I see what you mean... I'm not sure either.

I got excited recently when I saw this being painted:

This is the Foy and Gibson building. 'Foys' was an Australian department store chain, and this building at the corner of Bourke and Swanston - dating from the 1930s - was Foys' (Foy's?) main Melbourne store. The building was taken over by Woolworths in the '60s, and is now a Telstra shop with offices above.

Hardly in as-new condition, Foys has had various decorative trimmings removed, and three ticky-tacky stories ingloriously added above it, while the street corner (once its architectural climax) has been covered up with a full-height advertising board for so long that no one remembers what was underneath it.

I was excited to witness, in-progress, what is clearly a fearless attempt to pretty-up this ponderous dog's breakfast of a building (located - typical of Melbourne - at one of the city's most prominent intersections), so I wanted to try and understand Foys a little better - what it was, what it has become, and what it might yet be.

The other side hasn't been painted yet:

Here's what it used to look like:

(Click for source). By the way, immediately to the right of Foys is an old picture theatre designed by William Pitt. The Edwardian facade is still there today (in pretty bad shape), but is boarded up and hidden behind a giant Target sign. 

I like this photo. You get a sense of the jazz-age confidence of the original building - it certainly had an emphatic presence. At the same time though, the form seems just a tad lumpish - this despite its clear efforts at a sort of imperial-meets-jazzy swagger. 

I think I feel this way because I was struck, as I watched them being painted, by the magisterial quality of those giant-order pilasters. (in classical architecture, to which Foys refers, a pilaster is a flattened column, and giant-order means rising across more than one storey.) In the original design, however, this regal pomp is diluted by elements, now-hidden, that are evocative of a different kind of 1930s architecture - Streamline Moderne.

The Streamline Moderne vibe is mainly coming from the rounded corner with its stepped parapet; the long smooth capping that runs right around the whole façade and makes the rounded corner feel like the nose of an aeroplane, is also part of this story. Foys, as it survives today, no longer boasts this classic detail, but to catch a fine example, you can wander down to Little Collins and Russell and take a squiz at what remains of the Victoria Car Park (Melbourne's first multi-storey car park, built in 1938), most of which has been destroyed to make way for a new glassy tower for a 'big four' bank. I have some feelings about this.

It is interesting to compare this to the Total Car Park, built nearly 30 years later. In the

1930s, a carpark still wanted to have a facade, like any other building.

Long straight lines and curved elements are Streamline Moderne's key ingredients, and corner sites are ideal because you can really get your curve on. The point of having a curved corner is to eliminate any sharp break in the horizontal lines that wrap around the building. These horizontal lines are like racing stripes on a car. Life was all about automobiles, trains, ocean liners and dancing - or wanted to be, and 1930s buildings would often try to capture this sense of thrust or motion by stressing the vertical and/or the horizontal axis independently.

Here are a couple of Melbourne buildings that better illustrate this point. The one on the left (the McPherson's Building, 546-566 Collins Street) is doing horizontal, while the one on the right (the ACA Building, 118-126 Queen Street) is going for vertical.

When horizontals and verticals are combined in this sort of architecture, the two elements tend to be visually separated from one another. Like this:

Streamline Moderne buildings are generally all about the horizontals.  McPherson's (the first example above) is certainly the most elegant example of Streamline Moderne in the city. It also has some curved corners. Unfortunately I can't get a better picture until the Plane Trees nude up, but it is worth a look.

If the curved feature-corner at Foys feels less convincing in that old black and white photo, it may simply be that its faint suggestion of horizontality is competing with the vertical emphasis of the classical columns, which suggest a character quite remote from Streamline Moderne. The curves, and particularly the stepped parapet are such a standard detail from this era, that they were no doubt incorporated to add a bit of commercial pizazz -  acting as a symbol of modernity, regardless of whether or not the details themselves actually possess any of the 'streamlined' qualities to which they refer.

Anyway, this is a lot of talk about elements of Foys that are no longer visible to the passer-by. Still, when you are used to seeing a building in an inscrutably vestigial state, it is nice to be aware of what it was once about.

More relevant to Foys' future then, is this Roman-classical inspired colonnade - the only remaining feature of the original building and the source of the 'imperial swagger' I mentioned earlier:

These columns relate to another 1930s style called Stripped Classicism. 

I've so far avoided using the term Art Deco, because it's a term whose meaning is a bit stretchy; but my personal preference is to use it, quite broadly, to describe a whole range of styles from this period (including Streamline Moderne and many examples of Stripped Classicism), that are recognisable as much by their character as by any specific set of details. I would describe the general mood of Art Deco as an exuberant confidence in the modern world. The term Art Deco actually refers to a 'decorative arts' expo that was held in Paris in 1925. The name stuck, because unlike the no-nonsense functional modernism that was being practiced by more 'serious' European architects in the 1920s and '30s, Art Deco sought to express this excitement about modernity in more accessible, overtly decorative terms. Even Streamline Moderne, although it sometimes verges on functionalism, is unabashedly stylised. The range of decorative ideas employed by Art Deco is almost baffling - modern elements such as playful abstract geometry or references to ships and cars were often mixed with elements drawn from historical styles such as ancient Greek or Gothic. (Gothic is particularly good for verticals). Also popular, and quite novel at the time, was the influence of the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Mayan architecture being uncovered by the archaeologists of the day. The stepped 'ziggurat' motif is a good example and pops up everywhere - this is where Foys' Moderne curve gets its stepped crown from. 

Stripped Classicism basically offered a way to be progressive and confident about modernity, without losing the sense of solemnity and timelessness that you get from the classical tradition. A building in the classical tradition is anything that can be traced back to this sort of thing:

Click for source

The simplicity, harmony and palpable logic of columns and beams is a recurring theme in the history of Western architecture, and in periods such as the Enlightenment, this sort of puristic classicism was strongly associated with both rational thought and timeless virtue. In the 1930s, a rational outlook was particularly prized, and it was found that if you took Classical architecture, cleaned up the lines and got rid of the frilly bits, you wound up with something that looked rational and progressive, but still had gravitas.

In some cases this classical spirit is combined with various other sorts of lively and novel decorative touches, such that the overall effect still belongs decidedly to the Art Deco world. I think the columns at Foys, with their tight geometric frills, simmer with just enough of this jazzy energy to qualify. I can't think of a better Melbourne example, but here is good example in London that delivers a weighty, Classical composition, while at the same time bubbling over with zig-zgas and Egyptian-ish frills:

This is not Stripped Classicism, but it shows how Classicism could be incorporated into the Art Deco world. Notice that, unlike the examples I was talking about before, there is no overall vertical or horizontal thrust here. Classicism - with its harmonious balance of verticals and horizontals - is something you bring in when, rather than a sense of speed or momentum, you are looking for a sense of weight and permanence.

Proper Stripped Classicism is more, well, stripped. Round columns give way to smooth, featureless square ones, and all other decorative frills are removed. You have to be careful how far you carry this stripping-back process. Take it too far and end up getting mixed up in these sorts of shenanigans. This is usually thought of as the wrong kind of Stripped Classicism. I'm not convinced that there is anything inherently wrong with this extreme end of Classical-stripping, even if it seems rather masculine and domineering. It does, however, seem to have attracted the wrong kind of patron.

Here are some square columns in Melbourne. The overall effect here, though, is still more traditionally classical, and quite gentle and unassuming with the dark brickwork and Spanish roof tiles. This is he Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (1934):

The following two Melbourne buildings were both built in the 1930s by the same practice - Marsh & Michaelson. The first is the Melbourne Theosophical Society building in Collins Street, the second, in Elizabeth Street, was built for the Australian Natives Association - originally a group of Australian born Europeans lobbying for the federation of Australia.

The Melbourne Theosophical Society building is a wonderful, compact, temple-like composition, with just enough novel details to let you know that it isn't a staid old bank building. The stepped 'ziggurat' motif even makes a subtle appearance at the top of the parapet. The familiar embellishments of Greco-Roman classicism are present in a few spots, but are foregone here in favour of these more exotic Egyptian-esque columns:

... but otherwise the effect is generally Classical - simple, symmetrical, solid. Columns and beams. (The beam in Classical architecture is called an 'entablature' and includes a projecting cornice such as the one above the "Melbourne" lettering in the photo above).

The Australian Natives Association building has obvious similarities, but is more stripped. The idea of columns is only suggested by by the tall vertical strips of masonry, with a kind of beam above. Not clear in the photo above are the wonderful little koalas, sculpted in relief, clinging to either side of the main window bay.

Notice how similar the details of the ANA building are to this vertical strip of paired windows located at either end of the colonnade at Foys. It's exactly the same detail - including the little architrave detail at the top. There is no historical, classical source for this detail, but it turns up in a lot of architecture from this period. Even the Moderne Mitchell House (further up) has a version.

So how will Foys look after its make-over?

One thing that doesn't look set to change is this:

The marvellous Bourke-Swanston intersection. I'm not sure what the Sean Scully inspired stripes down the middle are about.

Before the building's current occupants added their personal touch, this six-storey quarter cylinder of advertising space was leased to the highest bidder - with varied results. On the whole, I think oversize advertising space is no bad thing, and can can easily compete with a lot of architecture as far as adding visual interest - and potentially even formal beauty - to the city. Perhaps you remember this one - Foys was in the news a number of years ago for hosting this controversial add for Elle MacPherson's underwear range.

The one below is not quite so glamorous, but it's not exactly dragging down the class-average either. I'd like to be cynical about the ubiquity of vacuous advertising in our lives, but to be frank, a bouncy girl touting mediocre pizza with dirty double entendres is at least as decorous as most of the items that comprise the fabric of a modern city. Telstra's deathly grey monolith is probably as ugly as anything that has been done to the building architecturally. Anyway, I suspect they are paying for the paint-job, so I shouldn't be too harsh.

Thanks to The Collector for this one.

Twist your head to the right, and the building across the road from Foys is has lately been presenting this ad from another Telco, which combines a Tim Burton-ish aesthetic with a raised skirt.

Clearly there is a valid feminist counter-argument to much of this visual material that I haven't explored.

I preferred the white undercoat from the first photo, but instead they've gone for this sort of truffle grey colour everywhere except for the columns:

I guess they're trying to differentiate the added storeys from the original building. This is a very Melbourne moment really - what do you do?

I'm not sure either. Still I would just paint the whole thing white - at least then the columns would seem connected to the stuff above that they're supposedly holding up, rather than looking like they've been jammed into the frame as decoration.

Anyway, the columns themselves look fantastic - bright and bold - especially with the grey highlights like the vertical fluting (the lines) and those little abstracted capital details. And they're big enough that you don't have to look at the rest of the building. This is what Robin Boyd referred to as 'Featurism' - forget the messy whole, admire the details. And the white columns really jump forward of the grey spandrel panels now. The problem with the beige-and-grey combo we had before is that those are both sort of washed-out background colours. There was no sense of foreground and background. Now we have vertical thrust! Art Deco needs this sort of bravado - this sort of drunken, spirited confidence.

Art Deco is very popular again now. The destruction of Lonsdale House a couple of years ago attracted more protest than probably any other instance of heritage destruction in recent memory. This is interesting because the values Art Deco represents are almost diametrically opposed to the sorts of values that are popular today. After all, Art Deco represents frivolous excess, waste, and blind optimism. It seems that at the same time as we are all conscientiously switching to artisan-crafted, bicycle-powered, locally sourced this, that and the other, we also yearn for the high-nonsense, high-speed, glamorous, fizzy excesses of modernity's youth. Perhaps this just shows that that there is a part of us that always wants the opposite of what we think we want. Or perhaps just wants what we can't have.