Task 2 - Groupwork - Report

Me and my group chose the Art Nouveau movement as a style to do our presentation. Before actually starting doing the group work I conducted my own research about Art Nouveau, which I also dedicated a blog about. This helped me out understand and recognize better the features of Art Nouveau myself. After this I started to work with my group and also continued to do some more research with my group members. This research helped us identify the characteristics of the style and also found some places around Malta which we visited and took some pictures.

While doing this research we learned that in Malta, Art Nouveau was mostly inspired by ‘Stile Liberty’, which was the Art Nouveau for Italy. The Art Nouveau in Malta started about 10 years after the actual Art Nouveau ended.

We started off by visiting a villa which has its façade full of Art Nouveau decorations, which nowadays is a private home for elderly people named Roseville. Elements found on this villa which are Art Nouveau are the door, windows, balconies, fence, sculpture and paintings. Ironwork is an important characteristic which is visible on this villa which during the Art Nouveau was getting more popular as a material and as a technique.  Not only the façade has Art Nouveau decorations but a fence at the garden of the villa also has some curvatures, and also one window at the back of the villa has some sculptures as a frame with curvatures which both reminds me of Art Nouveau.

The next building we visited is the Balluta Buildings which is considered to be the iconic building of Art Nouveau in Malta. It is a large building which has many features of Art Nouveau mostly in ironwork, which there is as fences, railings and one interesting gate in the middle of the building.

Afterwards we visited another building in Sliema which is the Lombard bank. This has also some good features of the Art Nouveau. This building was restored very well and kept every feature there was before as Art Nouveau and is now utilised as a bank.

Lombard bank

Close up of Lombard Bank's door.

We also visited two streets in Sliema named as Triq Sir Adrian Dingli and Triq Amery, where there are quite a good number of good examples of Art Nouveau. Most of the features were metal works, such as balconies, doors and windows of private houses. There were also elements of stained glass and little typography which are in Art Nouveau style.

The following images are of elements from the streets mentioned.

We also found some other elements related to Art Nouveau which are jewellery, fashion and furniture.

After we’ve done all the visits and took the all necessary images, we started to put everything together in a PowerPoint presentation. Then we started to tackle everything which was asked by the brief and made sure to do them well. At the end, I think we worked very well as a group and we collaborated well together all the time.