Past Programs
Architecture - 2005
A Tour of the New Design Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney
19/11/2005
One of the largest design and decorative arts galleries in Australia opened at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney on October 6. Covering 1,000 square metres, Inspired! Design across time is the biggest permanent gallery to open in the Museum since the Powerhouse opened in 1988.
The gallery presents over 800 Australian and international objects spanning 300 years, from the 1700s to now, drawn from Australia's foremost and extensive collection of design, decorative arts and crafts held by the Powerhouse.
Situated in the Museum's prime gallery at the main entrance, Inspired! showcases iconic as well as rarely-seen pieces of furniture, fashion, textiles, graphics, glass, ceramics, jewellery and metalwork.
Alan Saunders tours the exhibition with Eva Czernis-Ryl, the Museum's Curator of Decorative Arts and Design
Architecture of Museums
12/11/2005
These days, when the church occupies less of a position in society that it used to, and the government often likes to maintain a democratically low profile when it comes to architecture, some of our grandest public buildings are museums or art galleries. There's Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, of course, but also Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Tate Modern in London, and, of course, ANZAC Hall, the new exhibition gallery at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra which has just won the Sir Zelman Cowen Award, the most highly-regarded prize for public buildings in Australia.
The Hudson River
29/10/2005
You may know the Hudson River as that short river running through the city of New York; or as the last leg that European immigrants made on their sea journey, past the Statue of Liberty, on their way to Ellis Island to become American citizens; or perhaps in gangster films set on the docks; or romantic comedies set on the island of Manhattan. But there is a lot more to this river, and a fabulous new book, simply called The Hudson: A History tells some of the stories of explorers, artists, entrepreneurs, and ecologists - those who have been shaped by the river as well as those who have helped shape it. And the author Tom Lewis talks to Geraldine Doogue about the importance of this river in American history and culture.
Superheroes and Design
15/10/2005
Some of the time Superman and Batman are ordinary guys who live in ordinary houses and wear ordinary clothes, but when they transform into men who save the world, their clothes and even their houses change dramatically. The recent film The Incredibles, an animated spoof on the myth of the superhero, provides a good example of how an ordinary family living in the suburbs, who also happen to have extraordinary powers, break out of their 1950s décor, put on their designer superhero suits and go in pursuit of the baddies.
This week, we're looking at fashions and domestic environments in comics and animation, to find out how these creations of imaginary worlds have fed back to the design practice of the what we like to call the real world.
High Density Cities
24/09/2005
Over the last 50 years or so Australian cities have become denser, and there's been an increasing push by governments and developers recently to up the anti and to make even more compact cities for the future. Even though we have some high and low-rise residential blocks here, living in a flat is usually seen as a place of transition, and most of us still long to have our own home on a separate block of land. So how can we stop suburban sprawl and still satisfy the needs of city dwellers? Bill Randolph from the City Futures Research Centre, at the University of New South Wales, has thought deeply about this dilemma and he talks to Alan Saunders about cities of the future.
Kitchen Culture
20/08/2005
We hear quite a lot these days about the kitchen returning to its traditional, almost primeval, role as the focus of the home. But not many people have thought as deeply about the implications of this for the rest of the home as Johnny Grey. He's a kitchen and home designer who believes that these two function are really one and he's just put some of his thoughts into a new book .
Avalon
16/07/2005
To live in an apartment block is to share a roof with strangers. It's both private dwelling and collective house. A place of refuge from the neighbourhood and a neighbourhood itself.
Through Number 96, the soap opera hit of the 1960s, Australians became very familiar with the façade of an otherwise fairly ordinary-looking four-storey block of flats. It wasn't the architecture but the residents that captured our imagination.
Well there's a block of flats in Brisbane called Avalon that is now the subject of a new book. Like Number 96, Avalon isn't particularly distinguished architecturally. But since it was built in 1929 its 26 one-bedroom flats, lettered A to Z, have been home to some very interesting characters and, in recent years, has provided many Brisbane visual artists with a place to live and work.
Home Affair: Garages
16/07/2005
This week in Home Affair, our regular spot where each week we review the way in which we think about some aspect of the home environment, we discuss the impact of the car on domestic architecture in the form of the garage.
Windows
11/06/2005
Architects from all over the country are attending a symposium in Sydney about what might at first sound a rather humdrum subject - doors and windows.
Now how, you might ask, could anyone spend a day and a half talking about doors and windows? It's an open and shut case, I hear you say.
Well, like so much of our built environment that we tend to take for granted, actually there's a great deal to say about doors and windows if we pause to think about them. Because despite their ubiquity, they say a great deal about humanity ... about our ingenuity, even our spirituality, and the way we choose to connect to the outside world from the comfort and safety we otherwise find when cocooned inside our homes and public buildings.
This morning we look through the history and significance of windows in architecture and society.
Home Affair: Greener Apartments
23/04/2005
In our Home Affair segment this week we find out how apartment blocks can cut down on their energy bills and do the environment a favour at the same time.
Home Affair: Opening the Door on Nature
02/04/2005
In our Home Affair segment this week we're asking whether the many of us who live in air-conditioned, artificially lit homes have lost contact with the natural environment. And how can clever house design can welcome nature back in to our homes for a richer sensory experience at no expense to our comfort?
Kitengela Glass
26/03/2005
During this Easter a lot of Christians will be enjoying the tranquil beauty of stained glass windows. Alexandra de Blas takes us to the incredible Kitengela glass centre on the outskirts of Nairobi in Africa, where the most exquisite stained glass windows are being made from recycled glass. Kitengela is a creative wonderland where everything is recycled. It's surrounded by a wildlife park where the leopards break in and eat the dogs, and the baboons relax around the pool. We speak with Nani Croze and Anselm Croze.
Home Affair: Green Wall
19/03/2005
Home Affair is the part of the program where we explore new ways of thinking about a particular aspect of our domestic environment. We go onto the balcony, into the courtyard or out onto the roof garden to have a look at the Green Wall, which is a vertical garden that is perfect for small spaces.
Home Affair: Courtyard Houses
12/03/2005
Home Affair is our opportunity every Saturday morning to hear a new way of thinking about some particular aspect of our domestic environment.
And this morning it's the turn of an architect who is a passionate advocate of reviving what is essentially not a recent but an ancient model for homes, the courtyard house.
The Family Home
05/03/2005
If you've ever lived in a shared household with friends, you'll know only too well that respecting other people's personal space is the key to harmony.
Although we might not think of them in the same way, family homes are also shared households. However small, they're places in which there's still a need for borders between the space we cohabit as a family unit and the space we need to express ourselves as individuals.
But by borders we're not necessarily referring to physical walls. So how do we differentiate between shared and private space in the family home?
Airports
26/02/2005
A discussion about airports, their architecture and what they've come to represent in the popular imagination.
If you thought they were just somewhere you got on and off planes, it's time to think again.
In today's airport architecture, information, people and machines are converging into a new urban form that's all about logistics.
Home Affair - Attic Space
26/02/2005
Home Affair is a Saturday Breakfast series where each week an architect, or someone from the building industry, gives us their views about a particular feature of our homes.
And in keeping with the elevated theme of today's program we're looking at attic space. And in particular the promise attic space holds for extending your home.
Monumental Canberra
19/02/2005
For many Australians, their first visit to Canberra is on a school tour. Parliament House will definitely be part of the itinerary, as will the War Memorial, the National Gallery, the new museum, and the High Court. These are the type of monumental buildings that you expect to find in any country's capital city, buildings loaded with symbolism. If they weren't there, Canberra would be hard to take seriously as our nation's capital.
But what place do these monumental public buildings really hold in our imagination? And does Canberra need more of them?
ACT Villages Rebuilt
29/01/2005
Two years ago, devastating fires swept through bushland, rural settlements in the ACT and some suburbs of Canberra. On the second anniversary of these fires, we look at the recovery process, in particular, the three rural villages that were destroyed: Pierces Creek, Uriarra and Mount Stromlo.
Michael Anderson grew up in Uriarra, fought the fires on 18 January 2003 and is waiting to return to his home in the rural community.
Sandy Hollway is the chair of a group called Shaping Our Territory, set up by the ACT Government to organise the rebuilding process of Uriarra, Pierces Creek, and Mt Stromlo after the 2003 bushfires.
Home Affair: Tiles or Tin?
29/01/2005
The first in our new series, Home Affair, where each week architects - or other professionals working in the building industry and landscape - will have their say about our relationship to some particular feature of our domestic environment.
To kick it off, a disucssion about one of the most ubiquitous features of suburbia, the humble roofing tile.
Architects Without Frontiers
29/01/2005
When the call went out for volunteers to help in Tsunami-affected areas it wasn't surprising to hear that people with medical expertise were needed, as were engineers. But there was also a call for architects to assist in the rebuilding of communities.
Quick to repond was Australia's own Architects Without Frontiers, which now has people on the ground in Sri Lanka looking at how Australians can work with local architects in the massive task ahead of rebuilding coastal communities.
Architects Without Frontiers was founded eight years ago to help rebuild communities that have been devastated by war, social conflict and natural disasters.
