Past Programs
Housing - 2008
Philip Cox's Australian style
26/11/2008
Philip Cox is now one of the elder statesmen of Australian architecture. He really started his career in the middle of last century, at Sydney University in the late 1950s, and then his first practice in the 1960s. His buildings have influenced the way Australian cities look. Lets find out why and meet the man himself, Philip Cox, on the eve of a new publication - Cox Architects and Planner 1960-2010 - about his life's work.
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.
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.
Trends: the 14-hour city
22/10/2008
Our Trends guest this week is James Calder from the architects Woods Bagot, who work now pretty much across the globe. Woods Bagot is an interesting firm in that they have been doing a lot of research and thinking about culture, about cities and about how we live our lives.
James has put forward the concept of a 14-hour city -- the argument being that most of the our buildings lie dormant for half the day -- and the weekends -- and that most of our lives now are too complex to revolve around a 9 to 5 existence.
The humble brick
10/09/2008
The humble brick is the subject of author Ron Ringer's The Brickmaster 1788 - 2008. The first alluvial clay was actually found in the first two weeks of European settlement at Sydney's Cockle Bay. Now it's known as Haymarket and Chinatown, where ABC Ultimo is based and from where By Design is broadcast each week. While the brick industry started in Sydney, the brick revolution spread quickly across the country. Perth is often referred to by old brickmakers as the brick capital of the world. And in every small town there was a brickworks. If not, a 'travelling' brickmaker would often set up at the edge of town.
Project houses in Australia
03/09/2008
Most new houses built in Australia are bought off the shelf -- in other words people want houses they have already seen -- and they then feel confident buying and building these project homes, which in some cases today have become large McMansions. This passion for buying designs off the shelf has been a long tradition in Australia, especially after WW2 when the project home really took off and the designs offered were very modern and very stylish.
Trends and Products: retirement housing?
30/08/2008
Here on By Design we have run a couple of discussions over the last few months about the changing demands and market for retirement and aged-care living. Today we look at intentional communities in the USA and UK, and in Holland at the Humanitas organisation's concept of Apartments for Life.
Conversation: teaching 21st century architecture
30/08/2008
Sandra Kaji O'Grady is head of architecture at the University of Technology in Sydney, an architecture school deliberately positioning itself right at the edge of the latest ideas in the world of architecture and design. Sandra is part of By Design's Conversation series, where leaders in the world of design and architure talk about their ideas. Sandra Kaji O'Grady's topic and interest is focused on what skills students need to learn if they're to become good architects for the 21st century.
Prize-winning Qld house: 2008 Robin Dods winner
23/08/2008
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.
- Watch presentation of the prize-winning house.
- Download our presentation of the prize-winning house.
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.
Prefab housing
19/07/2008
For many people, the term 'prefab housing' conjures up images of demountable aluminum boxes in caravan parks, a substandard home that they associate with impoverished circumstances.
But in recent years there has been a new excitement about the possibilities of prefabricated houses that can be built off site and delivered complete. Prefab is in fashion. And championing the search for prefabricated design solutions to how we live is New York's Museum of Modern Art.
In a new show this month, MOMA has commissioned five architects to design and erect prefab houses on a vacant block of land next to the museum; an event which is capturing the imagination of New Yorkers. The exhibtion is called 'Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling'.
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.
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
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.
2020 Design Summit: By Design panel
19/04/2008
As the Rudd 2020 Summit gets underway today (Saturday 19 April) in Canberra, By Design brings you a panel of design commentators to look specifically at what the world of architecture and design can bring to enrich life in Australia -- what we could be doing better, and how to make sure that Australian cities and design infrastructure are positioned to cope with the incredible shifts Australia in undergoing.
Edible Estates: re-inventing the front lawn
12/04/2008
Fitz Haeg is an architect and artist, and a keen environmental activist in the process. His approach is to tackle the front lawn and his project Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn started in 2005 - in Salina, Texas - with the object to replace the domestic front lawn with a highly productive, edible, organic garden landscape. Fritz's initiative aims to affect change in urban and suburban commities alike, one front lawn at a time.
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.
New meets old: reinvention at University of Sydney
29/03/2008
John Wardle is a Melbourne-based architect with a national and international list of projects under his belt. He is well known in Victoria for his commitment to domestic architecture, but increasingly he is finding himself designing large commercial and public projects.
In Sydney he is about to embark on the new Westfield Centerpoint Tower retail renovation in the CBD, but he is currently in the final months of completing the new extensive USyd Central for the University of Sydney, which will be the heartbeat for the university's retail outlets and the student union activities. It also includes the new Scitech Library and bridge over City Road, linking the old university Wilkinson buildings with Wardle's new centre. And all this coinciding with a Thames and Hudson publication of all of John Wardle Architects' buildings.
Conversations 2008: Collaboration
15/03/2008
Collaboration is one of the new buzzwords in the design world. As design becomes more complex, and more design is now done three dimensionally, rather than two dimensionally, the skills needed to bring a building to life are increasingly specialised. So what does it mean to collaborate? How are decisions made and what happens if there is a dispute.
Robert Moses: Shaping the City of New York
12/01/2008
The image of Robert Moses -- the legendary visionary who changed the shape of New York city in the middle of the 20th century with his vision for highways and urban renewal -- is undergoing a revision.
Two academics from New York's Columbia University -- co-authors of a major new book on Robert Moses' legacy -- argue that there has to date been too much attention on what Moses destroyed, and not enough attention on what he achieved and on the economic hurdles he surmounted to get things done.
This interview was orginally broadcast 17 Feburary 2007.
