One of my #leastfavouritebuildings, from most unflattering angle. The quite ridiculously skinny #PhoenixMelbourne apartments by @fenderkatsalidis on #FlindersStreet, with that crazy blue wiggle partly disguising a very sheer #concretewall (the wiggle is by graphic designer Garry Emery). When first proposed (at 40 storeys !) in the late 2000s I thought it would be financially unfeasible, … Continue reading Town planning fail – the Phoenix apartments Flinders Street, 2014 →

April 2029 #GoodFriday is a great day to see churches - so glad I got to #StBernardsCoburg, hadn’t found any photos of the inside of this 1955 #semicircular church, and it’s great ! Tall, sweeping, simple yet grand, no complicated stained glass but lovely light, and all original including the #pews and the #linoleum floor … Continue reading St Bernards, Coburg, 1955 →

Easter 2019: #StLukesLalor, 1975 by my fave #emigrearchitect #ErminSmrekar; very Wrightian, but madly geometrical. A pinwheel plan with looong triangular roof cantilevers (sadly now propped with annoying steel posts) with inset drains into planters. Very complicated 3D roof, seemingly held apart by the glass. The two opposing roofs at the apex might represent hands in … Continue reading St Luke’s, Lalor, just fantastic. →

#HolyNameReservoir, 1964, very interesting; impressive but not dominating, in fact nice garden front (ex fountain) and low embracing porch in copper; the very #Ronchamp #belltower was added later maybe so people could see it from a distance. Designed by #JPSaraty, can’t find any info, presume he was Czech or Hungarian. The mad wire frame enamel … Continue reading Holy Name, Reservoir, 1964. It’s a bit fishy. →

#MetroTunnelProject - the ‘eastern portal’ is where the trains from the Dandenong line will head underground, and it’s happening here off #ToorakRoad, before #SouthYarraStation, taking out a bit of that funny little park I’ve never been to. I think this is what the huge Easter shutdown is all about. Not sure exactly what it will … Continue reading Metro Tunnel ‘Eastern portal’. →

Vote 1 Steph Hodgins-May. Claremont, 1884, architect unknown. Built for the Heather family, Mr Heather being a long term Councillor and Mayor of South Melb in the 1880s, found lots of reports on births, then garden parties, birthday parties, then the kids being married, into the 1900s. It’s been a home for the elderly since … Continue reading Claremont, South a Melbourne, 1884. →

This curious little building is actually the first #SouthYarraStation, built c1862, or rather it's the entrance- it goes down behind to the track level. You can see it in the old photo; the rest of it is still there too, now a bar !

The #SouthYarraPostOffice has a good dollop of #ScottishBaronial, with the turret, #steppedgables, and castle-like verticality (better before the #damntrees) perched on the edge of a cliff !(ok #railwaycutting). This has been the office of architect #BruceHenderson for ages, I think the extension has been extended; it looks ok, suitably recessive. #AJMacDonald, 1893. ☹️😮 just learned … Continue reading South Yarra Post Office is like a Castle on a hill – but not for long. →

Another fave, the #SouthYarraPostOffice, possibly the best work by #AJMacDonald, the very inventive architect in the #publicworksdepartment who managed to design a bunch of POs and court houses in the early 1890s that just managed to get built before the depression stopped everything. This one finished in 1893, the year the banks nearly went bust … Continue reading South Yarra Post Office – Romanesque/Scottishness/Australiana →

2 April 2021 A big house on a small site on #FerrarsPlace, #SouthMelbourne, built in 1901, originally called ‘#Arrou’, and designed by #WilliamSalway, in a pretty usually style. It basically #Edwardian style, with the red brick and that single large terra cotta, bit there’s many unusual details - the classical bits are quite QueenAnne, like … Continue reading Unusual Edwardian house, South Melbourne (with some Australian Ballet history). →