When most people do their best of lists for music they tend to focus on music released in that year but I thought in my first attempt at a review of my music listening I would include all my music purchases for that year. That’s not to say I haven’t included albums released this year but they are vastly outnumbered by those that weren’t released this year.
Where Are All The Architects – The Beginning
Not your typical architect
My current place of employment sees me working in Hawthorn East and one thing I have noticed when I choose to walk from Auburn Railway station to the office that I pass by a number of architecture offices. This piqued my interest as to how many architectural firms are located in Hawthorn and it occurred to me to create a suburb by suburb graphic of the location of architectural offices. Realising that would quite possibly take me years (I’m easily distracted) a municipality by municipality graphic might be a better idea.
No means No
The alteration to this sign made me laugh
Have you ever notice how often you see the word “No” in every day life? Inspired in part by Hazel Dooney’s No! I decided to document various instances of where we do encounter the word “No” in every day life in what I called “The No Series”. Here are some of the instances that I have encountered so far which I have now decided to collate in its very own blog.
Seven projects worth looking at – 2014 edition
My attendance at events held by the Australian Institute of Architects is very rare but almost every year I do try and attend the Presentation to Juries for the Victorian Architecture Awards. It is a great opportunity to have a look at what has been going on in our state architectural-wise over the last year and one usually comes out of this event feeling refreshed and inspired. Once again I have put together a list of projects I think are worth a look, usually I pick out ten but this year I have selected seven as time has been against me this year (as you will notice by the lack of posts on this site). Once again the event is being held at Monash University Art, Design & Architecture Building G with most of the presentations taking place this coming Saturday 15th March. You never know you might see me there – I’ll be the one not wearing black.
Podcast of the Week: City Living
As promised a week or so ago when I started my little Podcast of the Week listing on the main page of this site I said that if any particular podcast piqued my interest I would actually write something about it in some extended form. Well second week in (third technically, but who is counting) I came across a podcast that I immediately thought that I should write about this. That podcast is To the best of our Knowledge’s City Living podcast.
MIFF 2013: Films of interest
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) kicks off on the 25th July 2013 (only four days away at the time of wriing) and as I do every year I choose a handful of films that I believe may be of interest to movie going architects and designers. This year there is a severe lack of films directly relating to either architecture and the urban fabric so after trawling through the MIFF programme I have made a small selection that will appeal to the design community.
Podcast of the Week
I listen to a lot of podcasts in one week, especially when I’m working as I find it makes me more productive. I have always had a thirst for knowledge and learning about new things and thus having been listening to a lot of this type of podcast of late. Current favourties include 99% Invisible (which is actually design based), Radiolab, To The Best of our Knowledge and Backstory amongst others. Sometimes I feel need to share some of the good ones that I come across either through my twitter feed or my tumblr blog but now I have decided to include my favourite one for the week on this site which you can now see on my side bar. Sometimes I may feel the inclination to actually write a small piece about them in the main part of this site. Would also like to hear your feedback and recommendations for good podcasts out there.
Update: I am now posting a semi-regular list of podcasts that grab my attention here.
The perversion of perspective and scale
During my days as an architectural student I was particularly fascinated with scale and perspective and how to distort and pervert it to achieve different outcomes when approaching a building. This often combined with my love of the somewhat absurd nature of Pop Architecture and the use of everyday objects at a much larger scale than anticipated and totally out of context. So with plenty of time on my hands during my time in Canberra I decided to explore some of those ideas to do with Pop Architecture, scale and perspective using an every day object that has always fascinated me, army figures, and using them to interact with a much larger scale environment. It was also an opportunity for me early on to practice my creative writing but that soon passed as I looked to create interesting visual effects. Again I have only used my iPhone and the many and varied filters of Instagram.
The (almost) Canberra year(s)
After a little over eleven months my time in Canberra has come to an end. During that time I took many a photo to chronicle my time in the nation’s capital not knowing how long I would actually be there. Most of these photos have appeared on instagram, where I go under the username of “idontwearblack” and on my tumblr blog but I thought it would be best to collate some of these photos into a “best (or worst) of” to characterise my time in Canberra.
Ten projects worth looking at – 2013 edition
It’s that time of year again with the 2013 Presentations to Juries for the RAIA Victorian Architecture Awards taking place on the 23rd and 24th March and has been the case I will take the opportunity to compile a list of the projects I believe are worthing having a look at on these days. Again this year the presentations will be held at Monash University’s Faculty of Art and Design Building G.
i don't wear black 