The last opportunity for architects, building designers and architectural students to submit entries for Boral's 5th annual Design Award is fast approaching. Up for grabs is a generous cash prize pool totalling $34,000.

Entrants must submit a written component and digital imagery of up to five physical models or 3D renders of their concept. The entry pack, in addition to resources, can be downloaded at www.designaward.boral.com.au. Submission deadline is 30 September.

Clockwise L-R: James Vogdanos, Wojciech Pluta, Leanne Amodeo (Monument Editor), Rodney Eggleston, Mark Austin, Paul Bennett and Amy Doherty (Monument National Advertising Manager).

Monument held their first Melbourne Creative Conversations breakfast event on 6 August at St Kilda's The Prince, Circa. Those who attended included Rodney Eggleston (March Studio), Mark Austin (Andrew Maynard Architects), Paul Bennett (Metier3), Wojciech Pluta (Denton Corker Marshall) and James Vogdanos (Asko). As with our recent Sydney breakfast the topic of conversation was the nature of specification within the Australian architecture industry. 

Clockwise L-R: Steve Koolloos, David Richardson, Leanne Amodeo (Monument Editor), Neil Ashley, Amy Doherty (Monument National Advertising Manager), Asher Frankel, Tim Jordan, Caroline Pidcock and David McCrae.

Last Friday's Creative Conversations breakfast event at Surry Hills' The Book Kitchen was attended by David McCrae (Peckvonhartel), Steve Koolloos (Marsh Cashman Koolloos), Caroline Pidcock (PIDCOCK Architecture + Sustainability), David Richardson (Trend Windows & Doors), Asher Frankel (Stylecraft), Tim Jordan (Bathe) and Neil Ashley (GGI Office Systems). The topic focused on the nature of specification within the Australian architecture industry and the successes and challenges that arise from working on different projects with such a diverse range of collaborators. Some of the issues that were covered were the need for 'authenticity' in design, the question of collaboration and how this can be improved for maximum results and the client as specifier. Caroline Pidcock talks about collaboration in her upcoming Monument 99 (October/November 2010)Soapbox article, but in the meantime please feel free to post your comments below.

Click here to view a selection of images from the event. Photography courtesy Tom Lau.

Monument held our first Create-A-Date LIVE event on Wednesday 2 June at Mico Design's Showroom in East Sydney. Lisa-Maree Carrigan, Architect and Director of Group GSA, and Cesar Cueva, Silversmith and Co-director of Metalab, discussed the collaboration and process behind designing a bike rack for the future in conversation with the Editor, Leanne Amodeo. To view a selection of photographs from the night click here.

Lisa-Maree Carrigan & Cesar Cueva. 

The motorways that cut up our cities have a certain brutish beauty: their utalitarian scale is monument to the motor car and far greater than anything built for the edification of other endeavours. They also unfurl a bittersweet poetry of urban alienation: cars forever speed along striated concrete slabs, either above, past or away from us. You're not part of it unless you're vehicularly endowed.

This poetry of alienation is no better illustrated than in the dead and dirty spaces beneath elevated motorways that at best give shelter to the homeless or provide shortcuts beneath the traffic sewers while giving the architecturally sensitive a frisson of dramatically lit structural delight.

In one such space under the Western Distributor at the corner of Bulwarra and Fig Streets in Ultimo/Pyrmont, the City of Sydney has commissioned Warren Langley to do something. He's created Aspire, luminous cartoon cacti that mockingly appear to hold up the highways. They're a light and frolicksome intervention that transforms the area, somehow removing the gritty fear that often lingers in such places. While some might say there's an awful lot more practical things the City could do with its money, Aspire is an uplifting step toward quality environments.