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Impressed Ceramic Dish
No full textImpressed, a porcelain dish with concave depressions or receptacles 'impressed' into its surface, explored the natural material properties of porcelain clay and how those characteristics could be manipulated in an innovative way; along with the process of making ceramic wares, to merge a fluidity of form with ceramic casting techniques. <br><br>The form of the dish, a large tray-like surface supported by legs that are formed from the concave depressions in the top of the dish, makes it difficult to sustain without it collapsing in the middle during the firing process because of its weight. Its positioning in the kiln also makes applying the glaze very challenging. Through a series of experiments with different ways of firing and glazing, including the manipulation of temperature and time, and the steps in the process of applying the glaze, a ceramic dish was achieved with a unique fluidity of form and function. With its continuous surface, the dish allows sauces and condiments, typically served in separate dishes, to be served with food on the one dish, while still remaining separate from each other. Culturally, the project reconsiders ways of serving food in both Asian and Western contexts.<br><br>It was exhibited in the 2004 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York and selected for discussion in a public Forum 'Live@ICFF'; the 2005 'Avant-garde Industrial Design: Philadelphia Airport' Philadelphia, USA; and 'Feliciti with...' at Felissimo, Design House, New York 2005. It has been featured in the international press including Metropolitan Magazin
Peppermint Bay
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND <br>Peppermint Bay is a function centre in southern Tasmania. Through a carefully orchestrated promenade, the project reveals a series of disjunctive relationships for consideration: inside/outside, building/landscape, nature/object. Here, these questions are addressed through the architectural device of the surface - a membrane that distinguishes between interior and exterior. <br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION <br>The key design research question for Richard Blythe (Terroir) considers how the creation of a relatively small architectural object may also provide an iconic architectural experience in the context of a vast, politically inscribed landscape. The implicit question of how to negotiate built and natural environments has been integral to Tasmanian politics since colonisation. Such questions also have a wider global relevance in view of climate change and this project suggests an innovative local response to the situation.<br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>Peppermint Bay toured as part of the Second Nature Exhibit at the Planning and Architecture Exhibition Centre, China, October 2006, curated by Peter Davidson. It was included at the 2nd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The project has also been published extensively to an international audience, including: 'Self-Curating Collectives: Terroir' in Mastering Architecture: Becoming a Creative Innovator in Practice by Leon van Schaik; the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture by Phaidon Press; 'Terroir' in Next Wave: Emerging Talents in Australian Architecture by Davina Jackson, published by Thames and Hudson; 'Antipodean Charts. Australia and the Pacific, the Inverse Vision' in Global Architecture circa 2000 by L Fernandez-Galiano (ed.). Journal coverage includes: 'Peppermint Bay' by Leon van Schaik in Architecture Review UK and in "AR 25 Year Survey of Australian Architecture" in Architectural Review Australia AR100 Special Edition
S!X Collection
No full textS!X - Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd - was the first Australian design house, and one of the first design practices outside Belgium, France and Japan, to practise what is called deconstruction, a critical approach to design that seeks to bring into question notions of authorship and originality, the role of gender in design, the process of design, and structural concepts of form, materiality and decoration. <br>Collections are not a regular and datable series of seasonally-changing market-dictated looks but a slowly evolving selection of garments, more like a travelling exhibition. While each collection introduces something new, older works are often repeated or reworked. Each collection has a handful of found garments, often men's tailored jackets, reworked as women's wear, as well as male clothing such as trousers turned into dresses and skirts. Clothing purchased retail is cut up and remade. Otherwise modest materials such as lining may be used, stitching may be done roughly by hand, hems may be unfinished, odd materials such as plastic and tape may appear. Traditional pleating and finishing techniques such as Japanese shibori are also employed. "Driven by original ideas, a vast knowledge of traditional techniques and practical application of modern technology, S!X successfully disrupts the design process to create avant-garde, 'recycled' pieces that maintain a strong sense of tailoring and the iconic S!X style. The duo maintains a successful exhibition practice and participates regularly in Sydney and Melbourne fashion festivals" (Freestyle: http://www.freestyledesign.info/31-s!x.html )<br><br>S!X has also shown in Paris, Milan, Stockholm and Tokyo. It has been reviewed in national fashion press and electronic media, was the subject of an episode of "Fashionista" on SBS TV (2004) and made the 2007 Bulletin list of 100 Innovators
Australian Design Luminary
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND<br>'Australian Design Luminary' is a retrospective survey exhibition of the enduring and significant design and artwork produced by Kjell Grant, whose long career as an industrial designer, architect and artist commenced in 1947 under Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, as well as Mies van der Rohe at Illinois Institute of Technology.<br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION<br>Grant's design work has ranged extremely widely, and includes furniture, interiors, seating, whitegoods, electrical appliances, clothing, textiles, jewelry, porcelain and sculpture. His work is an important survey of the history of modernist design, beginning with its abiding concern for streamlined form, uncluttered lines and modern materials, and virtues of flexibility and resilience, exemplified by his Montreal chair, to the colour and exuberance of his recent Jigsaw seating.<br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION<br>Grant has designed and consulted for Cartier, Orrefors, Knoll, Rosenthal, Raymond Loewy, the Ford Motor Company, BHP, Shell, Mitsubishi and Toyota. His work has been commissioned by Sir Roy Grounds and Harry Seidler. His 1967 commission by Robyn Boyd to design the furniture for the Australian Pavilion at the Montreal Exposition resulted in his Montreal Chair being added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has designed for Flair, as well as auditorium interiors and seating for the Adelaide Festival Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Theatre Royal Sydney and His Majesties in Perth. His ECCO seating range has sold over six million items, largely in Japan and the USA. 'Australian Design Luminary' was reviewed and featured in 'Indesign magazine #31' and he received the honorary Indesign Luminary Award
Polytactics in Make Change: Design Thinking in Action
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND<br>Resilience is "the capacity of a system to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient system can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future". Our project explores concepts of resilience and adaptation in bushfire prone communities. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities which continually adapt through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced to achieve more sustainable environments.<br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION<br>The project is concerned with how we as a society might live with fire and fire-based ecologies. It offers an integrative, resilient approach to living within fire prone environments and adapting existing measures which recognise that bushfire management is a dynamic and complex activity. The project re-purposes and reconsiders existing lightweight polymer materials that are activated by fires. The polymers are cast into lightweight shields - pergola screens at the domestic scale and barricades at the civic scale. When theses shields are heated during a fire, they will transform into a protective ceramic layer. Researchers proposed tacking into existing fire preparation regimes at both the civic and domestic scale. The proposal embraces multiple conditions over time; it seeks to be a useful entity before, during and after fires. <br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>Polytactics won the inaugural RMIT Design Research Institute Design Challenge (2009), was exhibited at the Melbourne Museum (2009), was one of three Australian works exhibited at the Asia Pacific Design Triennial in Brisbane (2010)
Advertisements for Architecture
No full textRESEARCH STATEMENT<br>Recently there has been renewed interest in using architectural exhibitions as tools to engage the public with architectural practice. This interest responds to current questioning of the role and place of architecture against the background of global economic and ecological concerns.<br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION<br>The exhibition contributed to this debate in a novel way. The curators invited architects, architecture students and designers from around the world to create an 'Advertisement for Architecture'. They were asked to address one of several questions, including the need for architecture, the role and status of the architect, the changing historical place of the profession, and the relationship between architecture and broader social and cultural issues. Although open to professional architectural firms, the advertisements were not to serve as self-promotion but as self-reflection and communication of the place of architecture as a whole. The most outstanding of these entries were exhibited at Federation Square, Melbourne, September-October 2009, and published in an accompanying catalogue.<br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>Following the initial exhibition, Advertisements for Architecture was reviewed in Architecture Australia 2009, was re-exhibited as part of the Woods Baggot National Architecture Week in 2009, and for the Australian Institute of Architects at the Victorian Chapter's Public Gallery in December 2009. It was re-exhibited with the addition of Sydney entries as part of the Darchorse event organised by Sydney's Australian Institute of Architect's D'arch group in February 2010, and won the AIA's 2010 Bates Smart Award for Media in Architecture
Visualising the virtual concourse
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND<br>Visualising the Virtual Concourse examines the kinds of public behaviour that sustains creative communities. It promotes the creation of digital environments in which virtual communities can participate in a paradigm-shift of formal and spatial production. Virtual environments, when supported by a spatially-unifying concept, allow the development of learning communities that are both more dispersed and more intensely interrelated. While sites such as Facebook allow viral clustering of individuals with like interests, this project examines the kinds of relationships between real and virtual environments that might be offered to support learning communities. <br><br>RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION<br>The project explores relationships between real environments that are rich in sensory and spatial information, and virtual environments that are developed around emerging communication software applications such as information-rich quick-links. The project proposes the creation of users' information-generated pavilions, web 3.0 visual models for engagement and self-monitoring. Data gathered from user interactions and information exchanges sourced from collaborative software systems is transformed into a dynamic spatial environment that offers an emerging tool to transform information into qualitative 3D spatial intelligence. Here, digital technology is placed in the service of new techniques for spatialisation, and new dynamic surfaces are developed to integrate architecture and its surroundings. Kovac develops a new phenomenological use for digital tools. His approach seeks to create a new materiality shaped by processes that shake up the inert state of architecture. <br><br>RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE<br>The project was exhibited at the 3rd International Contemporary Art Biennale, Seville, Spain
Sappho
No full textThis project was the the theatrical culmination of an ARC grant for the writer/performer Jane Montgomery Griffiths. For me as the sound designer it was to explore methods of representing elements of ancient Greek poetry and drama without disrupting the poetic and subjective world experienced by the audiences with elements which would tie the production down to specific era and geography. It also involved lengthy discussions about the differences between the experience of poetry and the experience of sung text - again with my reservations associated with the destruction of the poetic, open and personal (which incorporates an ongoing dynamic between the residues of artifice and "natural" speech) with the potentially proscriptive artificiality of musical settings potentially not doing justice to the beauty and mystery of fragments of the ancient verse.<br><br>Importantly, the work was revelatory, given that the sonic approach to narrative within narrative (which I had successfully explored in "Madagascar" earlier in the year) completely failed in my initial experiments here. It was quickly clear how certain characteristics of direct address fundamentally shifts the dynamic with a narrative line - and when not handled correctly, potentially catching the sound design in its glare as artifice. This was a problem that I continued to wrestle with later in the year (see "Syncopation...<br><br>Details: Commissioned work<br><br>Significance: Malthouse is one of the two premiere Victorian theatre companies. I was invited to compose for this project by the new artistic director of the company (ex Bell Shakespear AD) Marion Potts.<br><br>The project was the culmination of an Australian Research Council grant - the Monash/Malthouse Linkage Project "Staging Sappho: investigating new methodologies in performance reception". It was criticaly very well received