The Design Writer

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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By Penny Craswell

It’s not easy to fit a home into a mere 50 square metres, but tsai design has achieved it, thanks to their use of pretty much every trick in the book, including some incredibly clever built-in furniture. The existing apartment, located in the incredibly stylish Grand Hotel building in Melbourne, was not only tiny but also dark and uninspiring, with a windowless kitchen tucked at the back of the space.

With this renovation, the client instructed tsai design to create a space for her (and her cat) that was not only brighter, but also clever, using space-saving transforming furniture. A half-height partition wall was torn down to create an open living space and the kitchen built here thanks to an l-shaped kitchen bench constructed in one corner whose hidden appliances almost make the kitchen recede from sight.

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By Penny Craswell

Last Friday I had a great conversation with Mat Ward from Bookshop by Uro about my book Design Lives Here: Australian Interiors, Furniture and Lighting, published by Thames & Hudson in April 2020. Watch the video here.

Watch at Bookshop by Uro

More on my book Design Lives Here

By Penny Craswell

A multi-disciplinary team of artists, engineers and architecturally-trained designers are behind a new pavilion in Sydney called Interchange. Studio Chris Fox, which also created the incredible sculpture Interloop made out of the old wooden escalators at Wynyard Station, designed, modelled and managed the project, which covers 350 square metres.

Three fluid forms seem to twist into the sky meeting delicately in the centre. The external structure is white, made of glass-reinforced concrete (GRC), while the internal structure is formed from Australian Blackbutt hardwood and aluminium inner rails, with the lower parts curving into seating for the public.

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