Perth

Object stories: Etched memories by Penelope Forlano

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By Penny Craswell

The work of Perth-based designer Penelope Forlano explores memories, heirlooms and intergenerational meaning. En_Case (Engraved Casegoods) is a modular furniture piece with a series of patterns laser engraved to form texture on timber. These patterns act as visual snippets of memory; new combinations can be selected from a wide range of patterns to create a personal, customised version.

Hong Kong pattern by Penelope Forlano engraved on timber. Read more on The Design Writer blog
Hong Kong pattern by Penelope Forlano engraved on timber. Image: supplied

For this particular piece, Forlano conducted an interview with a family about their personal and ancestral past, going back as many generations as they knew about. Recurring or overlapping themes and stories, including significant places and experiences, were then translated into patterns. Read more →

Review: Connect(us) light installation by Warren Langley

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By Penny Craswell

A ribbon of light twists and turns above a pedestrian street in Perth’s latest urban renewal project, Kings Square, this is Connect(us), the latest light installation by Sydney-based artist Warren Langley.

Connect(us) by Warren Langley, Perth, by night. Photo: Trent Baker
Connect(us) by Warren Langley, Perth, by night. Photo: Trent Baker


Warren has been working with the medium of light and glass for over 30 years, creating individual light installations for the Shanghai World Expo in 2011, as well as more permanent lighting displays and public artworks such as a tower made of glass and light at the Canberra Glassworks and Aspire, a forest of sculptural trees in light under the underpass in Sydney’s Pyrmont, as well as major project for Parliament House Canberra, the Maison de la Opera, Amiens, France and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Tacoma, USA.  Read more →

Perth house, with sculptural brick extension

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By Penny Craswell

In the Perth suburb of Mt Lawley, a sculptural form pops out above the houses, an irregular tower made of red clay shingles that seems to wrap in on itself in an unusual architectural shape that is also strangely familiar. This is the Camino House, a Perth house extension designed by Bosske and inspired by the shape of a kiln or oast (a traditional building where hops is dried as part of the brewing process).

View from the street, Camino House, designed by Bosske. Photo: Peter Bennetts
View from the street, Camino House, designed by Bosske. Photo: Peter Bennetts


“We initially envisaged the extension as a distinct object, as different to the existing house,” explains Caroline Hickey of Bosske. “It could be something which might ‘sit’ behind it, lean against it, looming above it from the street view, creating a casual relationship between these two elements.” Read more →