Past Programs
Urban Development and Planning - 2008
Trends: urban forests
24/12/2008
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.
Part of the By Design Summer Seaon this was first aired August 2, 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.
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.
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: 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.
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.
Trends and Products: blogging
24/09/2008
Blogging is making its mark in the design world, rapidly becoming the fastest and most effective way of getting your message out. Find out why.
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.
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.
Trends and Products: future of the internet
17/09/2008
The internet is dynamic. What happens when English is not the world's most used language on the internet? What happens when most of the readers do so from right to left, instead of the current left to right? Research is underway between USA's Intel Corporation and Melbourne's Swinburne University to identify the main shifts in the way we use the internet.
A new model for the Australian town?
17/09/2008
Imagine building a town from scratch. What could you learn from the mistakes of the past to create a new community with urban planning that ticked all the right boxes?
Rouse Hill Town Centre is a new development that sits at the heart of the 120-hectare New Rouse Hill site in north-west Sydney. It's purported to be the largest and most complex architectural commission undertaken in Australia and—now that it is up and running as of this month—it is being held up as a new model for town centres.
We're talking retail centres, green spaces, streets and laneways, banks, post office, library—just about everything you would expect in a town centre around which 1,800 new residential dwellings are planned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Parliamentary architecture
16/08/2008
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.
Friday is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of parliamentary operations in the new building, and 9 May was the twentieth anniversary of the official opening. To mark the opening, Dr Clem Macintyre of the University of Adelaide delivered a lecture on parliamentary architecture and political culture and he talks to By Design about his ideas.
How pin-up girls taught men to shop
16/08/2008
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'.
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.
Trends: urban forests
02/08/2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Avant gardeners: what no plants?
21/06/2008
UK author and journalist Tim Richardson is equally at home in an 18th century garden, he says, as in a very contemporary 'conceptual' garden. In his latest book, Avant Gardeners, Tim profiles the work of 50 contemporary landscapes worldwide, and takes us behind the thinking of these gardens. Why make a garden from blue sticks, or a garden full of glass shards? Whatever happened to plants?
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?
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.
The aesthetics of mobility
12/04/2008
Increasingly today we spend more time between places, travelling -- by public transport or car -- from home to the office, taking the kids to sport, or visiting friends.
In the course of a day, some of us spend hours mobile, transiting through a gigantic network of public space.
The visual quality of this experience -- what we see from the window of the train or the car -- is of great concern to Francine Houben, one of Europe's most active architects.
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.
The Endless City
05/04/2008
According to UK writer and critic Deyan Sudjic, the future of the city is the only subject in town. The number of people living in cities is about to overtake those still in the country, so we need to think hard and fast about sustainability, economic policy, transport, law enforcement and much else. The London School of Economics set up a think tank, the Urban Age project, to ponder on these issues and the result is a very weighty volume called Endless City, edited by Deyan Sudjic and Ricky Burdett.
The Nearest Thing to Heaven
29/03/2008
Mark Kingwell's book Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams opens up the building's richness and importance as an icon of America. This week, he talks us through the facts surrounding the skyscraper's conception and construction, function as an icon, its representation in pictures, literature, and film, and the implications of its iconic status as New York's most important architectural monument to ambition and optimism. And, of course, he talks about King Kong.
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.
Slow Home Movement
08/03/2008
The slow home movement takes its cue from the slow food movement: like ingredients, houses must be carefully considered, nourishing and thoughtful. This is about finding a house that suits you, rather than buying what others think suits you.
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).
Trends: Tactiles
23/02/2008
Australia leads the world in the development and quality of tactile ground surface indicators for the visually impaired -- just one of many areas in the built environment where Australian research and innovations are offering global leadership.
Portmeirion
02/02/2008
Portmeirion is a remarkable Italianate village, located not in Italy but Wales. And although you might never have visited it yourself, if you were a fan of Patrick McGoohan's cult television series The Prisoner it will be very familiar to you.
The Times called Portmeirion 'the last folly of the western world', while The Guardian saw it as 'a giant gnomes village'. But for its creator, Clough Williams-Ellis, it was an exercise in designing a resort where tourism could enhance rather than damage the environment.
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.
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.
