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Articles on Design

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Learn to think like a child. Boy in hard hat via parinyabinsuk/Shutterstock

What architects can learn from designing with children

It makes perfect sense. If you need to design a new school or playground, who better to help than the children who are going to use it? Gradually, more architects and landscape designers are bringing young…
Why has David Foulkes Taylor again been left out of the history of mid-century Australian design? Ted Snell

Don’t forget the west: mid-century modern and David Foulkes Taylor

In 1982, I wrote an introduction to a survey exhibition of the work of Western Australian furniture designer David Foulkes Taylor lamenting that so little attention had “… been directed towards the recording…
What happens when designers go off the rails? Feral Experimental shows the results can be stunning. Photo: Britta Campion. Feral Experimental

Design goes wild: boundary crossing in Feral Experimental

What happens when designers stray from familiar territory and go “feral”? This question has been at the forefront of curator Katherine Moline’s mind. She proposes answers in Feral Experimental: New Design…
Do architectural competitions lead to unrealistic design directions? AAP/ Paul Miller

Architecture competitions are risky … but we can build on that

There’s a perverse irony in the apocryphal tale of the design competition for the Sydney Opera House in 1956. The story goes that, after the selection of the group of finalist designs for the competition…

Designers on collaboration: Josh Santospirito

In the third of my series of interviews with designers and illustrators on collaboration, Hobart-based comic maker and publishing entrepreneur Josh Santospirito discusses self-publishing as a way to grow…
Palludarium Shigelu by Azuma Makoto and marmoreal engineered marble designed by Max Lamb for Dzek. UCCA/ Asialink

When migration meets creation: Australian design in Beijing

What happens to design when it migrates? This is the question posed by Australian design studio Broached Commissions which opened its latest exhibition, Broached Retreat, at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary…
While design alone cannot solve global poverty, the Moneymaker pump is making a difference for many Africans. Esther Havens/ Kickstart.org

Sublime design: the KickStart MoneyMaker pump

Designers aim to change peoples’ lives, ideally for the better. The American co-founders of design and development company KickStart, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon, set themselves a particularly difficult…
Still Armani. EPA/Daniel dal Zennaro

Giorgio Armani: 80, the new 40

With 3,000 employees, 2,473 points of sale, seven different fashion and furniture labels (to say nothing of his makeup, skincare, chocolate and flower lines), 16 cafés and restaurants, two hotels, a basketball…
Irrespective of your button pressing technique, unfortunately the wait will always be the same. Dave Young

Sublime design: the PB/5 pedestrian button

We are more likely to thump this instantly recognisable design, on a daily basis, than to give it much thought. The PB/5 pedestrian button, a type of “Audio-Tactile Pedestrian Detector” (ATPD), is a successful…
The classic Queenslander, whose design can be easily modified to suit our contemporary lifestyles. Wikimedia Commons

Sublime design: the Queenslander

The Queenslander house is a classic piece of Australian architectural design. With its distinctive timber and corrugated iron appearance, it breaks the monotony of the bland, master-planned display villages…

Jackets required: Australian book designers unite

The Call for Entries is now open for the 62nd annual Australian Book Design Awards which are seeking the “bravest and brightest, the most original and beautiful” books published before December 31, 2013…
In 1999, the Mini was voted the second most influential car of the 20th century. Flickr

Sublime design: the Mini

Car enthusiasts say the Mini has endured because it is fun - fun to drive and fun to look at. However, as a design, the Mini endures because of how its designers worked within the constraints they were…
Le Corbusier drew influence from the machine age for Villa Savoye, inspired by his fascination with steamships. End User

Sublime design: Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Some 33 kilometres outside of Paris, in the town of Poissy, sits a true “design classic”, Villa Savoye. The work of seminal Swiss architect Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye is a constructed experiment, a manifesto…
When is a map not a map? When it’s a diagram. Roger Wollstadt

Sublime design: the London Underground map

What makes a design “classic”? That it stands the test of time through continued use, critical recognition and popular approval? Or is it simply that its vision and innovation results in it being regarded…
The Moog, 2014 Model Sub 37 – producer of squelchy bass lines and distorted expressive solos. Wikimedia Commons

Sublime design: the Moog synthesiser

The classic sound many of us imagine when the word synthesiser is mentioned is the sound of the Moog – the warm, solid propulsive groove of its bass sound and the distinctive sweep of its patented lowpass…
The Tibetan Book of Proportions, produced in Nepal during the 18th century. The Public Domain Review

Sublime design: an ode to the layout grid

Staring at a blank page is daunting. Where to make the first mark? As designers have known for centuries, one way is to start with a grid. A grid is a structure of lines used by designers to help organise…

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