Skip to main content

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.


Art Deco lives (although I’d argue that it was more a case of Art Moderne. Sandy Bay, April 2011.

Sunday and no church to visit AGAIN. Oh well, I’ll have to console myself with another Sunday Top Five.

This time I’m venturing back to the heady world of architecture, more specifically, (In No Particular Order And Off The Top Of My Head) My Top Five Favourite Architectural Movements Since The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century!

  • Googie: yeah, yeah… I know. Forgive me, but The Jetsens was very influential to an impressionable lad. A very American form, features of Googie include upswept roofs, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and daring use of glass, steel and neon. Think Googie, think Space Age.


  • Art Moderne: a common feature of Burnie, Art Moderne is a late type of the Art Deco design style that emphasised curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements.


  • Brutalist: in what will be a controversial choice for many. Whatever. I happen to like much of the Brutalism that flourished from the ‘50s to the mid-70s. Brutalist buildings usually have bold and repetitive angular geometries, and are generally made of concrete. You’ll find no shortage of these around, although they’re starting to knock them over


  • Deconstructivism: a response to modern straight lines, deconstructivism embraces ideas of fragmentation and manipulates a structure's surface, using non-rectilinear shapes to distort and dislocate key elements of a building. This style brings unpredictability to buildings, and I like the notion of ‘controlled chaos’. I for one blame the French.


  • Blobitecture: the new kid on the block. Who doesn’t like a blob? Blobitecture refers to buildings that have an organic, amoeba-shaped, bulging form. Liberated by computer software, architects now experiment with this "blobby" design to create forms. It’s not hit Tasmania yet, but we spotted a few of these beauties when we were in Melbourne.

Comments

Hi! Kris...
I have to say that your quote is very apropos...I just checked-out each link and I have to agree with your assessment Of each building.
[I had taken art history courses in school and my instructor, discussed some Of the Architectural Movement that you focused on here in your post.]

"Art Deco lives (although I’d argue that it was more a case of Art Moderne."

Oh! yes, I have to agree the photograph is nice and the architecture do look more Art Moderne,than Art Deco.

Thanks, for sharing!
DeeDee ;-D
Kris,
Happy Mother's Day! ♥ to you,wife Jen, and your mum, and all mothers.
I hope that they all have a nice one today!
D.D. :-D
Kris McCracken said…
We celebrated with a zip around the Derwent Estuary with a couple of mums on board. Henry and Ezra made some excellent gifts and we retired home to a great big bowl of chocolate mousse.
smudgeon said…
Did we ever get Googie down here? Nothing would quite tie the centre of Campbell Town together like a Seattle-space-needle knock-off.
Kris McCracken said…
The only real Googie influences that I can recall were found in now long-gone drive-ins and the odd flourish at a service station here and there. By the time Tasmania caught up with the trend, it was long gone…

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.