The Design Writer

By Penny Craswell

A new apartment in Rome by architects La Macchina Studio has a quasi-theatrical flavour, with bright colours, geometries, graphics and other surprising insertions that add up to a collage-effect interior.

Called Retroscena, this apartment is located in a 1950s building in the historic Appio Latino district of Rome. The architects were able to retain the pre-existing Venetian Terrazzo flooring of the apartment with the help of local craftsmen. Other materials added to the flooring, including black and Botticino marble in the living room, a pinkish binder with pozzolan powder in the corridor and brick red microcement in the bedroom, create a collage effect.

Read more →

By guest contributor and graduate of architecture Nikita Bhopti

Dutch-American artist Lara Schnitger explores female power and representation through the ages in a new textile installation ‘The House of Heroines’ at the NGV Triennial in Melbourne. Through the use of illustrations, text, fabric and sculptural forms, Lara fills the gallery with a myriad of messages in a powerful culmination of her past works. The resulting exhibition is a welcoming space scattered with moments of joy, humour, familiarity and power. 

With an early love for clothing, Dutch-American artist Lara Schnitger is a self-taught sewer who learned how to make her own clothes as a child, inspired by various stretching, weaving, colour, patterns and techniques. Textiles has always been a place where women come together, whether through knitting groups, quilting groups or weaving communities, instead of creating in solitude. At the NGV’s Triennial, the House of Heroines stands as a fabric temple – a safe space for women that references both contemporary and ancient women’s movements and representations found in architecture and our built environment. 

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

Melbourne designer Ross Didier has created a versatile modular furniture system called Puffalo whose name refers to a combination of a puffer jacket and a li-lo.

Designed and manufactured in Melbourne using solid timber frames, steel springs and Green Star-rated foam, plus duck feather for the cushion, this system can be dressed up using any upholstery option. “Any upholstery fabrics can be specified but wools and leathers have a beautiful natural stretch that organically moulds around Puffalo’s voluptuous forms and reveals the skilled upholstery detailing,” says Didier.

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

An undulating facade of slim white bricks conceals a complex interior for both visual and performing arts at Phoenix Central Park, Judith Nielson’s latest contribution to Sydney’s cultural infrastructure. The architecture is collaborative, with Durback Block Jaggers designing the performance space and John Wardle Architects the visual arts gallery – two separate buildings linked by a courtyard and shared architectural skin.

The striking exterior of the building was a collaboration between both architecture studios; the architectural statement says that the design was created “working together, iteratively, with conversation and debate, both rigorous and polite, with irreverence, humour and respect.” The result is outstanding.

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

Designed by Krisna Cheung Architects, this backyard project involves the creation of a double-story studio garage at the back of a Melbourne house, created as a stand-alone building that functions as a garage with single room studio above.

Built next door to Krisna Cheung’s earlier similar project Studio Garage, this example took the same form, but added another level of design detail through the use of coloured perspex shingles in pale blue, green and white.

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

Australian artist Susie Losch has created a mesmerising new sculpture as part of a new suite of commissions by the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA). A series of shapes made with recycled cloth take the form of tetrapods, those three legged objects in concrete that are placed along shore lines to prevent erosion. Losch has created them as inflatables, that take on a life of their own as they inflate and deflate, with flailing limbs that recall a living being.

The artist says: “I recently spent some time observing the masses of tetrapods at Gyeongpodae beach, in Gangwon-do province, South Korea. I set about re-creating their forms, which appear simple but have a geometric complexity. In doing this I also came to realise just how much concrete is in each tetrapod. There is a tension here in the amount of heavy material used to protect coastlines from environmental degradation. As they move against each other, inflating and deflating, they behave like the waves that break upon tetrapods on coastlines around the globe. They become the storm surge.”

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

Since I started this annual list in 2016, the ethical gift market has grown enormously, making my task not easier but more difficult each year. Still, I’ve had a good crack at it, finding options that prioritise people and planet.

First off, do you need to give a physical gift? If not, please consider gifting to charity if you can – Red Cross is doing Real Good Gifts, Care Australia has their Care Gifts, there’s Oxfam Unwrapped or you can adopt a Koala or other endangered animal via WWF, give toys to kids in need via The Smith Family or give a Bushgift Card to support our environment via Bush Heritage.

1. This beautiful bag was woven by Tama Jackson in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and is available to buy through Among Equals, an organisation started by Caroline Sherman in 2015 to bring the beauty of the bilum bag to the global fashion market. At time of writing, this bag is $180 reduced to $120. See this bag and more here.

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

What do a lamp that purifies the air, a sculpture for feeding bees and a gravestone made from discarded clothing have in common? They are all the result of a new exhibition ‘Hybrid: Objects for Future Homes’ that is currently on at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Multi-disciplinary ‘hybrid’ teams were commissioned by the museum to create new works for the future home, with a target date set for 2030. According to design writer Stephen Todd, who curated the exhibition with the Powerhouse Museum’s Keinton Butler, each team was given data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that said the critical 1.5% tipping point of global warming would be reached by 2030, as well as data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that modelled dramatic population growth and an evolved cultural mix, especially in Western Sydney, by 2030. “By setting the focus ten years hence, we tasked the designers to envisage a very possible future,” says Todd.

Read more →

By Penny Craswell

In response to the social distancing requirements of the Covid-19 pandemic, Melbourne designer Holly Board in association with partner Peter Grove of BoardGrove Architects, has designed a stool that can be configured as socially distant or together for those in a bubble.

A minimal construction of intersecting planes is charming thanks to its asymmetry and the way each stool seems to have a pair of outstreched arms. As well as creating an interesting profile, these ‘arms’ are functional – each Stool Dolly can be positioned in two states: at ‘arm’s length’ (1.5m), or interlocked. 

Read more →

Guest contributor and graduate of architecture Nikita Bhopti discusses memory and materiality with the Gridwork Side Table, designed by Jonathan Ben-Tovim of Melbourne studio Ben-Tovim Design.

Working in the architecture industry, we aim to specify pieces that reflect the style of the homes we design, and the memories associated with them. When looking at the fluted glass on B-TD’s Gridwork Side Table, I’m reminded of running my fingers across the reeded glass sliding doors in the weatherboard cottage I grew up in. The kitchen had a ‘tupperware orange’ benchtop, where we would make pizza dough every weekend. When speaking with founder of B-TD, Jonathan, he shared that the aluminum frame of their Gridwork Side Table could be powdercoated ‘tupperware orange’, immediately evoking a sense of childhood delight onto an already smart piece of furniture.

Read more →