The charm of the garden square

I am very much a fan of the square as an urban space - be it the grand civic/ceremonial piazza, or the lively church or market square that serves as a bustling meeting place, or, most especially, the charming garden or residential square - those lovely, quiet little pockets of greenery and solitude offering peaceful respite from the city.

Considered a British invention, the garden square is mostly associated with London, where there are more than 600 of them, although they were built throughout the British Isles with other notable examples in Dublin and Edinburgh. These squares were exclusive sorts of places, generally built for the upper middle classes who lived in elegant rows of townhouses overlooking the communal, and usually gated, central gardens; residents had a key to the gardens. Today, the squares are usually open to anyone to enjoy. Place des Vosges, where my picture for this post was taken, is a deservedly famous Parisian take on the residential square. There are also examples of garden squares in American cities such as Boston, Savannah and San Francisco, a city that I am currently visiting and where, this afternoon, I plan to find my way to two of its most noted examples of residential squares, South Park and Alamo Square.

In Australia, the concept of the residential square never really developed much traction, perhaps because of the preference for private backyards. St Vincent's Place in South Melbourne is one of the best examples of an English style residential square in Australia. Today the gardens in the centre of that square remain a beautiful and much loved green space in this very charming area of the city, and they are a lovely place to spend an afternoon with a book. Wellington Square in North Adelaide is another example, slighlty larger in scale, of an Australian residential square. I can't think of many other examples of genuine Australian residential squares.

I think it is time for the idea to make a comeback, especially as we move towards more higher density living and less private backyard space. The residential garden square is an elegant, environmentally and socially sustainable solution to how we can increase our residential densities but still retain some greenery and open space in our cities.

Farewell, Bea Arthur

I was in San Francisco when the beloved, unique and very talented comedic actress Beatrice Arthur died. I heard about it on the tram where a group of teenagers were discussing it sadly. Yes, teenagers! I do believe that San Francisco may well be the only place in the world where teenagers know who Bea Arthur is/was. Later that afternoon I was walking down Valencia Street and saw a beautiful picture of Miss Arthur, from her Maude era, displayed in a shop window - no tacky "in memory of" poems, just a simple photograph. What a classy town this can be.

And as for Miss Arthur - what a tremendous talent! I loved her in Maude, and I loved her in The Golden Girls. I never saw her on stage but I do have a CD of her live show from a few years back and she is marvelous.

A few years ago I read an interview with her where she said she had no idea why Golden Girls was shown on TV repeats so much more frequently than the more confrontational and political Maude (of which only the first season has been released on DVD), but she thought that Maude would do the world a lot more good if it was rerun. I agree with her. Maude was a wonderful role model, and of course her portrayer will be forever loved.

Is this Berlin's most charming platz?

A post about a platz in Berlin, what has that got to do with unAustralian politics, culture or urban affairs (the ostensible semblance of a thread that hangs this fledgling blog together)? Well, I happen to think urban squares are something Australian cities do not do very well, and an area where we could learn a great deal from European cities in trying to make our own cities more livable. So there is the link.

I do love Berlin. I loved it even before I had been there really. It is such an interesting, exciting, constantly evolving city, a city of contrasts, a city with the most intriquing history, and despite all of that burden of history and expectation it is just such a liveable and fun city too. It's probably just about my favourite city, along with Hong Kong (although Paris and Amsterdam are notable mentions, as indeed is Melbourne.)

Viktoria Luise Platz is an elegant residential square in the Berlin borough of Schöneberg, famous as the birthplace of Marlene Dietrich and one time home of Christopher Isherwood and the setting for much of his stories in Goodbye to Berlin. The borough was the centre of Berlin's gay world in the 1930s and it was West Berlin's main gay area until reunification in 1989. It still has a pretty vibrant gay life, but much of the action has dispersed to other parts of the city now, leaving Schöneberg something of a fading flower. But what a lovely fading flower she is.

The centrepiece of the platz is a charming, oval-shaped park with a rather impressive fountain. The square itself was originally constructed in 1898, then renovated in 1957. Several of the lovely apartment buildings around the square were destroyed during the war, but still quite a few remain (you can see some of them here). Billy Wilder lived on the square at one time. There is a plaque somewhere attesting to this trivial fact.

The square hosts a playground and garden (although, being Germany, the grass, so tempting for lazing about on in the sunshine, is fenced off). It is surrounded by cafés, a pub, local shops and high density courtyard apartment buildings, most of which also feature private balconies. The square covers an underground U-bahn rail station. It is within walking distance of several other squares which are also community hubs, such as Nollendorfplatz, a gay hub, Winterfeldplatz, a laid back café cluster which hosts a weekly farmers market, and Wittenburgplatz, home to chic department store KaDeWe. Also nearby are the supermarkets and services of Prager Platz and Bayerischer Platz, and the friendly gay strip of Motzstraße.

The streets in this area are lined with stands of large, elegant trees. With its greenery, its human-scale high density, its diverse population of young families, older people, immigrants and gays, colourful street-level local businesses and a mix of affordable and more exclusive housing options, this charming corner of Berlin is my idea of a highly effective, desirable urban village.

Focus on Wendy Hughes (and Paul Cox)

For this, my first "blog" post, I thought I'd a plug a fantastic film retrospective currently screening in Melbourne at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image celebrating the wonderful career of a true Australian living treasure, the lovely Wendy Hughes.

Last night I saw the first film in the series, Paul Cox's harrowing 1984 drama 'My First Wife'. It is a pretty intense story about a marriage breakdown, told particularly from the man's perspective, who is played with amazing rawness by the late John Hargreaves, a frequent acting partner of Ms Hughes. I read somewhere that Paul Cox's films are gifts to an actor - Norman Kaye in 'Lonely Hearts', which also stars Wendy Hughes, Sheila Florence in 'A Woman's Tale' (my favourite Cox film), Julia Blake in 'Innocence' (my second favourite) - and I think that is quite true; 'My First Wife' is definitely John Hargreaves's gift from Cox. Wendy Hughes has a difficult, somewhat unsympathetic part, as the unfaithful wife, but she certainly plays it with dignity and emotion - as she always does.

Wendy Hughes has mesmerised me since I first saw her as the haunting, elegant Vanessa in the intense Depression-era family drama 'Careful, He Might Hear You'. The ACMI poster refers to her career as being defined by "classic poise and cool eroticism", and I think this is a wonderfully apt description. To me, she had the mysterious, elegant, sensual air of the 1970s era Faye Dunaway. If Australia were France, Wendy Hughes would probably have the same sort of cultural status as Catherine Denevue. But Australia is not France: we revere only sportsman apparently, and sometimes Kylie Minogue, but never our artists. But just the same, I sense that there is a certain, special respect and love for Wendy Hughes - after all, she is still acting in films and plays nearly 40 years after she started.

Wendy Hughes has starred in many classic and classy Australian films, including 'Newsfront' and 'My Brilliant Career', as well as quite a few criminally lesser well-known ones (I highly recommend 'An Indecent Obsession' and 'Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train', the latter of which is my favourite Hughes film and both of which are showing as part of the retrospective), not to mention a wonderfully showy part as a drunken socialite who beds her best friend's husband and stands by as he attempts to murder her, with a crocodile, in the classic Australian TV melodrama 'Return to Eden'. Amidst all of this, she still finds time to act on stage - 'The Graduate' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' being recent productions (personally, I think it's time for Ms Hughes to take the stage in a comedy - something from Noel Coward's canon perhaps, like 'Private Lives' or 'Design for Living', would be perfect for her).

After last night's showing, at which there were about 50 people I suppose, the radiant Ms Hughes and the rather maudlin Mr Cox did a Q & A session. Like many cinematic geniuses, one gets the impression that Paul Cox's sadness is no act - he speaks openly of his disappointments and of having failed at many things in life, and it's not easy stuff to hear from a man who should feel at this stage of his life that he is celebrated for his fine achievements. Mr Cox spoke candidly, with tiredness more than bitterness really, about the fact that his films are frequently better received overseas than they are in Australia, and the absurdity of current film funding arrangements in Australia that seem rather degrading to established filmmakers but more than willing to fund scores of banal, derivative films. He says he makes films for people not the public, but clearly feels sadness at what he perceives as a lack of connection between his art and the wider Australian film going community. I'm not so sure that this rejection of the artist by his own nation is peculiar to Paul Cox or Australia - I think sometimes, some artists speak with an emotional profundity that can be too intense, too close to home, too confronting for people to want to acknowledge, and this seems to result in them often being better appreciated abroad than at home.

Except maybe in France.

I must disagree with Paul Cox on one point. To demonstrate his point about Australians not appreciating their artists, he suggested that Wendy Hughes, a hero on Australian cinema (his words, and apt in my view) was not rightly recognised in Australia. Well, I do disagree - I think Wendy Hughes is quietly beloved and acknowledged as a living treasure. Viva Wendy Hughes - Australian living treasure!