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Wednesday
Sep012010

Final call for Boral Design Award entries 

 

 

 
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.

Thursday
Aug262010

monument creative conversation breakfast: melbourne

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. 

Wednesday
Aug182010

Street Art meets International Design @ BATHE

Our fabulous Monument Editor, Leanne Amodeo, and I had the pleasure of attending the recent Saturday in Design event in Melbourne.  We saw many fantastic creations, but one of the ones that stood out the most was BATHE's "Street Art" concept.

The team at BATHE got two of Melbourne’s influential street artists from everfresh studios together for the creation of a street art piece.

The laneway of the South Melbourne showroom was transformed into a live art studio with retro speakers et al and they let loose with spray paints and brushes and created a one-off art object consisting of a LAUFEN Il Bagno Alessi dOt Pedestal washbasin and toilet, both designed by international designer Wiel Arets.

The end result was a unique pop-up and pop-art bathroom.

Very cool.

www.bathe.net.au

 

 

Monday
Aug022010

Monument Creative Conversation Breakfast: Winter

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.

Monday
Aug022010

DURAVIT OPENS SUBSIDIARY IN AUSTRALIA OFFERING THE COMPLETE DURAVIT RANGE

Duravit, one of the world's leading bathroomware suppliers, operating in over 90 countries worldwide and  based in Hornberg in the Black Forest, Germany, has gone one step further by opening its own subsidiary in Australia, based in Alexandria, Sydney. The new trading base will underpin the successful expansion of the business and is expected to increase levels of brand acceptance significantly. Duravit Australia will handle all sales and marketing activities and provide blanket coverage of the Australasian market including a full in-house and field sales team and a project consultant.

Duravit will be also have a fully-integrated warehouse and logistics centre.

The customer thus benefits from the shortest possible delivery times and the rapid availability of the entire range. As retail and trade partner, Duravit will give its Australian customers and partners comprehensive, professional support when selling, marketing, planning and installing Duravit products. “The support we have received from the market enables us to make further investments in our new office, as well as our sales, marketing and logistics infrastructure. This secures the availability of Duravit products in Australia and the further development of our Duravit customer service”, states Gary Dart, General Manager Duravit UK and Australasia.

The entire product range will be available to the Australasian market.

Duravit aims to combine international marketing activities with the specific needs of Australian people.

 “We offer the entire product range here,” reports Franz Kook, chairman of the board of Duravit AG. With sanitary ceramics, bathroom furniture and the Baths + Wellbeing segment, Duravit covers all aspects of bathroom furnishing. “As a full-line manufacturer we offer a more diverse product range than practically any other sanitaryware manufacturer,” says Kook. Correspondingly the products range from the low-priced Euroline through the mid-priced Profiline to the higher-priced Studioline - from simple forms to the designer bathroom by Philippe Starck. Franz Kook: “True to our motto of ‘bathroom design from jeans to dinner-jacket’ we cater for all budgets and lifestyles.

www.duravit.com/au

Ph: 02 8070 1889

2/19-21 Bourke Road
Alexandria NSW 2015
Tuesday
Jul272010

Monument create-a-date live event

 

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.

With over 200 guests in attendance we would like to thank our sponsors, Mico Design, Electrolux, James Boags and Martini, as well as a special thank you to Lisa-Maree and Cesar for their enthusiasm in wholeheartedly embracing this project, and to our event photographer Tom Lau.

Lisa-Maree Carrigan & Cesar Cueva. 

Friday
Jul232010

MELBOURNE WELCOMES NEW SICIS ICON SHOWROOM

Friday 23 July 2010

 Another important date for SICIS, another capital city to add to the list of cities housing their icon showrooms. This time it’s Melbourne. The doors to the new showcase of the Italian house of fine artistic mosaics open on the 6th August, in the designers' hub of South Melbourne.  Mosaics that come to life in every guise, combining art with the ancient technique of mosaic.

 An open space in which to display the most important collections, splendid interpretations of a distant language, bringing vibrations and lights, sounds and colour. A juicy taste of SICIS' versatile work can be experienced at the new icon showroom.

198 Coventry St
South Melbourne 3205
1300 310 002

www.sicis.com

 

Wednesday
Jul212010

trees of light

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.

 

Wednesday
Jun232010

Promoting a movie and music tie in...

What better way to promote the collaboration (marketing tie in) between band AC/DC and movie Iron Man 2...than on the side of Rochester Castle.

Projections on architecture are nothing new, and are pretty in vogue right now. Most are nothing very special, although some like the Tetris game, are pretty cool.

To be honest most of this is middling, and reliant on editing, and pushing the AC/DC marketing side of it. But at about 3:20 in, they kick it up a notch, and the visuals are really cool, playing with our visual depth, and the perception of reality with hints of the castle being deconstructed, and rebuilt through the animations. I love it - using the depth of the night to adjust our expectations and use the visibility to play with the castle in that way...

ACDC Vs Iron Man 2 - Architectural Projection Mapping on Rochester Castle from seeper on Vimeo.