Halsbury Chambers, Napier

I took this photo of Halsbury Chambers (1932) in Napier, New Zealand in 1999. I was lucky to catch the vintage car out the front that gives it a bit of a timeless feel.

I was back in Napier in April this year and this time I was lucky to get a shot with no cars at all in front of the building. It seems to have faired reasonably well over the last fourteen years.

The little swing sign to the left of the entrance is gone but the arm that held it is still there so it wouldn't take much to put it back. It looks like the current occupant prefers to put its name along the bottom of the windows. It could be worse, I suppose, but I prefer they had advertised themselves in a less intrusive way, perhaps via a small swing sign just to the left of the entrance.

Lieder Theatre, Goulburn

The Goulburn Liedertafel Society was established in 1891. Liedertafel literally means "song table" in German and is the common name for a male voice singing society. In 1908 the society acquired Lander's Hall for rehearsals and then had Manfred & Sons design this hall for the site.

The new hall was opened on 22nd August 1929 and it hosted its first stage production in March the following year. After hosting a variety of events and productions over the years the Liedertafel Hall was renamed the Lieder Theatre in 1971 and still works as a theatre today.

Reference:
Lieder Theatre website

Casa do Baile, Pampulha

In the 1940s, Oscar Niemeyer designed a number of modernist buildings on the shores of an artificial lake at Pampulha, part of the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.

I already posted pictures of the Igreja de São Francisco de Assis and this is the Casa do Baile, originally a casino, which was built in the same year as the church, 1943.

The building is circular with this curving covered walkway along the side of the lake.

Inside on the wall there are some Niemeyer drawings and a quote linking the development at Pampulha in the 1940s to Niemeyer's development of Brasilia in the 1960s.

Niemeyer's quote, translated from Portuguese, goes something like this …

Pampulha was the beginning of Brasilia.
The same problems, the same rush, the same enthusiasm.
And its success influenced, with certainty, in the determination with which JK* constructed the new capital.

*JK - Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, Mayor of Belo Horizonte in the 1940s and then President of Brazil when Brasilia was developed in the 1950s and 60s.

Reference:
Casa do Baile, GuidaBH.com.br

National Congress of Brazil, Brasilia

National Congress of Brazil (1957-64), Brasilia designed by modernist master architect, Oscar Niemeyer

Prudential House, Toronto

Prudential House, at 55 York Street, Toronto was designed by architects Kaplan & Sprachman and completed in 1929.

It features some lovely decoration, especially above the ground floor windows.

Reference:
Prudential House, EMPORIS

Apartments, Shanghai

Apartments, Shanghai

A House in Morwell

This looks like a typical Australian weatherboard house but I think the rounded porch and the curved sections of the front windows raise it to something a bit more than that.

Te Kainga, Oriental Bay

As the name says, this is Te Kainga, a block of flats in the Oriental Bay area of Wellington. And that's a nice piece of decorated curved glass in the corner windows.

And it looks like some of the other windows, at least the smaller on in this photo, are even more Art Deco in style.