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Wednesday 07 January 2009
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- 07012009
What's your favourite font for typing? Or perhaps you don't have one. Perhaps you're happy to use whatever font your computer defaults to ... Times New Roman perhaps. Or maybe you are passionate about fonts, someone who knows their Palatino from their Book Antiqua, a person who picks a font according to what they are writing about?
Among the international stars at last year's Melbourne Food and Wine Festival were chefs Jonathan Waxman and Fergus Henderson. They seem to represent very similar approaches: good, seasonal ingredients, with as little as possible done to them, served in plain, unfussy interiors.
Many of you will be familiar with the books of author John Birmingham, Leviathan is one, about the history of Sydney, and the one which made his name, He Died with A Felafel in His Hand. That book was set in a shared inner city house. Well life has changed considerably for John since those days. John and his family now live back in their home town of Brisbane, in a Queenslander, one reworked to accommodate family, friends and a writer's private work space.
John worked with architect Stuart Vokes from the young prize-winning Brisbane firm Owen and Vokes to transform the 19th century run-down Queenslander into a 21st century tropical home.
The first alluvial clay was actually found in the first two weeks of European settlement at Sydney's Cockle Bay. Now it's known as Haymarket and Chinatown, where ABC Ultimo is based and from where By Design is broadcast each week. While the brick industry started in Sydney, the brick revolution spread quickly across the country. Perth is often referred to by old brickmakers as the brick capital of the world. And in every small town there was a brickworks. If not, a 'travelling' brickmaker would often set up at the edge of town.
Tuesday 30 December 2008
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- 30122008
Dubai. Part of the United Arab Emirates, perhaps ten years ago you might never have heard of it. Today that's unlikely since we are talking about the fastest growing city in the world.
All decades have their iconic objects and metaphors that describe the times. Adrian Franklin suggests that today's objects include LCD flat-screeen TVs, BlackBerries, the Toyota Prius, exuberant, loud large women's handbags, patio gas heaters and the iPod. We had the swinging 60s, the decadent 20s and the austere 30s. How will we describe the noughties?
Trends is the spot where each week we investigate developments in a particular part of the designed world. This week we're taking to the air and looking at the interior design of the new Airbus 380, the 525-seat aircraft billed as the most spacious airliner ever conceived and promising unparalleled comfort.
Wednesday 24 December 2008
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- 24122008
Bathing is essentially about washing the dirt off your body, but if you've ever experienced a Japanese bath, you'd know that bathing is a lot more than a good wash. Japanese baths are meant to rejuvenate not just the physical, but the mental, emotional self. So how are Japanese baths designed to achieve these aims?
This week Trends and Products is about urban forests, with physicist Dr Peter Fisher, who emailed us in response to our Conversation in June with the Melbourne City Council's Rob Adams. Dr Fisher has a passion for old-fashioned shade from trees and plants, and is lobbying hard for urban forests. He is a climate change consultant and research fellow at the Central Queensland University.
Going into the cookery section of any half good bookshop these days is like going on a world tour. You want to cook Uruguayan, Burmese, Icelandic? We've got a cookbook for you.But where do you go to find the basics, the sort of knowledge and skill you need to survive in the kitchen?
'Luxury or bust, what happens next?' was the title of a keynote address given at the the l'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival business seminar this year. It was delivered by Dana Thomas, formerly cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek and now contributing editor of Conde-Nast Portfolio. Dana is author of a very successful book published last year called Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre.
Wednesday 17 December 2008
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- 17122008
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A lot of Australian cities have casino, but what we don't have is a city that was made by gambling. In other words, we don't have a Las Vegas.
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Today By Design looks at the big trends for 2008 -- the ones that will take us into 2009. And it is worth noting that 2008 was the year Google turned 10. How our world has changed.
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Imagine a house designed specifically with you in mind? I'm not talking about how many bedrooms you need, but a house inspired by your personality and your personal interests. Well Alan has just had such a house designed for him. A startling house situated in the Queensland hinterland. Unfortunately it's not a real house. It's hypothetical and one of a number of hypothetical houses designed by architecture students at the University of South Australia.
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Did you know that Australians are the fourth biggest buyers of footwear in the world? On average, figures show, we buy 3.5 pairs of shoes a year per head of population, which means many of us are buying way over the average 3.5 pairs of shoes, with most of them now imported. But that has not always been the case. Australia once had a flourishing shoe industry.
Wednesday 10 December 2008
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This exhibition from London's Victoria and Albert Museum has just opened at the Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria. By Design talks with the exhibition's curator Claire Wilcox. This is an edited version of an interview first broadcast in 2007 when this important exhibition opened in London last year. The show at the Bendigo Gallery is open until 22 March 2009.
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This week in our Trends and Products segment we're looking at the rise of 'the brand' throughout all levels of society. Where once a badge was used to simply identify the name of a product's manufacturer, the brand can now be more important than the product itself. So the way a brand is incorporated in the overall design of a product has become very important indeed.
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We tend to take the objects around us, from car keys to chairs, for granted, remarking only when they're either annoying to use, or impossibly elegant.
More Past Programs...
2.20pm AEDT