Welcome to Auckland’s original ‘Municipal Destructor’. Everyone, like me, know it as Victoria Park Market – a super popular open air market through the 80's to 2000's – a great place to buy your crystals and tie-dies etc! I've always known that it was originally the city rubbish dump – when the city was waaaay smaller). There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times. The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restau...
Originally published on Urban Sketchers
Welcome to the Urban Sketchers Symposium 2015 headquarters. This is the Singapore Design Centre – the worldwide epicenter of all things sketchy for the next 4 days! I decided to start the day by sketching the venue and it's neighbour before the 10.30 instructors meeting.
Welcome to the Urban Sketchers Symposium 2015 headquarters. This is the Singapore Design Centre – the worldwide epicenter of all things sketchy for the next 4 days! I decided to start the day by sketching the venue and it's neighbour before the 10.30 instructors meeting.
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| The National Design Centre - center of the world for the next few days |
The design centre is a renovated art deco building which once housed the
St Anthonys Convent and is situated right next door to the St
Joseph's church. I got a quick sketch of it in before the morning
briefing.
The
Singapore organisers seem to be an incredibly well organised unit and
it's clear they've done a lot of work. I enjoyed the early morning
instructors briefing - a briefing to some of my all time favourite
sketchers - some of which I hadn't even met yet. The day has been a
steady stream of sketching and meeting familiar and new faces, then
sketching again and meeting more! Lunch turned into a sketch off...
Later
on it was registration time. Something like 300+ sketchers from all
around the world filtered through to collect their symposium guides and
goody bags before heading off for casual sketchcrawl - the perfect way
to warm up for the next few days activities.
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| Kiah Kiean, Marc Taro Holmes and James Richards get amongst it in Purvis Street |
I took the Purvis Street sketchcrawl group. Sketchers everywhere I've never sketched with so many people before!
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| More sketchers on Purvis Street |
Then
back to the design centre for the introduction. I tried to capture the
organisers as they worked to explain proceedings to a captive
audience...
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| Design Centre Reception |
See you tomorrow, I'll be back with more.
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