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Silly Building Names

mark_melb
edited July 2006 in architecture
With the glut of building development and the problem of the developers running out of names for 'their' buildings, I thought it would be good to have a look at how building names have got to a rediculous stage.

Balencia, St Kilda Road (will it be shaped like the handbag?)

Market Square Apartments, West Melbourne (two blocks from the Market and I can't see the Square I was expecting)

Eiffel Apartments, Melbourne (he would roll in his grave)

yve, St Kilda Road (don't start me)
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Comments

  • peter_j
    edited January 1970
    don't forget the

    tad pompous category
    HMAS Lonsdale
    Hero

    The Marquise

    appalled dead artist category
    And then we have all those waters edge lifestyle-chocker buildings named after artists who couldn't have afforded a bedsit in any of them:
    Mondrian
    Nolan
    Conder
    Arkley

    et al

    My fave docklands name is the peculiar choice of Watergate for the Elenberg Fraser complex at Docklands, consisting of two towers called Woodward and Bernstein. No sign of Deep Throat anywhere, but he was pretty hard to find in real life.
  • mark_melb
    edited August 2006
    Seen on Mathoura Road, Toorak this Saturday - Montemarte

    I'm hoping it's a typo by the Graphic Designer.
  • chunk
    edited January 1970
    brisbane has a 'miro' to add to the dead artist category
  • peter_j
    edited January 1970
    Montemarte could be a deliberate typo to make it easier to a) get a domain name and b) make it easier for people to find them on google. Or it could just be a very silly mistake, but you'd hope not... there are 12,900 other montemartres on the web so it's a common mistake.

    Another is a similar vein, with an extraneous 'e', is

    The Boulevarde
    by Central Equity
  • mark_melb
    edited January 1970
    Here is a good one- VILLAGGIO -by CATT Architects in Toorak.

    It's kind of a faux Spanish (Miami Spanish), Moorish (Crete retirement villa), Tuscan look.

    I recall this look as one favoured by middle class English retirees on the island of Crete, but I'm sure it has been transported to other areas if it has cropped up in places like Toorak where ample money can buy ample amounts of taste. This one oozes taste.....oozes it from every orifice.

    Very..........classy would be the kindest way to describe it.
  • mark_melb
    edited August 2006
    I did a double-take walking past what was now an obvious typo. Montmartre has been pasted over the offending name.

    We can now await to see if the building will be of the 'Caufield and Krivanec French Urban Style'.
  • peter_j
    edited January 1970
    Montmatre? Is that a new typo they've made!

    I was shocked to spot these three on the weekend, featured in a gatefold ad in Morry Schwarz's fine mag "The Monthly".

    St Hotham
    St Buller
    St Falls


    http://www.thesaints.au.com/

    So easy to achieve sainthood today. St Buller and St Falls, and probably the other one, are designed by Elenberg Fraser for Zacamoco, and previously designed the award-winning Huski.

    From the Falls Creek press release:

    "The principals behind Zacamoco are Zahava Elenberg and Callum Fraser, of
    Elenberg-Fraser, and Morry Schwartz of Pan Urban. Recent Zacamoco projects
    include the historic Normanby Chambers in Melbourne and Falls Creek’s first all-year
    spa retreat, the five-star Huski."

    Must have been a cheap ad!

    According to the Buller website, that mountain was named after Mr Charles Buller of the Colonial Office, Falls Creek was named by the Country Roads board in 1938
  • mark_melb
    edited January 1970
    They struck me at the time as being odd. Obviously they could not find any spare St. names. St. Ehud or St. Ari don't have the same ring.
    I wonder if the likes of AJAX and SKI BUNNY are not sophisticated enough these days.
  • erectus nobilis
    edited January 1970
    Check out the Herald Sun 26.10.06 page 39
    The artisits don't even have to be dead. What a lot of garbage these architects can spit out, interesting that its not just the developers that come up with this sort of rubbish.
  • peter_j
    edited January 1970
    Why wait for the name to even die when you can get some international architect to lend their name and cachet to it.

    The rather presumptuously titled building "One East Melbourne" is being contributed to in some way by Claudio Silverstrin. Hard to tell how much involvement though, just as it was hard to quantify what exactly Philippe Starck had to do with the Victoria Bewery redevelopment, other than suggesting some very large flower pots.

    The blurb for One goes thus:
    He designed for Calvin Klein, Armani and the Tate Gallery.

    What did he see in Melbourne?

    It took a man of vision to see what was right before our eyes - a location that is as unexpected as it is rare.
    One East Melbourne is a two-minute walk from the corner of Flinders and Spring Streets, (and the heart of Melbourne fashion and food) on a quiet leafy part of Wellington Street over-looking the Treasury Gardens.
    What world renowned architect and designer Claudio Silverstrin saw next, needs to be seen to be believed.

    Penthouse Apartments - $4.6 million
    REALESTATE.COM.AU

    I like that bit about his vision helping him to see what was before us all. And what did Claudio see next? I don't think they quite know yet as there isn't much to see at the website apart from some past work of his and a whacking big photo of a perturbed Claudio looking like he's wound up in a straitjacket.

    http://www.oneeastmelbourne.com/
  • simon seasons
    edited January 1970
    How about the deletion of all that came before with the new development at Dinner Plain on Mount Hotham that is called 'DP' at the massive stone front gate to distinguish it, no doubt from the existing infrastructure also behind the gate and in the hope presumably that it will supercede the rest of the villiage in eminance. I recently past a truck with Dinner Plain Plumbing Services on the side and wondered whether he would soon be coerced into changing his signage in favour of the new owners designations.
  • mark_melb
    edited January 1970
    On my saturday AM bike ride, 'EDGECLIFF' between Mentone and Brighton

    Usually the name would have some reference. Not a cliff to be seen.
  • simon seasons
    edited January 1970
    House names. I saw one recently in Sydney that I had to do a double take on.
    "CHEPPYWOOD". On closer inspection I could see that the double P used to be a double R and that one of them had lost its lower portion to concrete rot and that the other had subsequently been chipped off. Presumably CHERPYWOOD was too cheerful.
  • mark_melb
    edited January 1970
    Abacus Apartments in Avoca St South Yarra. Abacuses (?) set into the front fences. What the?!
  • simon seasons
    edited January 2008
    Just out of Mansfield on low rolling hills in NE victoria is a new property with a sign made of corrugated iron cut to look like a colonial hipped roof profile with the name 'Settlers Flat'. It's got a little bit of flat land on it where the house site was graded but the incongruity belongs to historical affectation since the designation 'Flat' was just about exclusively given to the surname of the original 'claimant'.
    That is the bloke with the biggest gun in most cases who claimed the flatest bit of land by slaughtering the locals and then settling down on ... 'Surname's Flat'.
    'Flat' itself denoted the flat land along a creek front that was formed by erosion from the hills above, before the said creek entered the plains.
    To call a place 'settlers flat' is like calling a cul de sac, 'boheme cul de sac' or perhaps 'Bogan street' or 'navel gazer's avenue' or 'post modernists lane'. It's just not right, geographically, historically or politically.
  • peter
    edited November -1
    Norman Day found a few more names in his sum up of 2007 in The Age.
    Architecture is being marketed as never before as a fashion accessory, chic, cool, glamorous and slick. New apartments signal this polished pulse. Balencea, Yve, Alto, Lucient, Soho and more are joining the chorus as large multinationals realise they need to use architecture for marketing as much as they use their graphics, advertising and PR.THE AGE 31.12.07
  • susu
    edited November -1
    Its just so chic livin in "Martini Apartments" Rose str Fitzroy... right opp the brothel...hrhr
  • simon seasons
    edited November -1
    Here's one I saw in a caravan park the other day. It was a mobile home masquerading as a caravan. It would have been easily near to 15 metres long and the sides were popped out and I could see inside a TV as big a set of double doors. A normal caravan was parked next to it and it was dwarfed like John Howard.
    On the side was a nice delicate little sign writing job proclaiming this thing to be "The Hitch Hiker"

    !!! You're f'n kidding aren't you?
  • peter
    edited August 2008
    <p>The restarted Rijavec-designed block in Fitzroy, previously <b>Urban Jazz</b>, and unofficially <b>cheesegrater</b>, is now <b>The Artist</b>. No artist in particular, maybe they've run out.</p>
    <p><a href="http://theartist.com.au/">theartist.com.au/</a></p>
  • simon seasons
    edited August 2008
    <p>Urban Jazz !!??  Presumably when the off-the-plan sales were so alarmingly slow as to stall the project in the first place, some one must have cottoned on that that name is as nonsensical in the Fitzroy context as "Cool MaMansion".  A bit of pubcrawling market research after the job was canned probably told them that.</p>
  • peter
    edited November -1
    <p>Now we have the <b>Alto on the Boulevard</b>, on St Kilda Road. Sounding a lot like, but one vowel away from being a dead Finnish architect.</p>
    <p><a href="http://www.altoontheboulevard.com.au/">www.altoontheboulevard.com.au/</a></p>
  • info
    edited November -1
    Newsflash from Queensland

    There is a bend of the river, by West End, that is receiving commercial housing designed by architects of varying capabilities - but all commercially savvy....eg:

    Coco
    Soho
    SL8 (designed by the architect the other architects applaud) [seriously]
    Flow

    I am hoping a nicely designed bag accompanies first time 'unit' owners
  • info
    edited November -1
    Am also wondering if SL8 is pronounced Slate (as in SK8 - skate)
    Nice graphics though
    And no vowels in it
  • miles
    edited November -1
    a'beckett tower....its a beautiful thing. (my step daughter and her bloke knocked up)
    do stoopid slogans count?
  • miles
    edited November -1
    this has to be the winner...http://www.fallingwater.com.au/
  • mark_melb
    edited November -1
    <p>.........he would roll in his grave.</p>
  • peter
    edited November 2008
    <p>Oh dear, that is bad. I went onto google maps and found Fallingwater Drive, it doesn't seem to be any closer to a waterfall  than it is to FLW. The Location page describes the site with three photos only: one showing a fast food strip complete with petrol station and passing Holden, one showing a sign at a bus stop, and one showing the sign for Pakenham Station (3km away). None of the site.</p>
  • sod
    sod
    edited November -1
    <p>Fallingwater certainly looks more debased than silly</p>
    <p>there was a golf resort housing development marketed as the  Swingers Estate or something similar a few years back.</p>
  • miles
    edited November -1
    ok
    so 505 st kilda road wasnt selling so they changed the name to 'toorak'?? http://www.toorakhasmoved.com.au/architect.php very strange response for strange times.
  • peter
    edited November 2008
    <p>Here is the old website, still up, <a href="http://www.505onfawkner.com.au/website.html">www.505onfawkner.com.au/website.html</a></p>
    <p>Would make a little more sense if it was at the Toorak Rd end of Fawkner Park and not Commercial Rd. "The Commercial" doesn't sound quite as fancy, but would mean less taxi confusion.</p>
    <p>Holiday diversion... Looking up "Toorak", the suburb took its name from Toorak House (which is still there). "Toorak" is apparently close to the local aboriginal pronunciation for the words for "black crow" and "reedy swamp". Albert Park Lake used to be a reedy swamp, the crow used to be a Swiss architect. It all fits!</p>
    <p>Walking Melbourne has some <a href="http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=735">pics</a> of the old Park Tower, an early high rise that has looks like it's been painted with leftovers from M*A*S*H. They also have some nice <a href="http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4633">pics</a> of the undressing of the old buildings for their Fender treatment.</p>
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