Falls the Shadow is a new book on the National Gallery of Australia. It is handsomely designed and features a comprehensive survey of the original building including finely reproduced photography of the building and models by Max Dupain and David Moore (among others), and a thorough set of drawings. Happily, the focus is on the original Madigan design - which remains one of the great works of Australian architecture - with the unfortunate recent addition by Andrew Andersons receiving some sharp attention at the close by James Weirick an Laura Harding.

[source]

- Botanicus Interacticus is an interactive plant technology demonstrated at this year’s Siggraph. A diode is inserted into the soil of any pot plant turning the plant into a touch sensitive control device.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhasvJW9Nyc]

via @LukeBicevskis

- have you seen the Supernormal series at Domus? It is a fantastic series of in depth studies into everyday design items, like the on screen  graphics in sports broadcasts, and the Facebook Timeline. Dan Hill gives an overview of the rationale behind the series over at City of Sound.

- The Australia House by Andrew Burns has been completed. I’m pretty pumped for this project, Andrew went through uni in the year below me and the confidence and maturity of this project is totally humbling.

Andrew has photos of the pavilion’s first show by Brook Andrews being installed in the pavilion here and here.

- The Sound of Buildings collects sound snippets around Melbourne buildings including, interviews with visitors, the architects, and tour guides.

- Huh - in all my excitement over the possibilities of widely available, cheap 3D printing, I had not thought through the fast that this tech would also enable people to print weapons. It is currently possible to print certain parts of a gun (including the ‘lower receiver’; the part that makes a gun legally a gun) once it is possible to prit metal objects with a high degree of accuracy it will become nearly impossible to enforce gun control. Forbes has more.

-  Related - It has come to this: Random shootings by gunmen in public places in the USA have become so common that the office of the Mayor of Houston has release a PSA video teaching people what to do in the case of an ‘Active Shooter Event’:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0]

- Bunker 599, by Rietveld Landscape:

- Installation of The Last Child  in Waterford by Gottfried Helnwein:

Via But Does it Float.

- Man, I wish I wish I could post every one of these photographs of building services by Meno Aden:

Tubes 10, Meno Aden.