Past Programs
Galleries, Libraries and Museums - 2008
Mornington Peninsula's creative architectural heritage
12/11/2008
A new show at the Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery pieces together the important architectural innovation and heritage of the Mornington Pensinsula, just outside Melbourne.
Here architectural experimentation has always played a role -- a life away from the restraints of city life. Many of the features we take for granted in houses nowadays were encouraged along the Mornington Peninsula -- bold structural statements, glass-curtain walls and the seamless integration of indoor and outdoor space. The show is called Out of the Square: Beach Architecture on the Mornington Peninsula.
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.
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.
Aussie Beach Shack inspires New York
22/10/2008
Australian architect Jeremy Edmiston lives in New York, and has for nearly two decades. With US architect Douglas Gaultier he created the BURST House, which is on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This house was chosen from over 400 world-wide to be one of five houses at the show Home Delivery: Fabricating The Modern Dwelling, curated by Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture at MOMA.
The orginal BURST house was built for its client, an Anglican minister and his family, in North Haven on the mid-north coast of NSW, near Port Macquarie. In 2006 it won the NSW Wilkinson Prize for Residential Architecture.
Big idea for Australian architecture? Diversity
09/08/2008
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.
Australian Pavilion in Venice
28/06/2008
The Australian Pavilion in Venice—the one used for the Venice Art Biennale and the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale—is the subject of a show that opens today at Melbourne's Heide Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition has 11 finalists, shortlisted from an international competition, that give options for a new Australian Pavilion.
Why architecture is NOT building
14/06/2008
The 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale opens in September. The director this year is the internationally acclaimed USA-based writer, historian and curator Aaron Betsky, who believes architecture is not building. For him architecture is ideas, pure and simple. Out There: Architecture Beyond Building is Betsky's theme for the 2008 Biennale. Listen to Aaron Betsky next on By Design
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.
Food: Back to Basics
01/03/2008
Among the international stars at this year's Melbourne Food and Wine Festival are Jonathan Waxman and Fergus Henderson.
Jonathan (who formerly worked with the legendary California chef Alice Waters) is the chef and owner of Barbuto in New York City, as well as West County Grill in California; and Fergus Henderson is the chef and owner of St John in London.
They seem to represent very similar approaches: good, seasonal ingredients, with as little as possible done to them, served in plain, unfussy interiors.
