Chris Smith designed many Art Deco buildings around Adelaide including The Capri Theatre in Goodwood Road, Everard Court Apartments on Anzac Highway and City of Holdfast Bay Council Chambers.

Inside the features are more or less intact although they have been renovated in recent years. Many of the rooms have built-in furniture and ornate decoration on the ceilings and cornices.
Some of the decoration is a bit over the top (in a good way) as if Smith was showing off some of his cinema designs to prospective clients but the etched glass doors leading to the dining room are very simple, elegant and almost impossible to photograph.

The ceilings have been painted silver or a bronze-gold colour and for some reason the light fixtures have been placed where they are needed rather than in the centre of the ceiling decoration as us mere mortals would expect.

For instance the kitchen light (above left) is over the built-in banquette seating area rather than the centre of the room. I think it looks a bit weird, here particularly, but worked quite well in one of the bedrooms where the man light was over the dressing table with additional light coming from a wall fixture above the bed. It does allow us to take in all the beautiful Art Deco detail of the ceiling decoration.

One area where the function and design came together as I would have expected was in the landing at the top of the stairs (above right) where the light fitting is centred. I think it works really well but maybe I am a bit old-fashioned.

The house also had its fair share of terrazzo. The entrance porches but front and rear had beautiful terrazzo floors. The small area at the back door had a design which may have been just a geometric pattern but could also be interpreted as Chris Smith’s initials. The bathroom upstairs also has a colourful terrazzo floor (left) which the owners showed with a dramatic pause before throwing open the dark wooden door. It certainly had the desired effect.

Perhaps in an effort to outdo the floor, the line of tiles halfway up the wall provide an amazing zig-zag of colours. The total effect is mind-blowing.

The garage and office (now a self-contained apartment) front onto a side street and have a wonderful deco facade. A central fin, the obvious feature matched with similar fins on the side walls set a little way back from the street-front. It was also great to see the by-fold wooden doors retained in the garage when so often they are replaced with a modern roller-door.

I hope next time I’m in Adelaide I get to spend a bit more time in this wonderful house.