Category: urban

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“urban form”

Tim Horton, the Integrated Design Commissioner for South Australia, has said that too often the idea of vernacular in architecture is dogmatically applied to a Disney-like preconception of quaint pioneering shopfronts and the purse-lipped Georgian strait jacket and is rarely translated into the 21st century convincingly (we’ve all seen the historicist townhouse dwarfed by the three car garage grafted on the front).

He adds that the future of Adelaide’s city form needs to be modeled on a more sustainable response to our climate, not the Centenary picture book, circa 1936, and not a forced idyll long since departed.

Hotel Metropolitan, Adelaide

If these are accurate observation, then we don’t seem to be getting in the buildings for businesses, and residences a shift in Adelaide that is a sustainable response to our environment. Nor is the urban form being reinvented for the 21st century. What we have is piecemeal ad-hockery.

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marine heritage

The poodlewalk was down at Port Adelaide this afternoon. I had a go at the two marine cranes that have been saved; but you can find two far superior interpretations here and here. Local knowledge derived from living in the locality always wins doesn’t it.

marine heritage

I realize that I don’t really know Port Adelaide, even though I ‘m doing a project on it. I’m basically a fly in. I drive down every couple of weeks or so for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon and take some photos. But I’m not really intimate with it’s character.

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heritage at Port Adelaide

This picture of the former Customs Clearing Office, known locally as the Radio Shack, on the corner of Todd and Divett streets, in Port Adelaide shows the state of heritage at the Port. This area has been earmarked for residential redevelopment, and this historic building, which housed the Port Adelaide Radio Club for more than 15 years, has been left to decay.

radio shack

It is currently owned by the South Australian state government Land Management Corporation, whose “primary aim is to provide social, economic and environmental benefits to all South Australians”. It looks as if it will be quarantined from the waterfront development of the “upmarket” lifestyle residences that has stalled since the global financial crisis.

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street photography

I don’t do that much street photography, even though I live in the heart of this lawyer precinct in Adelaide. I’ve never had the confidence doing this genre with 35m film, let alone using medium format. It is pretty much hit and miss for me and film is too expensive for this kind of work.

Bean Bar, Adelaide CBD

Digital makes it so much easier to experiment and I can check the results on the spot whilst I wait for the next person to move into the urban space I’ve selected. Its convenient. However, the fundamental underpinning is very simple—film and its processing cost money, digital does not.

With the latter you can correct mistakes right away, experiment, try new approaches or techniques and have fun—and do so at no additional cost. It’s a no brainer.

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heritage

One of the intriguing aspects of the central market precinct in Adelaide is the heritage buildings that have been preserved and used by the lawyers. It is my local neighbourhood and I often think about how can we respect and celebrate our heritage and meld it with an exciting future. Yet I rarely take photos of it.

Mill St, Adelaide

I decided that needed to change from taking the sporadic photo. I would force myself to start looking at the precinct as a photographer as opposed to being an inhabitant or local who works, lives, shops, and plays in the precinct.

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urban-scapes

I’ve been hunting around the Adelaide CBD looking for some high up locations to take large format urbanscapes. These are few and far between, as the roofs of most buildings in the CBD are inaccessible to the public. The best options so far are the car parks, but these have now been grilled to prevent people from jumping off them.

Franklin St, Adelaide

This is one possibility. It’s easily accessible, is an older style car park with the top roof uncovered and open, and the perspective it offers on Franklin Street is suitable for the Cambo 5×7 view camera. It is the best location that I have found so far.

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banksia

As its been raining off and on in Adelaide this past week my photography has consisted of taking a few quick snaps of the banksia in a pot in the townhouses’ corner balcony that overlooks Sturt St. My photographic time has been spent in front of the computer working on archival photos that I’ve scanned.

banksia

The walks during the week have been done between the showers as much as possible. Today is the first sign that the rain depression may be lifting. We have both sun and rain alternating today.

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snap shots

It has been raining in Adelaide for several days straight now. Autumn has gone, winter has arrived. I’ve been trying to take the 5×7 Cambo out between the showers to get some photos of the tree roots of Morton Bay Figs. But I’ve had no luck.

Meet the Whole Family

Although it is clear blue skies when I leave, the apartment, by the time I get to the location the showers are sweeping across the ground. It clears, but then it is too dark and the light is too flat. So I’m down to quick snaps whilst walking the dogs in the parklands.

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industrialscapes

I’ve become tired of just taking photos, building a decent archive of images and then posting them on Flickr and my photoblog to share with others. It’s become something of a cul-de -sac. I’ve run out of enthusiasm and becoming jaded.

I have to do something more substantive with the photos—to construct them into a project and publish them in some way. The next step is to begin to work on a project for publication–a DIY book—from the Port Adelaide archive. So I’ve returned to the Port Adelaide arcchive, and starting looking over the work I was doing last year.

Port River expressway

So I am picking up where I’ve left off last spring:–returning to the digital studies I made of the Port River Expressway that were done for a reshoot with a large format camera. The above image is one that I had planned to do. This is another.

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grunge

My response to the ‘in a vacuum’ post has been to walk the city with a digital camera looking for possible photographic subjects in the central business district for my large format work. I came across a couple of possiblities:

Cluhouse Lane, Adelaide

The possibilities I uncovered explore the grungy side of Adelaide CBD. Though grunge is usually associated with the music of the 1990s there is grunge literature of the 1990s that charted the territory of young people living in inner cities.

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