former Government Building, Asmara

Yesterday's post of a building in Rayners Lane in London with a circular section on the corner reminded me of this former Government building in Asmara.

Comparing the buildings now, I can see that they are quite different but they both do have a circular element addressing the corner of their sites but the London building has a more acute corner allowing a fully circular construction.

The other similarity comes from the corner elements sitting above the roofline of the rest of the building and they each have an eyebrow providing shade for the top level windows.

Surely in the case of the English building this is purely a decorative feature or is that being unnecessarily cruel.

And they are both on Avenues. Alexandra and Martyrs'.

Alexandra Avenue, Rayners Lane

This is the view of Alexandra Avenue from Rayners Lane tube station. In the background you can see the former Grosvenor Cinema, now a Zoroastrian Centre but I am looking at the building in the foreground.

I really like the circular section on the corner and I feel it is a sign of a well designed building that addresses a corner in an interesting way.

I bet the top of that tower offers wonderful 360 degree views over the surrounding area.

Bethany, Saltdean

This wonderful house is in Saltdean, near Brighton on the south coast of England.

It is now called Bethany but in a former life was know as Bedford and according to 'The Ocean Hotel, Lido and the War' at www.saltdean.info, the house was central to The Saltdean Fellowship, a self-help residents organisation whose objectives were 'tending to casualties, helping the homeless destitute through war and organizing first aid and home nursing classes and also organising working parties for providing required items by the fighting and mercantile services, providing social functions and to generally promote a sense of community spirit'.

'Most Fellowship meetings were held at 'Bedford', now 'Bethany' in Arundel Drive West, home of Mrs Hill, and over 5 years mountains of garments (1626 woolens alone) were sent for dispatch to the services, Merchant Navy and the blitzed people of Britain and Russia. On 25 November 1940, Miss Margaret Hardy returned to 'Bedford' to a sale of household goods, garments and fancy leather work which sold so quickly that when a reporter from the Herald arrived halfway through the day most of the goods had gone. This raised a huge £56 for deserving causes'.

Bethany is now used as holiday accommodation.

T&G Building, Horsham

During the 1920s and 30s the T&G Mutual Life Assurance Society had a building in many cities and regional centres around Australia. As can be see from this thread on www.skyscrpaercity.com they often had a clock tower bearing the T&G letters with a stepped pyramid on top supporting a flagpole. In many cases they were the tallest building in town.

Horsham was no different and in this case the T&G lettering forms the clock face and is cut out from the wall of the tower.

A Villa in Asmara

This is a typical residence in the Villa district of Asmara. Obviously it has seen better days bvut there is a glimpse of fabulous villa where perhaps wealthy Italians could spend an interwar winter in North African sunshine.

I think it is interesting to see the heavy wooden window frames in the rounded section of the building. I think elsewhere these would be slimline metal windows and the do look a bit clunky here.

The other thing of note it the pair wrought iron gates and indeed the metal fence partially hidden under the garden foliage. They were almost certainly locally made as many gates, fences and window shutters are still made today by an cliche of craftsmen (and boys) in another part of the city.

War Memorial, Adelaide

Anzac Day, April 25, is a special day in Australia and New Zealand.

On April 25 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the Anzacs, landed on the Gallipoli pennisula leading a heroic, if doomed, assault against the Turkish defenders. So now, at war memorials all over Australia and New Zealand, commemoration services are held for those who perished in all armed conflicts.

The Wikipedia Anzac Day entry is excellent for backgound information but also because it features a photo of the commemoration service at Port Melbourne from 2005. This is the local service for me but is also significant because it overlooks the piers where many of those original Anzacs set sail for WWI and where they returned almost 5 years later at war's end.

The photos on this page were actually taken on 26th April 2008 which marked the inaugural Art Deco Walk by the Adelaide Chapter of the Art Deco and Modernism Society.

The South Australian National War Memorial in North Terrace was chosen as the meeting point and the wreaths are clearly visible fron the previous day's commemoration service.

The notes from the walk tell an interesting story relating to the construction of this memorial.

In 1919, shortly after the end of WWI, the South Australian State Government decided that a war memorial was required but due to issues with choosing a site and the destruction of the original five short-listed designs in a fire, it wasn't until January 1927, that the firm of Woods, Bagot, Jory and Laybourne-Smith were announced as the winners with their design entitled Spirit of Sacrifice.

The memorial was eventually unveiled on 18th April 1931.

A House in Ranfurly

The Napier suburb of Marewa probably offers the best collection of this style of modernist house in New Zealand but there are other isolated exampled elsewhere in the country.

On the South Island there is a modernist house in Kaikoura and this one in Ranfurly.

It is a very modest home and no doubt was easy and inexpensive to construct. But they still took the time and effort to add some decoration and even a little stepped-down kink in the roofline. I find it interesting that even the smaller of the two windows on the front of the house is divided into three sections.

A Gutter in Durban

So. When you have spent eight days straight looking at Art Deco builings and attending presentations on Art Deco, do you start to see Art Deco everywhere?