The South Coast House renovation and additions are coming along nicely. The cladding is on, the window frames are in and the slab has been poured out the back.
I went to TEDx last weekend (along with 2200 others!) in the Sydney Opera House. Notable was the number of great Australian minds spending their working lives overseas- Simon Jackman, Danny Kennedy,Marc Newson, Andrew Parker, Jennifer Robinson, David Sinclair. It makes me simultaneously depressed and proud.
As is typical, those that held great expectation were the least thrilling (Marc Newson particularly) and those I expected little from blew my mind (all the musical performers, Bill Pritchard, Marita Cheng)
The sheer amount of information starts to overwhelm at points, but the inundation feels good. You come away with the impression that everyone in the world is doing intensely interesting things, and feeling inspired to pick up your own game and join them.
Photo of Dr. Lisa Murray (with me in the fourth row!)
One from the Archives.
In light of a recent post about old skool photo montages and with reference to the pending redevelopment of the Amatil building; here is an image from my 1997 graduation project at UNSW. Note the toaster in early construction, and the view we had for so brief a time of the trees and sandstone cliff of Macquarie St and the Botanic Gardens. The white model in the photo, to the left is one of the proposed toaster buildings. The building in balsa and gold paint was a proposal to subsume the Amatil (not demolish it), to colonise over the Cahill Expressway with theatre shapes suspending in a concrete frame and to reclaim the Cahill as a promenade connecting the Botanic Gardens to Observatory Hill. Now, why can’t we do that ? And if they really are looking for ideas well, I can tell you there were about 60 other people in my graduating class and we all had the same site and brief.
Venice Biennale â Shortlist announced for 2014 Australian creative directors
Grace in our office is part of the “Under Construction” team who made it on to the shortlist for the creative director of the Australian Exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Congratulations Grace!
The online home of the world’s best architectural drawings
Architectural Review have collated a pretty amazing collection of architectural drawings online. A great resource.
Image credit: Smout Allen 
‘If I was Designing London’ by Peter St John « Caruso St John Architects
In light of much of what is being built in Sydney, it is worth reading this article by Peter St John of Caruso St John Architects in London. Replace London with Sydney and East with West and it is surprisingly and shockingly relevant.
“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” ― Thomas Jefferson
(via infiniteinterior)
None of these silly sandbag tests, this is how you load test a truss…
Breaking ground at the Congo (Dog Trot) House.
