Chain store competition is creaming Milk Bars across Australia, leaving independent store owners, desperate smokers and the odd lost droog thirsting for more.

Milked Dry

Milk bars have a curiously convoluted history dating back almost a century: the first so-named establishment opened in India back in 1930. The concept of an alcohol-free pub catering to the younger set with healthy, dairy-based fresh and frozen comestibles then took off in the UK, and by 1940 had spread to the United States.

In Australia, milk bars evolved into proto-convenience stores selling cigarettes, newspapers and sundries alongside trademark tasty treats. Our lead images of the abandoned Oak Milk Bar in Kangaroo Point, NSW were taken in 2003 by Flickr member Geoff Eastwood though by that time, the quintessentially Sixties structure had already been long-abandoned.

Nixed Business

The sign says “Mixed… Business” but to the average Aussie, that meant a milk bar with the aforementioned odds & ends sold within. One would hope the floor within this abandoned milk bar in Fitzroy (a suburb of Melbourne) was more level than the street outside but if not, any spilt milk would run off instead of forming a puddle. Call it a feature, not a bug. Flickr member Susan Fitzgerald snapped the tipsy ex-establishment in July of 2006.

Petered Out

They do things a little differently in the Antipodes… care for some “Tea of Flavor”, fer instance? You’ll find it – at least you COULD, before the shop went (down) under, sold along with Peter’s ice cream at this unnamed former milk bar in Annandale, Sydney. Aussies also take their milk barrista-ing seriously: none other than Mrs. R.V. Craig, “Reg. Milk Vendor”, served up the cow juice with fresh or frozen att-teat-tude! Flickr member Navin (no, not Navin R Johnson) posted the above pic early in 2010.

Heavy Medal

The weight of time is apparent when gazing at the now-demolished Olympia Milk Bar in Stanmore, Sydney. Flickr member Newtown grafitti recalls a movie house just next door, the closing of which likely decimated business at the Olympia. Too bad – a scoop or two of Street’s Ice Cream would have made a notoriously hot Sydney summer evening a tad less hellish.

Never On Sundae

From the serene blue-tiled facade to the homely (in a good way) rose-patterned window curtains, this nameless former milk bar in Murrayville, Victoria just oozes cooling replenishment of the dairy persuasion. One wonders, did anybody ever actually “insist” on being served a “delightfully refreshing” Holten’s aerated drink? We sure wish we could do so but alas, Flickr member Matt‘s photo above plainly and painfully points out the milk bar’s CLOSED status as of January 2010.

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Dairy Err 10 Closed Abandoned Australian Milk Bars

Architects in Melbourne cite the cloth-clad dancers in the music video for Ghost by singer, songwriter and performer Beyoncé as the source of this newly-approved building, tall, slender and full of curves. Indeed, the whole building looks like an undulating figure on a pedestal, rectilinear below and organic above.

A skyline-shaping and head-turning structure, the mixed-use Premier Tower was designed by local firm Elenberg Fraser and boasts structural as well as aesthetic reasons for its complex appearance. The architects explain that “the twists and turns of this new project belie its pure and simple, first principles rationale,” representing the “culmination of our significant research into how to best work with individual site and climatic constraints, brought together using our new parametric modelling techniques.”

Structurally, the cantilever helps redistribute the mass to deal with frequency oscillation and wind loads needed to deal with local environmental conditions and meet building codes. At the same time, watching the music video (above) shows the visual source of inspiration that drove this design direction in the first place (arguably also influenced by the work of Zaha Hadid).

The distinctively exterior curviness is carried into various interior elements as well, from wavy ceilings to complex cylindrical columns, repeating the same curvilinear theme throughout various indoor spaces both communal and private.

The finished complex will house over 600 apartments and 100 hotel rooms, sitting next to Southern Cross station, anchoring a western progression within the city “heralded by the regeneration of Docklands, Fishermen’s Bend and Southbank.” Significantly taller than structures on all sides, the bold design sets a new precedent for the neighborhood. Creating a direct connection to a public figure in the entertainment industry is also a daring move, and likely to brand the building going forward, for better or worse.

You see the finished pieces all over – ornate, curved and layered – but rarely get such a vivid and complete all-angle, real-time view of how their tags come together. If you are even remotely interested in graffiti, this behind-the-scenes video with its shifting point of view is well worth a few minutes of your time.

Featuring Melbourne street artist Sofles and directed, filmed and edited by Celina Mills of Unity Sound & Visual, this video provides a whirlwind four-minute window into the creative process behind tagging. Instead of a static shot of a single tag, though, the camera follows the artist from wall to wall, into an abandoned building and more.

What makes it really remarkable, though, is that it gives you a tour of different scenarios and contexts for various styles and types of graffiti creation. It features interior and exterior settings as well as canvasses ranging from blank to brick to already-painted – so you can see what happens from start to finish in all kinds of urban situations.

Architecture and graffiti are always a bit scandalous, as architects usually want anything but graffiti on the sides of their buildings. Not so in this structure, where the facade incorporates a giant three-dimensional tag.

The complex, dubbed HIVE and built for an architect and street artist, has its title printed right into its walls, as well as other graphical elements like arrows that give the entire complex an urban dynamic.

This project by ITN Architects dovetails into a tailor’s shop behind it, then transitions into an interior rivaling its complex exterior – all part of a theme of “hip hop buildings” being designed by this progressive firm.

“The principle construction material is concrete, the use of which has been lent to the larger than life graffiti relief façade complete with arrows, swooshes and drips which has been knitted into the brick shell of an old Carlton shop. The urban street is celebrated by making permanent an ephemeral art.”

“The notion of hive as home has been extracted from the facade and reappears through the fitout in various guises. The slightly sci-fi interiors over four levels are shaped by the arrows and expressive hip hop language of the façade, the remnants of the existing brickwork and are worked into very compact planning on a small site.”

It is fitting for its context: Melbourne, Australia, is a widely-known regional capital of street artwork – it was perhaps only a matter of time before it became fully ingrained in the most fundamental building blocks of the surrounding urban fabric.

For reasons no one seems to fully understand, Melbourne has become the world capital of street painting with stencils. More people search for Melbourne street art online than that of any other city, including New York and London. Officially, Melbourne recognizes street art and distinguishes it from graffiti. However, this stance still leaves a lot of excellent Melbourne street art to be considered illegal. To get a sense of the nature of Melbourne street art, here are some stencils and graffiti work‚ as well as a great selection of tags.