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Saturday 23 August 2008
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This week in our regular Trends segment where we look at developments in a particular part of the designed world, we're focusing on the greening of abandoned industrial spaces.
What can designers learn from anthropologists?
Bligh Graham Architects are a relatively new firm in Brisbane. Their work is starting to attract attention and this year they won the 2008 AIA Robin Dods Award for the best domestic architecture in Queensland. This is a very modern Australian house—significant and unusual in that it generates (theoretically) enough electricity from the solar panels on its roof to supply the street in which it is situated. The owners are selling electricity back to the grid. The attention to detail in this house is at the highest level. The craftsmanship is evident at every point—the plastering, the woodwork, the flooring, the door handles. The house is short-listed for the Australian Institute of Architect (AIA) national award, the Robin Boyd Award, which will be announced on 30 October.
Le Corbusier Le Grand is a book so heavy that it's like a concrete block. But perhaps that was the idea, because it's about one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, who really did use concrete in new and creative ways.
Saturday 16 August 2008
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Winston Churchill famously said that 'we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us', and the question of how buildings help shape parliamentary business, in particular Australian parliamentary business, will be the subject of a roundtable discussion to be held next Friday at Parliament House, Canberra.
Those of you passionate about architecture and, more generally, those of you in love with Paris will know of his famous Parc de Vilette, the 125-acre contemporary parkland in north-eastern Paris. And many will know of his writings.
The provenance of your chicken or beef or pork is becoming more and more an important part of knowing what you eat. Any old meat just won't do for many of the top chefs working in Australia. Hear about this trend.
In the 1950s marketers looked to educate men and women quite differently when it came to advice about the then burgeoning consumer lifestyle. For men the lure was often pin-up girls inside quite respectable publications such as Popular Photography. Many advertisers believed that by placing the 'hook' of a scantily attired girl in photographic spreads and features many a lawnmower or motor car or particularly male product could be more easily sold. Many advertisers believed that 'a girl in the hand [was] worth five salesmen on the road'.
Saturday 09 August 2008
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In June By Design spoke to Aaron Betsky, the director of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens next month. Betsky's Biennale is about ideas, not buildings, and he controversially put forward the idea that architecture is not about building, it is about ideas. Architects Kerstin Thompson and Neil Durbach—two of the five-member Australian curatorial team—talk with By Design about Australia's event. Team Australia's big idea is diversity. You can view By Design's video interview with Vince Frost, also a member of the Venice curatorial team, by clicking on the links.
Marc Simmons from Front Inc spoke to By Design in late July about his work on the CCTV Rem Koolhaas/Ole Scheeren designed building in central Beijing. Front Inc designed the facade of this building. It is now finished and ready for the opening of the Olympic Games. See link
It seems beyond dispute that Australians are preoccupied with their homes. But our first guest believes that this national preoccupation—the great Australian dream—goes beyond the widely held aspiration of home ownership. It extends to everything to do with home and housing: house prices, interest rates, mortgages, investment properties and holiday houses and, of course, home renovations.
This week on Trends and Products, the product we're looking at is a car. But not just any car, an Australian icon. And we're looking not forward but back in time as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the arrival of Australia's first family car, the Holden.
Art Deco burst onto the world stage at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale, and quickly swept across the globe. Its influence was everywhere: it transformed the skylines of the cities of New York to Shanghai and shaped the design of everything from fashionable evening wear to plastic radios. Its influence was felt across all areas of art and design, including decorative arts,architecture, fashion, art, graphics and film. The new aesthetics were also found in industrial design, furniture, transport, communications and in household items. Above all, it became the style of the pleasure palaces of the age - hotels, cocktails bars, nightclubs and cinemas.
Saturday 02 August 2008
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This week Trends and Products is about urban forests, with physicist Dr Peter Fisher, who emailed us in response to our Conversation in June with the Melbourne City Council's Rob Adams. Dr Fisher has a passion for old-fashioned shade from trees and plants, and is lobbying hard for urban forests. He is a climate change consultant and research fellow at the Central Queensland University.
James Stockwell has just won the 2008 Wilkinson Award, the Australian Institute of Architects' top award for a domestic house in NSW. The prize winning house is in the Blue Mountains in NSW, just outside Sydney. James Stockwell is one of Australia's top young architects—now in his own practice in Sydney. He has previously won two top national awards—the Robin Boyd Award—as part of NSW architect Peter Stutchbury's firm.
Photographs on web slide-show courtesy Patrick Bingham-Hall.
An extraordinarily ambitious exhibition is about to open at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.
'California Dreaming' is the title of a paper written by Andrew Wilson. It is a wonderful insight into the development of the modern Australian house, and the inspiration many architects, particularly those in post-war Queensland, took from American and British architectural magazines and museum shows, particularly one called Brazil Builds, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1943. Andrew Wilson has written an essay as part of the catalogue for a show opening today at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. The show is Place Makers: Contemporary Queensland Architects. It runs till 23 November 2008.
Saturday 26 July 2008
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Trends and Products is the part of the show where each we look at a development in a particular part of the designed world.
Last week on the program we were talking about prefab housing. And our first interview this week in part continues the subject because we're discussing the extraordinary life and vision of the American inventor Buckminster Fuller, a man perhaps best remembered for having invented the geodesic dome.
Oki Sato his way into design through architecture. It was a trip to Milan's Salone Mobile in 2002 that turned his thoughts to how much was possible in the world of design. He acted on his positive emotional response and founded Nendo, based in Tokyo. His success was immediate. He has been picked up by a number of manufacturers, and was a keynote speaker this month at Melbourne's Design Capital event, part of the State of Design Festival.
Rob Adams, from Melbourne City Council, returns to By Design for the second, and final, of two conversations raising issues close to his heart. This week it is water and how those living in the city need to work harder at making this valuable commodity go further.
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