Boolean Wardrobe:
Link. Via City of Sound
Unfolded Dog:
The NSW Architecture awards were announced the other night at the Carriageworks at Everleigh and although the party was by all accounts rad the awards themselves do not do much to dispel the idea that this is a state where earnestness generally wins out over invention.
Both of the big awards for public buildings and residential projects seem to have gone to the same project, that is, the well-crafted pavilion in the bush. While these types of projects are not without their own difficulties — such as bushfire controls and access — they are a far cry from the constraints, both physical and political, of populated areas and this lack of constraint means that innovation in this locale is rare. And being of the view that innovation and invention are to be celebrated, it is disappointing to see projects that seem to retread old ground be awarded.
In a move sure to excite media agencies and the public worldwide, the Australian Institute of Architects for some reason has not provided any images of the awarded projects on it’s website or in it’s press release, offering instead, this compelling list. And while I could scour the web for images of the winning projects, the Sydney Morning Herald has the one I am after:
For our money, and based only on the limited material available online, the bravest project seems to be the Balgowlah House by Reg Lark which at the very least appears to offer a critical approach to its (suburban) site; sharply raking back from the street, its louvred facade perpendicular to the slope of the site.
I linked to Peter Huyghe’s installation in the Sydney Opera House the other day, under the impression that I would be able to visit it in a few days time and post some photos on return. Closer inspection — ie. actually reading about the project — reveals that it was only in place for 24 hours. So there you go, I missed it. Not to worry. Maybe next time.
The work involved filling the Opera House with a forest of 1000 trees transforming it into an inverted time machine; bringing a landscape long distant to Sydney’s foreshore to an interior space sitting over reclaimed land.
There is an element of the post apocalyptic to the work — landscape infiltration, the engulfing of the ruins of a cultural edifice — and put me in mind of a slightly less ethereal but equally intriguing premiss for the occupation of the Opera House.
Y The Last Man is the story of Yorick Brown, the last man on earth and his search for Beth who is stranded in Australia. On his way there, he finds himself on board a submarine that is running drugs between the USA and Australia; the Americans having found a healthy market for its opium trade. We are told of an industrious American that “decided to start growing the same crop that all poor, starving nations decide to grow” and since the Americans were running out of resources to barter with, they started trading with Australia, who we are told still had its act together. At least until it became a nation of junkies.
Thus the Opera House becomes a convenient and lofty venue for Australia’s capitulation to the importation of illicit and addictive American produce.
“In front of me the instrument panel had been buckled inwards, cracking the clock and speedometer dials. Sitting here in this deformed cabin, filled with dust and damp carpeting, I tried to visualise myself at the moment of collision, the failure of the technical relationship between my own body, the assumptions of the skin, and the engineering structure which supported it.”
- JG Ballard ‘Crash’
I think I may have posted this quote a while ago, but it seems apt, given this image that I came across earlier today. It is a photograph of Evelyn Hale, a 23 year old book keeper, who in 1947 committed suicide by jumping from the Empire State Building landing on a United Nations Limousine parked below.
Velocity turning the soft, solid and the solid, soft.
via Kottke.
Random postings from our library
