Modern School Architecture Design

Melbourne Grammar School Modern Architecture by John Wardle Architects

John Wardle Architects has completed a project of Melbourne Grammar School, located in South Yarra, Victoria, Australia. It is a prominent Melbourne secondary school, sparsely built around lush sporting fields, where the student’s character is developed in competition. The architect received the brief as the objectives to create a new campus entry, consolidate the school’s library facilities and provide supporting lecture theater and seminar room spaces to forge a new campus heart focused on learning.

The architecture design comprised of a series of inter-linked pavilions, maintaining the continuation of the scale and rythym of the school’s frontage to Domain Road. Each link is glazed encouraging visibility through to the campus interior. Main entry provides a view of the Quadrangle building weaving the old and new together visually.

Old House Tours, Loch Aerie Victorian Mansion

Old House Tours has a huge photo and video tour of Lockwood Mansion aka: Loch Aerie in Chester County PA. This unique property is a rather rare combination of Italianate and Victorian Gothic on a sprawling estate.

The home has numerous porches, small conservatory areas, ornate plasterwork and a grand central staircase. There are some other oddities in the photo tour. What looks like some sort of wood burning central heating system or a complex wood fired kitchen store. A large wood barrel of some sort installed by one of the spiral staircases makes one wonder about the origins. If your interested it is on the market for $2.2mil and is zoned for commercial.

The best office suite in DC.

The office suite pictured to the left is in the Old Executive Office Building, Washington, DC. It was the background of a recent interview with outgoing VP Dick Cheney. This piqued my interest in the location that served as the backdrop for the interview. The office used by the VP, is the former office of the Secretary of the Navy. The office suite has had multiple uses over the years and are currently the official offices of the VP.


If you look in the background of the first two images you will notice a solid black Belgian marble fireplace mantle. In an up close view it is heavily carved. The room still has the original, now restored highly detailed paint scheme and plaster work. The paint scheme features classical ornaments with nautical themes worked into the green and burgundy color palette. The large light fixtures are the original gasoliers that provided for both gas and electrical lighting.


The original state of the room shows a detailed wood floor patterned with multiple species of wood. This image also provides a good view of the ceiling detail work.




A close up of the restored wall motifs between the windows. The designs are extremely detailed but due to the color choices don't become busy or distracting when viewed in the room as a whole.




You can see in the image to the left the intense level of not only painting detail but plaster work detail, much of it finished in gold leaf. The office suite is a significant departure from the typical federal style light colored rooms of the White House and similar official locations. It is enough to make you consider running for office.

Find out more about this building at the Navy's history page.

Book Review: The Queen Anne House, America's Victorian vernacular

I picked up this book over the summer, it now has a key spot on my reference shelves. The book covers 22 Queen Anne style Victorian homes in the U.S.

The examples in the book are quite different from many historical home books, the examples are more ornate and lean more toward the darker colors and more masculine styles of the period. The rooms are generally large with emphasis on woodwork and architectural details.

The photography in the book is of extremely good quality allowing for minor details within the rooms to be much easier to see. There is also plenty of historical information on construction, hardware and the evolution of home building during the era.

Chicago Colombian Exposition, stroll the white city.

The Chicago Tribune has a slideshow of the 1893 Chicago Colombian Exposition. All that remains of this expanse of buildings is the one that is now the Museum of Science and Industry.

Most of these buildings were built with wood framing and plaster and either burned down or decayed quickly. Even by today's standards the end result done specifically for a one time event is amazing.