Drenched to the Bone ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- remembering how fun in february this year i decided to pick up and nick-off somewhere. in my student mind melbourne was the home of some brave architectural practitioners, so i went there. buildings such as "storey hall" and "building 8" at RMIT were adorably ugly, and any city willing to approve construction of such buildings had to have something sydney didn't. i didn't know if it was a warped melbournian aesthetic sensibility or genuine attempt at critical architecture, but my budget plane ticket would let me find out. i had made an architectural guide for myself before i came down. i bought a 25 buck metcard and used the tram at every opportunity. i went to carlton, fitzroy, st. kilda, richmond, south bank. they were the exotic names that i had heard only on t.v in a confusing ball game, where pants were wedgie short. i went to buildings by architects i admired. i eyeballed them; analysed form, their relation to context, plan and their surface articulation. the usual. it was exciting seeing buildings i saw only in magazines. my neck cranked up, then clicked lopsided down to my sketch book. on a tram travelling between architectural points, i just forgot all about that. quit it. i realised i was missing a whole lot. the stuff you are supposed to see and live when you are in a place unfamiliar. i put away my pen, pencils, and camera for the day. towards the yarra river there was a 19th century service alley called "centre place". the melbourne cbd has a handful of these. on first impression you think how novel it is; it could easily be in prague or madrid or something. then you notice why it's so great. it could easily be just a narrow unused byway or thoroughfare for a mugging. but the shops facing the alley all open out to it in some way and increase its space, yet it remains small scale and enclosed, just right for a pocket coffee house or tiny boutique store. walking through, there was ornate metal work above and on its sides, wrought iron balconies and pot plants, old electric lamps, and the colours of the many happily cramped businesses. i sat on a box in a cafe drinking lemonade (oops!), people were buying their morning coffee, others were walking by and going to work. i was glad i stumbled on this jazzy little alley, defiant in the middle of the stoic business district. in the afternoon after glancing at the gymnastics of the federation square facade, i sat with sore feet in the plaza and tanned. just people watching, i could do the same in sydney, but there were thousands of kilometres between me and the sydney town hall steps. later i got a smoothie and walked over a bridge and went into a block of a building that i later found out was the national gallery. i saw some people in a large room all lying on their backs. i innocently lay down beside some excited old retirees, wondering what was making them so amorous and looked up. chunky colours moved me and the old fogies together, a menage-a-trois of colour appreciation. it was so simple and large, it was like being in a kaleidescope the size of a church. i lay there by myself for some time feeling the coloured light rejuvenate me like i was a solar cell. i had dinner in a cheapo take away shop in elizabeth st. a menu of seafood extender, with chips and a burger. the sun hadn't even gone down yet, but the city suddenly seemed dusty and empty, some people at the tram stop were quarrelling. the wallpaper was peeling off the walls, and the mirrors on the side walls were covered with visible stickiness. the city suddenly took on this grit, but it was still comfortable. i took a thick wad of napkins on the way out and walked back to the hostel. people were milling about on bourke st. where chinatown was with its familiar chinatown smell. the trams were going by and i thought i was going to run after one, but it was a short walk, and i felt like i wanted to fill my pockets with this city before i left the next day. i wrote this entry because all i had from my trip has a book of sketches and digital photos of extroverted buildings (my memory of the place was so much different from what i had actually recorded)...and because, yeah, i want to nick-off again. 12:31 a.m. - tuesday, nov. 09, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||