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Completed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning studio SANAA eight years after the Japanese firm’s proposal won an international competition for the new building, Sydney Modern adds 7,000 square meters (about 75,350 square feet) of gallery space to the existing Art Gallery of New South Wales. It officially opened to the public on December 3rd.

The new addition connects to the original art gallery, a neoclassical-style building designed by British architect Walter Vernon and completed in 1909, via a public garden “land bridge.” It consists of a series of stepped platforms that give it a stacked, low-profile appearance from a distance — certainly a contrast to the bold, graphic Opera House and its unforgettable silhouette.

For SANAA, the point wasn’t to rival that monument. It was to create an appropriate building for the site, with its stunning views of Woolloomooloo Bay and a backdrop of the city skyline. SANAA principal architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa wanted the building to be harmonious with its surroundings, “one that breathes with the city, the park, and the harbor.”

“There are two ways to create a landmark, which depends on the landscape,” says Nishizawa. “If you are in an open site, a landmark can appear with a positive form and clear outline, like a rock. But if you are in a forest with all its trees, this doesn’t work. You have to create a clearing and allow the sunlight in. But the light in the forest doesn’t have a clear outline. This is a very different way to create an icon.”

The effect may be subtle architecturally, but its impact on the museum certainly isn’t. The addition’s rectilinear pavilions are arranged around a central glass-walled atrium with views of the water. Courtyards and rooftop terraces grant the upper levels a series of outdoor areas for open-air events, and the lower levels are made with rammed earth, anchoring them to the site.

Interior spaces include large exhibition rooms, including one solely dedicated to aboriginal art and another two with soaring 18-foot ceilings. Smaller exhibition rooms are devoted to children’s learning spaces and a studio for creating multimedia artworks. A large, columned underground art space repurposed from a decommissioned World War II naval oil tank will offer another 2,200 square meters (23,680 square feet) for special commissions and performances.

The new land bridge reconnects the art gallery to the city’s Royal Botanic Garden, allowing pedestrian movement from the Woolloomooloo to the city center and creating an entirely public space in the process. The garden atop the land bridge is named “bial gwiyuno” (the fire is not yet lighted) and includes both indigenous plant species and an installation by Australian artist Jonathan Jones.

“The Sydney Modern Project allows us to engage our audiences and work with our artists in thrilling new ways,” says Maud Page, Deputy Director and Director of Collections for the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The post Sydney Modern is Australia’s Most Iconic Architecture Since the Sydney Opera House first appeared on Dornob.

“We’ve made huge strides with silicon computing, but they’re still rigid and inflexible,” says Brett Kagan, an author of the study published in Neuron and Chief Scientific Officer at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia. “That’s something we don’t see with biology.”

“From worms to flies to humans, neurons are the starting block for generalized intelligence,” he adds. “So, the question was, can we interact with neurons in a way to harness that inherent intelligence?…We chose Pong due to its simplicity and familiarity, but [also because] it was one of the first games used in machine learning, so we wanted to recognize that.”

Kagan and his team of researchers from 10 other institutions decided to explore that query by seeing how brain cells would react when taught to play a video game.

To achieve their goal, the researchers took material from adult stem cells and grew a layer of 800,000 living neurons on a silicon chip at the bottom of a nutrient-filled petri dish. The chip was connected to a computer, with the ability to detect and send electrical signals to the neurons. The team then booted up a game of Pong, sending electrical impulses to the living sample to indicate the position of the bouncing ball. The computer monitored electrical activity from the cells to see what they did with the new information.

At first, they didn’t do much — until the researchers gave the brain cells some motivation to learn to play. Every time the brain cells sent electrical signals to move the paddle to where the ball would be, scientists gave the cells a gift in the form of a beautifully organized burst of electrical activity. If the cells incorrectly predicted the position, they would instead receive a stream of chaotic white noise.

“If they hit the ball, we gave them something predictable,” Kagan says. “When they missed it, they got something that was totally unpredictable.”

This reward and punishment strategy was based on the Free Energy Principle that says brain cells always want to be able to predict their environment, leading them to seek out organized electrical signals over chaotic ones.

Eventually the petri dish cells learned to formulate electrical patterns that moved the paddle in front of the ball, gradually resulting in longer rallies. While the cells never got very good at playing, they still predicted the correct position significantly more often than just random simulations, an exciting achievement considering that the petri dish contained fewer brain cells than a cockroach.

“If you could see a cockroach playing a game of Pong and it was able to hit the ball twice as often as it was missing it, you would be pretty impressed with that cockroach,” Kagan says. The research team hopes that this experiment will lead to breakthroughs in understanding how the brain works, with possible biocomputing implications.

Study co-author Karl Friston, a theoretical neuroscientist and professor at University College London, says: “We now have, in principle, the ultimate biomimetic ‘sandbox’ in which to test the effects of drugs and genetic variants — a sandbox constituted by exactly the same computing (neuronal) elements found in your brain and mine.”

The post These Lab-Grown Brain Cells Just Learned How to Play Pong first appeared on Dornob.

Nicholas and Stanley spent every weekend working on the house over the course of 15 years, making use of found and recycled materials and allowing their plans to grow and change as they went. Today, the home looks nothing like the cottage it once was, or like any other house on the street. It’s entirely unique. And while the jagged black exterior isn’t for everyone, it suits them perfectly, and it’s more welcoming inside than you might imagine.

“We changed so much from when we started at the age of 25 to when we finished at the age of 40,” Stanley told Dwell. “By being hands on and playing around with ideas, we came up with a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t have if we were sitting at the drawing board and pushing to get things done quickly. And, as young architects, getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn.”

Collecting materials from warehouses and country yard sales, the couple began adding vertical exterior cladding made of Oregon timber beams. They staggered the heights of each board to mimic the way a city skyline rises and falls. It also extends higher than the actual roofline, providing enough privacy for a rooftop bath. They kept the gabled form and scale of the original home but opened and expanded it, creating new nooks and crannies both inside and out. The gable shape is echoed with a pergola on the rear facade. Zig-zag shapes along the exterior walls create space for large expanses of windows without sacrificing privacy.

Inside, the jagged black motif is repeated, and black is used to anchor many interior elements within an airy, light-filled space that’s otherwise painted white. This color palette, plus the incorporation of materials like a welded steel framework to which they attach elements like hammocks, gives the former cottage an industrial feel. Over the years, some mezzanine areas that were open have been partially enclosed to create newly private rooms, while low ceilings were eliminated. But the entire home maintains an open traffic pattern, with most rooms, including bathrooms, flowing into each other without doors.

Believe it or not, after all that, the couple decided they were ready for something new altogether. They put their one-of-a-kind home on the market and purchased a new property on the same street in order to start their creative process all over again.

The post Splinter Society Gives a Melbourne Home a Spiky Black Makeover first appeared on Dornob.

Set along the Marra Marra Creek in New South Wales, Australia, this off-grid cabin draws from the area’s fascinating history and makes smart use of a plentiful local material: repurposed 200-year-old electrical posts made of ironbark timber. From the outside, the cabin’s square, window-covered facade and large awning give it a modest and understated appearance. But not only is the inside a study in minimalist beauty — the whole project is an exercise in respect for the land, its history, and the Darug People to whom it traditionally belongs.

“In 1788, Captain Cook and his fleet entered the delta of the Hawkesbury and the sheltered bay of Sydney,” the architects explain. “At the entrance of the Dyirabun (Hawkesbury) River, he was first welcomed by the Darug People who had been living on these banks since the beginning of times. Not long after, the British colonized the Australian territory, building a network of roads and electrical lines across the vast country. The electrical posts were made of some of the finest local hardwoods. Later on, these posts were slowly replaced by steel posts.”

“The small community of Marra Marra Creek was established by settlers in the early 18th century, most probably using inmate labor to cultivate the land. However, the electrical network never reached the creek, and the community remained ‘off the grid’ and only accessible by boat at high tide until today. Marra Marra Shack is built on the land of the Darug People. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the house is set, their rich cultural heritage and deep connection to the country, and pay our respects to their elders past, present, and future. Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.”

The architects augmented those 200-year-old electrical posts with spotted gum timber that grows in the Darug region for the beams of the ceiling and floor. In other parts of the space, repurposed turpentine timber from an old jetty built by settlers on the creek bank has become furniture and other small details. The cabin steps down along with the slope of the land, resulting in an interesting terraced interior around the home’s single large north-facing window. This window can also be lifted up using counterweights to open the space to the fresh air.

The only elements of the shack that aren’t made of timber are the thin fire-resistant fiber cement sheets on the facade. Instead of using energy and labor-intensive concrete footings, the architects pinned the footings to the sandstone bedrock. Best of all, both solar energy and water are collected on the roof, making the home entirely self-sustainable.

The post Repurposed Off-Grid Cabin in Australia Pays Tribute to the Native Darug People first appeared on Dornob.

“We were excited to see such an exciting and imaginative use of color in this year’s entries,” says Andrea Lucena-Orr, Dulux Color and Communications Manager. “Architects and designers have really pushed the boundaries with color application to create inspiring, engaging — and often surprising — interior and exterior spaces.”

According to the Dulux website, the annual competition “is Australia and New Zealand’s premier showcase of inspirational color application in interior and exterior residential, public, and commercial spaces.”

Each year, the Australian paint company selects a panel of design professionals to judge entries from architects, designers, and students to “[recognize] their creative and innovative use of color” with Dulux shades. The contest spans six categories: interior residential, exterior residential, commercial and multi-residential exterior, public and hospitality commercial interiors, workplace and retail commercial interiors, and students.

Company executives noted an inclination toward moodier home colors this year. “Deeper tones of blue and green were popular amongst residential interiors, showcasing diverse moods in areas and differentiating functional use in a space — from deep and dark, to bright and lively — applied to cabinetry, trims, and walls to create a peaceful, relaxing interior setting,” Lucena-Orr says.

That was especially evident in “The Pad” by architect Suzanne Hunt, an entry in which all the walls were shrouded in slate gray as a backdrop to a set of indoor-outdoor Zen gardens. Natural light filters through the palm leaves and ferns, further balancing the seriousness of the dark grays.

Other darkly pensive residential entrants included the “Malvern House,” with its wall-to-wall sage kitchen cabinetry and green marble countertops and backsplash. “The Grid House” highlights its stairwell with a navy blue that perfectly matches the carpet-lined steps.

Lucena-Orr also found that “impactful tones and washed walls are also making a presence, bringing a sense of moody sophistication to interiors.”

For example, the “Nelson Road House,” named one of the year’s most stylishly colorful Australian homes, uses a tranquil pastel pink in the primary bedroom but switches it up to a night-sky blue in the formal living room, allowing for a full array of ambience throughout. The designers from Bloom Interior Design in Melbourne said they “treated each room as its own space,” which gave them the freedom to “play with a range of different colors giving each space its own persona.”

Neutral-themed residential dwellings also made the 2022 list. The “Bondi Terrace,” designed by Studio Quarters, is a flow of understated whites and beiges with only touches of contrast in each room. The mildness of the paint lets the original period details like the marble fireplace and crown molding take center stage. The designers explain that they used full, half, and quarter strengths of the same color in different rooms to create an “overall calmness that permeates the whole house.” The “Sorrento House,” submitted by the Fiona Lynch Interior Design firm, also drew on a cream color palette for a soothing, restful effect.

On the other hand, some finalists went bold and bright to earn their spot. For instance, the designers at Pac Studio used sunny yellow to liven up the kitchen of “Heron House,” giving it extra punch by painting the surrounding walls an azure blue.

The Dulux website says that all colors in the Dulux range were considered, even black and white. The final selections will be based on both the use of color and the designers’ reason behind the choice. The winners will be announced in announced in just a few months, so be sure to check back with us for updates!

The post 2022 Color Award Finalists Reveal Trend Toward Moody, Pensive Shades first appeared on Dornob.

Tranter has been fascinated by tiny homes for years and always hoped to build one of her own. Once she met Matt, a plumber who now owns his own bathroom and kitchen renovation company, she was ready to get started. The couple purchased a plot of land with beautiful views of the surrounding Blue Mountains and got right to work, detailing their building process on Instagram.

“Just because your house is small doesn’t mean you have to skip out on the finer things,” the couple says. That much is evident in their build, which includes a spacious living room, full size kitchen, bathroom, fireplace, and even a stairway leading to two separate sleeping lofts at either end of the house. They wanted standard size appliances, so they built the kitchen around them, tucking the refrigerator and range beneath the stairway leading to the sleeping loft. The kitchen also includes a farmhouse sink, a long waterfall-style counter, high cabinets, lots of built-in lighting, and a row of operable windows to let in the fresh air.

Diagonal wood floors transition seamlessly into hexagonal tile in the bathroom, where a huge louvered window blurs the lines between indoors and out. The bathroom also contains a dual vanity and a double shower with three shower heads, sliding glass doors, and a wide window for views of the scenery. Upstairs, the master loft has a king-size bed with two side tables and a skylight, and a walkway leads over the living room to the second loft, which contains a guest bed. This bed, too, has its own skylight, and both peer over the edge at the wood stove below. Does it seem like they’re lacking any little luxuries to you?

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they have a massive deck that effectively triples their living space in this temperate climate. The outdoor living area is covered by a custom black sunshade that matches the black corrugated steel siding on the minimalist house. The elevated deck is definitely a bonus. Pet lovers will note an awesome extra feature: a huge mesh-covered patio out back, accessed by a cat door in the house.

Since building their own home, the couple has founded a tiny house building company called Tailored Tiny Co., which specializes in tailoring custom-made small spaces to their clients’ needs and lifestyles.

The post Australian Couple Builds a Stylish DIY Tiny Home in Just 3 Months first appeared on Dornob.

The lifelong dream of Australian developer Doug Tarca and his son Peter, the hotel blew past its budget during construction by a Singapore-based company, ultimately costing in excess of $40 million. Tough environmental regulations required expensive upgrades like non-toxic paint on the hull, on-site sewage and liquid waste treatment, and solid waste incineration. Once the hotel was finally complete, it was towed from Singapore to a prime location off the coast of Townsville, with views of the John Brewer Reef. Before it even had a chance to open, it was struck by a cyclone, which damaged the swimming pool and delayed opening for two months. That meant missing Australia’s prime tourist season, which should have brought a lot of revenue.

In March 1988, the hotel welcomed its first guests ferried 43 miles from shore in water taxies, but boat after boat of them arrived seasick due to rough waters. Unpredictable weather meant guests might be unable to access the hotel at all, or stranded aboard until conditions calmed. A fire aboard one of the water taxies added to growing marketing headaches. It wasn’t long before the hotel was financially underwater, albeit still physically afloat.

In 1989, the hotel was sold to new owners and relocated 3,100 miles to the Saigon River in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, operating as the Saigon Floating Hotel until 1997. Locals, who flocked to its two nightclubs, called it “The Floater.” Tucked up against the dock beside the famous Tran Hung Dao Statue, it wasn’t exactly living out Tarca’s dream on the open seas, but it did well enough for a while. Eventually, however, it ran into more financial problems. The hotel was sold to yet another buyer, who transferred it to the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region of North Korea, right on the border with South Korea.

Opening in 1998, during a time when hopes were high for reconciliation between the two nations, the floating hotel became known as the Sea Kumgang Hotel, or Hotel Haegumgang. It enjoyed another decade of relative success until July 2008, when a North Korean soldier accidentally shot and killed a South Korean woman after she wandered into the restricted zone between the two Koreas. Tours to the tourist region were suspended, and the hotel languished. It has remained in place ever since. Current photos of the ship’s condition are rare, but it can be glimpsed from above on Google Maps.

A recent visit from King Jong-Un decided the hotel’s fate. The North Korean leader was said to be disgusted by its “backward” and “shabby” facilities, and ordered it to be demolished, along with many other structures in the area. It’s unclear exactly when that will happen, but one thing’s for sure: it’ll be a sad ending for such a unique attraction.

The post Australia’s Five-Star Floating Hotel Faces Demolition in North Korea first appeared on Dornob.

“The word ‘Oku’ relates to the concept of space within and often hidden.” This is the company’s statement, and it’s what visitors to their website are first greeted with upon entering the world of Oku Space. And truly, it could be considered the underlying ethos that defines all the Aussie duo’s pieces. The goal of founders Nick Rennie and Dustin Fritsche is to first and foremost create quality furniture, though their emphasis on creative (and sometimes quirky) design is what initially catches the eye and draws buyers in.

The two had been sharing a workshop for years before they founded Oku Space, and given their combined expertise, it only seemed logical for them to enter the furniture making arena. This first line of theirs consists of 11 eclectic, beautifully made pieces that give off a high-end vibe without feeling too precious to be utilized in everyday life. The collection is also timber-focused, proudly showing off the creators’ craftsmanship and ability to imagine furniture that’s so much more than the sum of its parts as it captivates the eye and takes everyday, practical seating to the next level.

The star of the show is the OS1, a dining chair with a deceptively midcentury modern shape that marries the clean lines and sparse aesthetic found in several of the collection’s other pieces. But what really sets the OS1 apart is its stackability. Though extremely functional, it’s pretty much the furthest thing from those rigid metal folding chairs or hotel ballroom monstrosities that offer neither comfort nor style. Instead, it’s lovely both as a stand-alone object and even more so when combined and stacked with its fellows, thus creating a new shape all its own.

The stackability of the OS1 is also important from a sustainability perspective, as both Rennie and Fritsche hope to develop their furniture responsibly and with minimal waste. As Rennie says, “[With chairs] as whilst most fundamental is the comfort, they need to be functional as well, and this is why I think the stackability is so important.” He goes on to add that “the benefits especially from a shipping perspective [are] really important as it allows us to minimize the possible carbon footprint of the object.”

With the trifecta of functionality, sustainability, and style on their side, Oku Space is destined to be a success in producing quality high-end furniture that lasts a long time. For now though, you can catch us lounging on chairs featured in this delightful debut collection.

The post Oku Space’s First Furniture Collection is Both Sustainable and Stylish first appeared on Dornob.

The nearly 100-foot-long portraits were carried by the subjects themselves, including Badger Bates, a senior Baakandji elder and spokesperson on the Back River, orchardists Rachel Strachan and Alan Whyte, and Wayne Smith, a sixth-generation farmer. All have been impacted by the decline of the Darling/Baaka River caused by climate change, inadequate irrigation, and drought.

The river is a major tributary to the Murray-Darling River system, the largest on the Australian continent, and its health is directly tied to the health of the Baakandji culture, offering food, fiber, and shelter, among other precious resources. The portrait subjects are among those calling for a new river management system based on indigenous land management practices, including the sustainable irrigation of farms and orchards.

“Baaka is the name of our beautiful river, and it is who Baakandji people are, people of the river,” says Badger Bates. “Baakandji never left our land, we are still here, we love our land and it loves us. We have stories that explain its creation and how everything works, so we know how to look after it.”

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria for the NGV Triennial, “Homily to Country” also consists of an open-air chapel inlayed with stained glass windows featuring the same portraits in the NGV garden and an accompanying film, which itself includes footage of the procession.

“Through this ambitious project, JR explores one of the most significant ecological issues facing Australia today,” says Tony Ellwood, Director of NGV, adding that “the procession in the Menindee Lakes district as part of JR’s thought-provoking ‘Homily to Country’ works in the NGV Triennial, highlighting important local voices and giving global attention to the environmental concerns of the Murray-Darling River.”

“Homily to Country” began as a continuation of JR’s “Omelia Contadina” project, which shines a light Italian farmers facing many of the same issues. JR traveled to Australia in early 2020, before the pandemic began, to meet with the orchardists who were forced to remove and burn their families’ formerly successful commercial orchards due to lack of irrigation flows.

“I started this project in Italy, very far from Australia, yet farmers have similar issues: protect their environment and live decently from their work,” JR says. “Like many people this past year who were not able to participate in important life moments, I will follow the procession remotely but will surely feel the presence of all the people gathered.”

JR’s signature black-and-white portraiture never fails to start conversations about important topics, like the homogenization of architecture, the plight of undocumented young people in the United States, and the well-being of incarcerated people. Previous projects include a massive Brooklyn mural of 1,000 New Yorkers in “Chronicles,” a thought-provoking temporary billboard along the US-Mexico border in “Giants,” a visualization of the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island in “Unframed,” and photos of local elderly people splashed across the facades of urban buildings in “The Wrinkles of the City.”

The post Monumental Portraits Call Attention to Australian River’s Decline in JR’s “Homily to Country” first appeared on Dornob.

Rosselli’s “The Great Wall of WA” was selected as a finalist in the Australian Institute of Architects Western Australia architecture awards, and won “best housing project” in ArchDaily’s Building of the Year contest in 2016. Despite being highly energy-efficient, earth-sheltered architecture still isn’t very common around the world, even in areas like Pilbara that could really benefit from the extra protection from the heat. This collective housing project demonstrates what a great choice it can be in certain climates and shows off the beauty of rammed earth, to boot.

Designed as guest houses for a 100-year-old family cattle station, the farmer residences that make up the new complex are accented by Cor-Ten steel canopies, matching the roof of an oval chapel that sits upon the new artificial dune overlooking the family cemetery. Each guest house is also stepped to maintain a level of privacy indoors and out, with only the verandahs visible from outside. The awnings keep the sun from penetrating the glass doors to the interiors.

The back end of each guest house tapers down toward an existing building used as a communal meeting area and lounge, which itself features a pergola made of old drilling pipes. The striking chapel, inspired by the Pantheon of Rome, its oriented to the east and pierced by a glass-covered oculus. Sliding curved glass windows can be opened to the air or closed to protect against dust storms.

“With their 450-mm thick rammed earth facade and the sand dune to their rear and forming their roofs, the residences have the best thermal mass available, making them naturally cool in the subtropical climate,” says the firm. “The design of the accommodation represents a new approach to remote North Western Australia architecture, moving away from the sun baked, thin corrugated metal shelters to naturally cooled architectural earth formations.”

“Rammed earth extracted from the local clay pans, pebbles, and gravel quarried from the river bed are the palette of materials that blend into the landscape. Internally, one finds a comfortable environment, cooled by the rammed earth walls and the meter-deep sand hill. The interior design by Sarah Foletta is a restrained, natural, and robust selection of materials and furniture.”

The complex blends beautifully into its scenic setting, and as always, the rammed earth has a stunning striated appearance thanks to the way it’s constructed. Framework, usually made of parallel plywood panels, is filled with a layer of damp earth and compressed to about half of its original volume with a pneumatic tamper. The process is repeated and the forms removed, revealing a strong, naturally pigmented wall.

Though it doesn’t have the best thermal performance on its own, combining rammed earth with earth-sheltering is a sustainable technique making use of abundant local resources and reducing or eliminating the need for mechanical heating and cooling systems.

The post 12 Homes Tucked Into “Great Wall” of Rammed Earth in Australia first appeared on Dornob.

“Interchange Pavilion,” created by Studio Mark Fox, is located in the city’s South Eveleigh district, a recently revitalized commercial neighborhood that encompasses several co-mingling train track lines.

Studio Founder and Director Mark Fox took his inspiration from the meeting of these many paths. He says the art is “an idea of convergence: of track convergence, of journeys’ convergence, of stories. The project really started with a concept around the rail switch, [it] being a potentiality of moving from one track to another.”

The pavilion is an “interchanging, diverging, and then coming together again” of wood, metal, and concrete that arcs upward in curved, geometric waves. Along the ground, steel bars mimic train tracks that overlap and spread out toward the sky before angling back to touch each other once more at the zenith. The ends of the wooden railway platforms feature artistic but practical benches where passersby can rest while being subliminally asked to contemplate how their own path in life junctions with others all around them.

None of those wooden planks were individually curved or bent anywhere along the arcs, creating an extra challenge for the design studio to “divide up something that is twisting in such a flamboyant way but to…position the timber exactly where it needs to sit so we get a continuous flowing form,” says Fox.

The shape of the sculpture was vital to its aesthetic, according to Fox. “Interchange Pavilion” lies in a courtyard between multiple high-rise office buildings and needed to be geometrically beautiful from every sight line, even from above. The 1,100-square-foot installation incorporates 15 tons of glass reinforced concrete (GRC), 1,400 pieces of Australian hardwood, and 820 feet of stainless-steel ground rails, all supported in a 1,650-piece aluminum structure weighing over 14 tons.

Fox and his team used cutting-edge technology in all aspects of the concept. The wood was sliced by computer-controlled cutting machines, the GRC molds were twisted by robotic axis mills, and the aluminum was digitally fabricated. He notes that “Interchange Pavilion design and building technologies are pushed to their limits to build what might have been an unbuildable form in another era.”

The undertaking was commissioned by Australian property group Mirvac and curated by cultural center Carriageworks as part of a larger public art initiative in the South Everleigh community. The aim is to “engage with the rich histories of Eveleigh and Redfern [train station] and create distinctive contemporary urban Sydney experiences.” Previous participants have created red gum slab abstractions inside an office complex, a smiling rain cloud on a building façade, and even a city park treehouse.

Fox, a senior lecturer in Art Processes and Architecture at the University of Sydney, is also well-known for his 2017 “Interloop” work, which fashioned the historic wooden escalator steps of Wynyard Station into an undulating coil on the ceiling over the modern moving stairways. He was intrigued by the mission of the Interchange Pavilion project, however, to meld art with architecture. “That challenge of combining something that is solely about form mixed with something that has to be a functional requirement, was really quite exciting,” he reveals, adding that “it is a connection to geometry, which then in turn ideally [leads] to transmission of ideas around the previous stories, previous histories of the site.”

The post Converging Outdoor Rail Art Points to Sydney’s Radiating Future first appeared on Dornob.

If this new home and work environment in Australia by Sibling Architecture hits like a jolt of electricity, maybe that’s because it reinforces the fact that everybody deserves good design. These interiors were created with aging and disability in mind, but they’re bursting with color, attention to detail, and an energetic feel. It’s especially telling that a result like this feels so rare.

The designers were determined not to get caught up in the tendency to reduce accessibility in architecture to a list of legal requirements like grab bars and standard countertop heights. They didn’t want “Frenches Interiors” to look anything like a medical facility, in fact, so they rethought what meeting those requirements could look like, developing “a different and domestic type of accessibility.”

Taking inspiration from their clients, who help people acquire care and living environments that allow them to retain as much normalcy as possible, the architects transformed the interiors of an existing Melbourne terrace house with furniture and decorative elements that are both functional and beautiful. The overall effect is bold, graphic, fresh, and even youthful.

“The former sitting room is converted to a workplace with the theatrics of curtains that conceal sitting and standard desks,” they explain. “The circular table, which allows for uncomplicated circulation, has deep tubular pockets that hold office pens and plants, or flowers, champagne, and crostini after taking care of business. The rear living room centers around a ‘cake’ couch where slices can be removed in order to include wheelchair-users within the seating arrangement. One slice features pink powder coated handles to assist visitors to get seated.”

“A circular motif is featured in Frenches Interior as a symbol of inclusion and sharing, for example, found in the form of the sturdy terrazzo lazy Susan on the dining table. Other symbols, or totems, also appear in the space, which contain valued objects, such as books and whiskey, of the clients. This project extends Sibling Architecture’s interest in how to design an age-friendly city. Frenches Interior explores the potential of accessibility to be domesticated through highly-spirited gestures where space can be reconfigured according to different needs and desires.”

Sibling Architecture takes an unconventional multidisciplinary approach to just about everything, so it’s no surprise that they were able to pull this off. The firm, consisting of Amelia Borg, Nichola Braun, Jane Caught, Qianyi Lim, and Timothy Moore, prioritizes a sense of community building and never fails to take a risk. Their practice combines architecture, urbanism, graphic design, art, and cultural analysis to respond to social needs of all kinds.

It’s time to discard old ideas about what makes spaces accessible and start designing them so they can be used and enjoyed by everyone, regardless of their cognitive and physical capacities. As Sibling Architecture beautifully demonstrates here, aesthetics are just as crucial to that equation as anything else.

The post Colorful Interiors Reimagine What Accessible Architecture Can Look Like first appeared on Dornob.

Working with scientists at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Jason deCaires Taylor has created a collection of figurative sculptures and other structures forming the first artificial reef ever to be installed in the waters near Australia’s famous Great Barrier Reef. “The Coral Greenhouse,” located at John Brewer Reef, opened to visitors in August 2020.

Sharing a message of reef conservation and restoration, the museum is filled with 20 “reef guardian” sculptures. They may be still and silent, but they’re actually doing the highly-important task of propagating coral. That’s right: more than 2,000 fragments from marine nurseries have been planted into the sculptures to help the site generate its own marine ecosystem. Installed just prior to coral spawning season, it’ll offer clean surfaces made of pH-neutral marine cement, to which coral larvae can easily attach.

The 60-foot-deep installation includes a 40-foot-long skeletal building that houses the sculptures, which itself is anchored securely enough to the sea floor to withstand a Category 4 cyclone. Scientists are monitoring the water salinity, pH, and oxygen levels and recording the development of coral with underwater cameras. Each of the sculptures is modeled on a member of the local indigenous community who traditionally own the land. Alongside Taylor and a team of local artists, they participated in workshops to construct and install the statues.

Adventurous visitors can book guided tours of the museum through a variety of different local dive operations, snorkeling or scuba diving right next door to one of the “Seven Wonders of the World,” to boot. These tours vary from shorter group trips to full-day excisions and are held on private chartered boats.

A second installation is a little more accessible to the average person. “” emerges from the water at the end of Townsville’s Strand Jetty, a popular tourist attraction that’s part of a 1.5-mile waterfront business district. Modeled after 12-year-old Takoda Johnson, another member of the Wulgurukaba people, the sculpture shifts in color according to the ocean’s temperature using data collected by the Davis Reef weather station.

“She looks over the land of her forefathers,” says Taylor.

The Museum of Underwater Art represents Taylors’ first time working in the Pacific Ocean. The UK-born sculptor and scuba diving instructor first gained international renown in 2006 for “Viscissitudes,” a ring of 26 children set underwater off the coast of Grenada, Spain at the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park. After that, he launched a series of underwater art museums across the globe, including Museo Atlántico near the Spanish island of Lanzarote and the M.U.S.A. Museo Subacuático de Arte in Cancun, Mexico.

Taylor, a lifelong environmentalist, hopes his work will inspire a sense of urgency around protecting our oceans and the life they contain.

“Our oceans are going through rapid change, and there are huge threats, from rising sea temperatures to acidification, and a large amount of pollution entering the system,” he told The Guardian. “Part of creating an underwater museum is about changing our value systems — thinking about the sea floor as something sacred, something that we should be protecting and not taking for granted.”

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While it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when one hears the term “Brutalism,” this cold, concrete movement in the architecture world is something most people either love or hate. Yes, when it comes to Brutalism, what you see really is what you get, with structural workings being celebrated and accented rather than hidden away.

The movement first spread across Europe in the 1940s, and its international influence can be seen virtually everywhere today. And while many people are happy to see the blocky, rigid structures crumble and fade with age, dismissing them as nothing but a passing fad, others embrace the history of Brutalism, going so far as to restore and maintain its ice-cold charm.

Australia’s Brutalist legacy is grouped in its cities around the coast, notably in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney, as well as in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane, with a few examples located as far north as Cairns. Rather than viewing these examples as ugly piles of concrete, Budget Direct Travel Insurance recently decided to honor 29 standing examples of Aussie Brutalism through a visually striking series of graphic posters. Notable examples include the Perth Concert Hall and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

In putting their list together, the team outlined three criteria: the buildings/structures must be located in as many cities as possible, they must still be standing (thereby disqualifying the dozens of already demolished Brutalist buildings in the country), and they must have some kind of unique story or special background attached to them. The Harold Holt Memorial Swim Centre stands out as a particularly iconic example here — perhaps the most notable on the list from Melbourne. Its Brutalist elements are obvious in the concrete pedestrian ramps and semi-circular staircase, and both its pool and diving tower are on the Victorian Heritage list. Ironically enough, that pool just happens to be named after a prime minister who died by drowning.

Also in Melbourne, the Total House boasts a classically Brutalist, immensely controversial design, with a parking garage that boasts open space above it (inefficient by most modern standards). On top of this unused gap sits a seemingly floating office building that makes a statement — though we’re not entirely sure how we feel about it yet.

Not all examples on the list are even old enough to consider tearing down, such as the Canberra concrete bus shelters. Erected in the era spanning 1974 to 1992, the total 450 structures are nearly indestructible and offer protection for riders of public transit while they await their next bus.

While not everyone views Brutalist architecture as art, anyone who’s visited National Gallery of Australia has at least appreciated it inside an existing example of the style. Architects Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners also designed another Brutalist example on the list, the High Court of Australia, spending a staggering 14 years in the planning and construction phase of that building. The result is over 20,000 square meters of nearly windowless space in which to display exhibitions.

If you want to learn more about the Brutalist movement, you might head to the library, two of which also made the Brutal Beauty list. The Northam Town Library, located outside of Perth proper, is perhaps the best example of architect Iwan Iwanoff’s work, with intricate brickwork around the perimeter and open airy spaces inside. In contrast, the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library sits at the heart of Queensland’s James Cook University, a three-story eye catcher by architect James Birrell with an overhanging steel-framed copper roof and of course, a harsh concrete facade.

The post Brutal Beauty: Budget Direct Honors Australian Brutalism With Striking Poster Series first appeared on Dornob.

Thanks to surprisingly simple processes that form chemical bonds between atoms in cellulose, some types of engineered wood now outperform tried and true (but environmentally harmful) materials like steel and even high-tech titanium alloys when it comes to strength, fire resistance, and impact resistance. Now, ultra-tall wooden projects are in the works all over the world, including the world’s tallest hybrid timber tower.

The Atlassian Sydney Headquarters in Sydney, Australia will be 40 stories and 590 feet tall once complete in 2025. Designed by SHoP in partnership with structural engineering firm BVN, the skyscraper will serve as a new headquarters for technology company Atlassian, which develops software and collaboration tools. Set to house thousands of workers, the building will feature a timber core wrapped in a glass facade, and will include a mix of outdoor and indoor spaces with access to large planted terraces and natural ventilation.

The architects explain that “the building is cutting-edge in its application of Mass Timber Construction (MTC). MTC is one of the most hopeful technologies in moving the construction industry toward real solutions to the global climate crisis. The novel hybrid timber structure is significantly lower in embodied carbon and offers a substantial reduction in the building’s carbon footprint. This is assisting Atlassian’s goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

“SHoP/BVN found an elegant way to tie a structural element of the building to one of the building’s most aesthetic attributes: the facade. The tower includes a steel exoskeleton that supports the mega floors between neighborhoods. The current design also incorporates an electricity-generating system with self-shade capabilities to reduce direct heat gain internally. Combined with the use of mass timber, the innovative facade enables the project to leverage Sydney’s temperate climate to help reduce carbon emissions and generate on-site energy.”

The project aims to achieve 50 percent less embodied carbon in construction compared to conventional building, and 50 percent less energy consumption using solar panels in the vertical facades to generate renewable power on-site. That means it can operate on 100-percent renewable energy from day one, while also making use of fresh air and Sydney’s temperate climate to keep itself cool.

The race to build “the world’s tallest timber tower” has grown increasingly tight in recent years. One building might achieve the title only to be supplanted by another within months. The current record holder is the 18-story, 295-foot-tall Mjøstarnet by Voll Arkitekter in Norway, completed in 2019, and the one before that was the 18-story, 174-foot-tall Brock Commons Tallwood House in Vancouver, British Columbia. Once complete, the Atlassian will be nearly twice as tall as either of these projects.

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