I'm not sure if he's cloned himself or just doesn't sleep, but Marc Newson is one busy boy. The multi-talented designer has collaborated with Boucheron to create the Julia necklace inspired by the Julia Fractal. While it's not exactly something you'd wear on a construction site, the degree of craftsmanship and detail that has gone into the piece is spectacular. Boucheron's craftsmen spent over 1500 hours to recreate the Julia Fractal in this piece. Made of sapphires and diamonds, the Julia necklace showcases the immense and multi-pronged talent of Marc Newson as well as the expertise of Boucheron's craftsman. Continue reading

Testing Reality: The Architect and the Model, curated by Mark Szczerbicki, is in its final week at Customs House, Sydney. The exhibition looks at the changing role of the model in architecture, especially relevant today as technology gets ever closer to usurping the place of the tangible. Testing Reality also sheds some light on the design processes of some of Europe's most prominant architecture firms including Jean Nouvel, EMBT, Lynch Architects and Bolles + Wilson Architects. Testing Reality: The Architect and the Model, Red Room & Media Wall, Ground Level, Customs House, Sydney. Closes 1 November. Continue reading

As my earlier blog (Utopian Visions) will attest, collaborations are my topic of the moment, so when a stunning little package arrived today called Mapping Sydney: Experimental Cartography and the Imagined City, I was enthralled. Edited by Naomi Stead, Mapping Sydney consists of six maps (each one done by either an architect, artist, writer, vis comm designer, landscape architect or animator) that showcases Sydney from their perspective. The maps are not factual, to scale or planimetric, but completely unique and revealing. While I haven't had the time or pleasure to have a proper read about the maps and concept behind... Continue reading

The great Australian dream: owning your own home, knowing you have that sanctuary you can call all your own. 1 House=1000 Homes places an entirely new spin on this much ingrained Aussie ideal - for one Australian home, how many houses could be constructed in less developed regions? The exhibition will showcase international proposals from seven international (Ghana, Philippines, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Namibia and Sri Lanka) non-government organisation groups on how their community would use the money raised from the sale of one Australian home. 1 House=1000 Homes will be showing at Carriageworks, Sydney, from 23 October. Continue reading

It's interesting, while the theme of the upcoming issue of Monument is Commercial, this is just at the very surface. There are many underlying themes within that I'm finding extremely interesting when coming from a creative perspective, the most striking at the moment being collaboration. Many creative disciplines have been slightly dubious of the other in the past, drawing clearly defined boundaries around themselves. It's absolutely fantastic seeing projects where the disciplines are collaborating with each other and creative minds are fuelling each other. The CBW project in Melbourne saw three architecture firms working together (Bates Smart, NH Architecture, SJB... Continue reading

American designer Karl Zinmaster's tentatively titled S.O.K. Chair (as in 'It's okay') is cheeky, intelligent and completely outside of the square (three things that are highly rated in my world!). While still a prototype, S.O.K. is not merely intended as a decorative piece: when vacated counterweights in the chair make it lean onto its back leg, yet when in use it is a fully functional chair. As Karl himself says, 'It's caveman engineering of angles and weight, but the result is as unsettling as it is rewarding and strangely theatrical.' The chair has been exhibited in various incarnations since 2007,... Continue reading

Last night was the launch of Art & About and Laneways By George! Hidden Networks in Sydney's CBD, both luring Sydney-siders into viewing their city in an entirely new light - bringing attention to the hidden quarters and factions that we tend to bypass in our daily lives. Highlights of Laneways By George include 'I Dwell in the City and the City Dwells in Me' where prosthetic skin oozes through the cracks of Bridge Lane as the sound of deep breathing fills the laneway. Tactile yet grotesque, I could only bring myself to gingerly pat the 'flesh' while the less... Continue reading