Tuesday, August 3, 2010

remember when you were more were easily led



Kind of a sequel to a previous post on pigeon lofts, here's a short photo-essay on another peculiar building type, the cricket pavilion (images discovered in the usual absent minded google image search).



What I particularly like about them is their hybrid quality, the fact that they are a mash-up of different typologies. Part house and part grandstand, they also include lots of other exciting add-on elements including score boards, clocks, flags and signage. Inside they are a cross-between a summer house, beach hut and, of course, bar.



Sometimes they're just a modest structure with a sign attached, like this one where the score board lives in its own slightly dormer which looks like its been removed from a larger pavilion elsewhere.



And sometimes they don't even have that, like this one, a utilitarian brick box with the name of the cricket club perfunctorily stuck on it. Some cricket nets attached to the side and jaunty white picket fencing are not enough to lift the drabness though.



This one has mated with a hump in the pitch, becoming both folly and picturesque landscape at the same time. I like the green painted timber work too which removes the mock-tudor from any vestigial structural role and reinforces its use as pure applied decoration.



In this one the sign has been incorporated into a small black shed all of its own (complete with operator inside presumably) that opens up on matchdays, leaving the pavilion free to pursue its dream of turning into a strange shaggy beast.



A charming example in suburban sixties moderne, complete with faux-digital scoreboard/commentators hatch. A man in a stripey shirt appears to be operating the scores whilst a large sign with the mysterious slogan of "Blair" is propped idly against some plastic lawn furniture.



Finally, this one has dispensed with almost everything except the sign, and become instead a giant building-board complete with clock face, flag poles and florid scrolls across the top.

4 comments:

Anwyn said...

There are, of course, any number of cricket pavilions dotted throughout Australia. Like the ones in these images, they always feel curiously, sadly desolate - it's rare that you see a full cricket match in progress on any of these suburban grounds. Particularly strange are the "mock Tudor" cricket pavilions, a little bit of Ye Olde England transported to the blazing sunlight of the colony, looking incongruously green and out of place.

Sammy J said...

The last one you have there is Adelaide Oval. You might be interested to know what it looked like originally and a bit of its history: http://www.cricketsa.com.au/content.aspx?p=395

Charles Holland said...

A, yes, I always find empty grandstands the saddest....there used to be one that I hung out around as a teenager, very rickety and unused (the stadium, not me) and it was especially poignant as it looked out over a rough area of grass not used for anything. It was very out of place, like a boat on dry land.

Sammy, thanks that's very interesting. It's a fine thing. And designed by an architect. Sadly, I can't imagine an architect designing a score board now without ruining it by trying to make it dynamic and contemporary!

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