Chairs are a health hazard – that is according to Galen Cranz, U.C. Berkley Professor of Architecture and author of the book, The Chair: rethinking body, culture, and design. She states in a 1999 article…
3D printing has to be a contender for the most talked about technology award at the moment. Gone are the days when I’d start talking about my research in this area only to be met with glazed eyes or polite…
In 2014 it is hard to remember how isolated research on art in Australia used to be. Before the web, when we were all in hard copy, it used to be almost impossible to find information on Australian art…
Recently on The Conversation, military historian John Blaxand put forward a design proposal for a new Australian flag. This was in light of a call by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key for a “post-colonial…
Designers today are impatient for their work to expand into a larger world. They are testing their expertise in complex and non-traditional fields such as finance, conflict, health and disease; growing…
Morry Schwartz, publisher of The Monthly and Quarterly Essay, launched The Saturday Paper on March 1 2014 – the same weekend Fairfax Media downsized its weekend broadsheets to “more compact” sizes. Launching…
I have a golden rule, which is never to review a building unless I have been to it. Architecture is at heart about use and experience, and this simply cannot be conveyed through pictures, words and drawings…
It’s coincidental that a renewed call for a “post-colonial” New Zealand flag has been made by Prime Minister John Key in the same year an independence referendum in Scotland may lead to the end of the…
Australian anthropologist Michael Taussig writes: To slip into the blue of your blue jeans is to slip into a surprising and unexpected encounter with the past … but without your having the faintest idea…
The big race of the annual Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix is coming up this Sunday at Albert Park, Melbourne – and it marks the beginning of a new era as a new set of rules and regulations are adopted…
It is estimated that by 2050 there will be a six-fold increase in the number of flights there are today. This is going to be an environmental problem, and it will need radical change in aircraft design…
My Twitter feed blew up with retweets of Dezeen’s February 4 2014 article on Danish design student Nanna Kiil’s Flesh Chair, which she had entered in the 2014 Stockholm Furniture Fair. According to her…
We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller This past weekend, I went with family and friends to see the film…
Last year, while designing the cover for Gabrielle Carey’s book Moving Among Strangers (UQP, 2013), Gabrielle and I started talking about book trailers. A book trailer is a short video created to promote…
There is probably not one of us reading this who has not lost themselves in time and space as they surf the web. So much engaging content, so many interesting lines of enquiry – and so much rubbish too…
The future of 3D printing is firming up as it moves from do-it-yourself tinkerers to key players selling complete consumer solutions. This shift brings important ecological and socio-economic implications…
As a book designer, I’m often asked whether I think printed books have a future. Short answer: yes, but it’s complicated. The future of print question is often followed by a declaration of love for tangible…
The third season of the BBC’s Sherlock opens with a bang and gives us Derren Brown, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in an action hero window smash, followed by an insouciant hair tousle and a Hollywood…
My new year’s resolution is to read less, more deeply. By this, I mean that I aim to break my habit of skimming multiple texts at a time; to focus on reading one thing from start to finish, before moving…
“It’s not just a _____, it’s an experience.” Substitute the blank space above with just about anything these days (car, meal, city, website, course, concert, charity, therapy), and you get the unofficial…