Past Programs
Computers and Technology - 2008
2nd Avenue subway New York
26/11/2008
The 2nd Avenue subway is the first subway to be built in New York in nearly 100 years. Segments of line have been built over the years, but a new line - as this is - has taken a lot of work, a lot of lobbying, and a lot of money. Janne Ryan talks on site to the chief engineer on the project, David Caidon.
Trends and Products: jewellery and medicine
05/11/2008
By Design's Trends guest this week is Leah Heiss, who is developing jewellery that has a therapeutic purpose. She has designed pieces that help the diabetic, and pieces that you might need in an out of the way place - practical and discreet way of taking arsenic and bacteria out of water. These pieces form her show Liminal, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne.
John Denton on UK Stirling nomination
24/09/2008
John Denton is part of the Melbourne-based, now global, architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall. You may be familiar with their work. They designed the entry to Melbourne, those 'sticks' that welcome you on the highway in from the airport. They also designed the Governor Phillip Tower in central Sydney, a place many Sydneysiders will have visited or walked past en route to Circular Quay. Now they have made the short list for the UK's top architecture award -- the RBIA Stirling award -- the first Australian firm to have done so. The building is the Manchester Court Complex, the first law court complex to be built in the UK since the Royal Court 100 years ago.
Perfecting PowerPoint and presentation
05/07/2008
Garr Reynolds is one of the leading lights in the world of PowerPoint presentations, and the world of communications. He has a number of clients in the Fortune 500. Find out how Steve Jobs (CEO Apple) perfected his communication skills, and why Bill Gates (founder Microsoft) still has a lot of lessons to learn. And what's design got to do with all of this?
Trends: murketing, the new marketing
05/07/2008
Trends and Products this week looks at the way in which our shopping and consumption patterns are the touchstone to understanding who we are. In his new book, Buying In, author and journalist Rob Walker declares marketing an outdated concept. He suggests murketing be the new description of how brands are made and marketed. The relationship now is interactive, between consumer and what is consumed.
Trends and Products: urban sensors
21/06/2008
By Design spoke a couple of weeks ago to Nokia's principal researcher, Jan Chipchase, about the future for mobile phones. You may recall that he mentioned the idea of mobile phones as 'urban sensors'. This week we speak to Eric Paulos, from Intel, about the work he is doing with urban sensors. He says we carry mobile phones with us nearly everywhere we go; yet they sense and tell us little of the world we live in. Look around you now. How hot is it? Which direction are you facing? How healthy is the air you are breathing? What is the pollen count? How strong is the sun? Were pesticides used on the fruit you just bought?
Weak-force architecture: Denton Corker Marshall
31/05/2008
Leon van Schaik has written a rather interesting text that accompanies a new book on the Melbourne-based architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall. Professor van Schaik puts forward a hypothesis on what he calls weak-force architecture and strong-force architecture. Strong force architecture is international and driven by highflying brandname architecture firms. Weak-force architecture is local, organic, slow even -- and it is in this category that he positions Denton Corker Marshall. What does all this mean -- find out on By Design.
Mobile phones: could they eliminate poverty?
24/05/2008
The way we use our phones is changing. Mobile phones are increasingly the centre of our technological universe, and this is so not only in the West but in the emerging markets where the greatest sales growth is underway. In the next three years over 1 billion phones will be sold into the emerging markets. So find out how they are being used in these new markets—and how this could change all our lives. Could they eliminate poverty, for example?
Beijing Bubbles: the Water Cube
23/02/2008
Australian-based designers and engineers are behind the inspiration and collaboration that delivered the innovative Bejing Olympics swimming centre, knows as the Water Cube. Next on By Design meet two of the key players -- Arup engineer Tristram Carfrae, and architect John Bilmon, managing director of PTW. John led the creative architectural and planning team responsible for the Water Cube. Arup and PTW worked in partnership with China-based firm, China Construction Design Institute (CCDI).
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.
