Past Programs
Architecture - 2008
Dubai
30/12/2008
Dubai. Part of the United Arab Emirates, perhaps ten years ago you might never have heard of it. Today that's unlikely since we are talking about the fastest growing city in the world.
When, in the past, we've mentioned Dubai on the program it has tended to be about the city's architectural curiosities. This after all is the city that has emerged out of a desert, has some of the world's biggest and most attention-grabbing buildings, and has even constructed a group of giant artificial islands off its coast to resemble a map of the world. Australia is there, but missing Tasmania!
In Dubai everything seems possible. A modern-day Las Vegas, its growth seems unstoppable. But as foreign workers and tourists continue to flood into Dubai -- 800 new residents arrive every day -- today we're taking time out to look at the realities that are fuelling this city's growth.
Part of the By Design Summer Series, this was first aired on May 31
The look of the decade
30/12/2008
All decades have their iconic objects and metaphors that describe the times. Adrian Franklin suggests that today's objects include LCD flat-screeen TVs, BlackBerries, the Toyota Prius, exuberant, loud large women's handbags, patio gas heaters and the iPod. We had the swinging 60s, the decadent 20s and the austere 30s. How will we describe the noughties?
Part of the By Design Summer Season this was first aired on July 12, 2008.
Wunderlich - a very rich history
05/11/2008
Ernest, Alfred and Otto Wunderlich began importing zinc roofing during the 1880s. Wunderlich has since become a synonym for decorative metalwork, but there was more to this famous Australian company. Through its production of tiles, terracotta and asbestos-cement (fibro), Wunderlich had a profound influence on the style and design of Australian domestic, public and commercial buildings. The talk will detail the story of Wunderlich, its people and products.
The Klein Bottle House
29/10/2008
By Design has been running a series on the houses that are finalists for the Robin Boyd Award - this award is for the best residential house in Australia, given out each year by the Australian Institute of Architects.
The award was announced on Thursday evening 30 October in Adelaide, and Victoria's Klein Bottle House has won this year's 2008 AIA Robin Boyd Award.
By Design visits Victoria, and the very graphic black and white house, with a red belly, nestled in the smokey grey-green tea-trees on the Mornington Pensinsula outside Melbourne. The house is based on the Klein Bottle mathematical model which curves upon itself.
The Queensland Finalist
Circular Quay - Gateway to Sydney
15/10/2008
By Design presents the headline forum from the 2008 Sydney Architecture Festival, Circular Quay - Gateway to Sydney, recorded at the Sydney Opera House.
Former prime minister Paul Keating talks about the Quay and his views on Sydney, followed by a public forum exploring the place the Quay holds in the public imagination.
European settlement began at Sydney Cove in 1788 and today Circular Quay is one of the world's great tourist destinations. The buildings that line its foreshores are loved or loathed. Whether it's the Sydney Opera House, the Toaster, Cahill Expressway, the Customs House, Museum of Contemporary Art or the Overseas Passenger Terminal, everyone has an opinion.
A radical plan has suggested demolishing the Cahill Expressway and creating a major public square at the Quay that would be linked to squares at Town Hall and Central Station by a pedestrian and public transport boulevard. But what does the future really hold for Circular Quay and what lessons can we learn from past mistakes?
The forum was recorded courtesy of the Sydney Opera House Trust.
Sandra Kaji O'Grady: conversation 2
01/10/2008
Today we tackle the topic of how today's buildings have forged their way in the world by looking dramatically different to anything that has come before and, as a result, have been very focused on image. Running parallel is a societal concern about the future of the environment and our concern with sustainability. A building's performance -- its technical function -- has had to find different ways of being assessed.
Design against crime
17/09/2008
The prevention of crime through good design has been around for a long time. Iron Age forts in Southern England are surrounded by complicated tracks and ridges. These are not an accident of landscape, but design—pure design. Their purpose was to deter cattle thieves. And it worked. Find out what kind of thinking and work is being done in design today to help eradicate crime.
The shrinking office
10/09/2008
You may have noticed the subtle and not so subtle design shifts taking place in your workplace. The office is shrinking in size, and sometimes there is no office at all anymore, simply a bit of space at the ubiquitous workstation. As there has been a call for higher density housing options now the pressure is on for higher density offices. By Design looks at when all this started and what the outcome is for us all.
Modernism in Australia
02/08/2008
An extraordinarily ambitious exhibition is about to open at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.
Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia reveals how modernism transformed all aspects of Australian culture across five tumultuous decades, from 1917 to 1967.
Modernism touched most aspects of our lives from art and architecture to advertising and fashion. It reshaped our cities and transformed urban culture.
Small moments in design - Oki Sato
26/07/2008
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.
Water and design with Rob Adams
26/07/2008
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.
What identifies the look of 2008?
12/07/2008
All decades have their iconic objects and metaphors that describe the times. Adrian Franklin suggests that today's objects include LCD flat-screeen TVs, BlackBerries, the Toyota Prius, exuberant/loud large women's handbags, patio gas heaters and the iPod. We had the swinging 60s, the decadent 20s and the austere 30s. How will we describe the noughties?
New rural architecture
05/07/2008
The price of coastal land has put the dream of an architect-designed house on the beach far out of the reach of most Australians.
But indications are that Australians are following their sea change rush to the beach with a tree change phenomenon that's seeing architects being briefed to create rural retreats that are both innovative and sensitive to the environment.
And so the country house it seems might soon no longer be the poor relation to the beach house.
Agoradynamics: restoring public space
28/06/2008
What determines the fate of our cities? Is it policy and infrastructure or is it our attitudes and desires? Bob Perry, an architect and a director of SCAPE, a consultancy focused on urban design, planning, landscape architecture and transport, thinks it's our attitudes and desires. He believes that we have reached a point where an imbalance between our public and our private lives needs to be fixed if we're to enjoy a sustainable life. In this country, that means embracing the idea of urban density and shared public space. It also means getting on your bike.
Conversation with Rob Adams
21/06/2008
In this segment By Design invites guests to raise ideas they want to talk about, rather than respond to events raised by the media. Last year Rob Adams produced a report for the European Union looking at 12 cities worldwide that have taken on the agenda of liveability -- Melbourne being one of these cities -- and it is this topic that he has chosen to talk about today, about you and I, actually, moving to a low-carbon future and embracing the change.
Vince Frost: what look is now?
14/06/2008
By Design talks to Vince Frost about his approach to design -- in his favourite room, a converted textile factory in Surry Hills, Sydney. He also talks about today's look, the aesthetic of our time. VIDEO: To view video click into this story, then follow links.
Vince Frost is a UK-born, Australian-based graphic designer. For him graphic design is not just drawing, it is a larger way of thinking about space and about the way we construct our lives. Vince Frost is a member of the Australian architecture curatorial team chosen to represent Australia at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens in Venice in September. The Australian team comprises three of Australia's top architects, Kerstin Thompson, Neil Durbach and Wendy Lewin; and two of Australia's top designers, Vince Frost and Gary Warne.
The Castle
07/06/2008
This short feature explores how, over the course of 14 days, 24 architecture students from the University of Tasmania's School of Architecture and Design created The Castle.
The Castle is a prototype for mobile, alternative, affordable housing for young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
The other partner in the project was Studentworks, a school alternative where students at risk are taught technical trades.
The design brief was to come up with a model that would be mobile, autonomous, lean and, most importantly, it would be a home.
The prototype can be seen outside Youth Futures in Invermay, Launceston, and in the near future the School of Architecture are hoping to take it to Hobart for more people to see it.
Dubai
31/05/2008
Dubai. Part of the United Arab Emirates, perhaps ten years ago you might never have heard of it. Today that's unlikely since we are talking about the fastest growing city in the world.
When, in the past, we've mentioned Dubai on the program it has tended to be about the city's architectural curiosities. This after all is the city that has emerged out of a desert, has some of the world's biggest and most attention-grabbing buildings, and has even constructed a group of giant artificial islands off its coast to resemble a map of the world. Australia is there, but missing Tasmania!
In Dubai everything seems possible. A modern-day Las Vegas its growth seems unstoppable. But as foreign workers and tourists continue to flood into Dubai - eight hundred new residents arrive every day - today we're taking time out to look at the realities that is fuelling this city's growth.
London under Boris
17/05/2008
On May 3, when Boris Johnson arrived at City Hall to sign the official acceptance of the office of Mayor of London, he stood up to make a speech, tripped on a step and nearly fell over. He then got in a muddle about which architectural peer, Rogers or Foster, had designed the building in which he and his audience were standing.
In fact, it was Norman Foster, though in many respects Richard Rogers was the architect of choice for Ken Livingstone, the man whom Boris had defeated and who had held the office for eight years.
So does Boris Jonson's apparent inability to tell one significant British architect from another bode ill for the architectural future of one of the world's greatest cities? Why has the hard-left Ken been in bed with feral developers? And is the congestion charge really such a good idea? To try to answer these and other questions we talk to the distinguished writer on design, Stephen Bayley.
Design - and feeling powerful - in older age
17/05/2008
As Oscar Wilde lay dying in a Paris hotel, he is reputed to have looked at the wallpaper and said: 'One of us has to go'. By Design looks at what happens when you find yourself subtlety getting older and less able to take control of the world around you: less able to make decisions about how a room should be furnished, what colour carpet you might want, or what plants you might like at your door. We look at the world of design and aesthetics with an eye on what's available when you get old.
Trends and Products: Design Island:Tasmania
03/05/2008
Design Island gets under way in Tasmania this week—the annual design festival that features some pretty important discussion about design in Australia. Guests this year include Mathias Schwartz-Clauss, senior curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. Currently he is preparing retrospectives on Rudolf Steiner and Humberto & Fernando Campana. Mathias Schwartz-Clauss is a consultant to the summer academy of Boisbuchet in France, writes for various design journals and lectures internationally.
Trends: legislation to enforce green housing
12/04/2008
Tim Redway, chief marketing officer for AV Jennings, one of Australia's largest home builders, is seeking national government legislation to enforce green standards when all new houses are built. And he goes one step further: for all older houses sold to be legally forced at this point to improve their sustainability. This, he says, is the only way to really change the energy efficiency of houses...and the larger environment.
Trends: Grave design
22/03/2008
Trends and Products is the part of the program where each week we look at developments in a particular part of the designed world. And today we're venturing into the cemetery.
The influential modernist architect Adolf Loos was no fan of architectural ornament and had the highest praise for a simple grave: 'When we come across a mound in the wood six feet long and three feet wide, raised to a pyramidal form by means of a spade, we become serious and something in us says: somebody lies buried here. This is architecture.'
But most people feel the need to mark graves with some kind of memorial, a headstone or some other kind of monument. And contemporary headstones tend to look pretty much the same.
But our guest today is pioneering a new approach to funerary monuments.
Town squares
02/02/2008
Beijing has Tiananmen Square, London has Trafalgar Square and New York has Times Square -- which isn't really a square at all. But is there still room and need for city squares in Australian urban planning today?
Technology and poetics
26/01/2008
Tom Leslie raises a question that comes up more and more in the world of design. What happens when technology gets out of hand, where despite the good intentions of architects, engineers and urban planners, their designs become more complicated, perhaps ever-so-slightly out of control? Does the idea of poetics in a building, or space, matter anymore? Or has our understanding of what is poetic shifted as a result. Is there a new poetic?
This interview was originally broadcast 11 August 2007.
New rural architecture
14/01/2008
The price of coastal land has put the dream of an architect-designed house on the beach far out of the reach of most Australians. But indications are that Australians are following their sea change rush to the beach with a tree change phenomenon that's seeing architects being briefed to create rural retreats that are both innovative and sensitive to the environment.
And so the country house it seems might soon no longer be the poor relation to the beach house.
Part of By Design, this first went to air on July 5, 2008.
Human scale urban design
05/01/2008
When is the last time you came into the centre of your city, just to hang out? Well if you're in Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth, it might have been quite recently, because one of the world's most eminent urban planners, Jan Gehl, has monitored how people use those cities and has suggested how to make them more walkable and liveable. And now it's Sydney's turn.
This interview was originally broadcast 25 August 2007.
At home with Alain de Botton
05/01/2008
The writer Alain de Botton takes By Design's Janne Ryan through his house in Shepherd's Bush in London. Inside his home, a three-storey Victorian terrace, de Botton has painted all the walls white, and carpeted the floor in a beige woollen carpet, the lightness of these colours reflecting the image of a modern house. This is an intimate journey through the private life of Alain de Botton.
