Australia
I write on architecture, books, and design for The Weekly Review, Domain, Green magazine and other publications. I am curious about the way design affects human behaviour, and whether it contributes to a good society.
Talking about the muse with Melbourne architect Ben Edwards
The bathroom is having a moment, taking its cue from the idea of sanctuary. Clean lines, a layering of textures and materials and a focus on artisan and handmade products are among the hot trends for 2017. INDUSTRIAL Channelling an industrial aesthetic, concrete will be popular, especially behind baths.
A tiny bar and a six-storey-high cafe are among the winners in this year's Eat Drink Awards, which celebrate design excellence in hospitality venues that have opened in the past 18 months. The mini bar, the Pink Moon Saloon, snuggled into a disused alleyway in central Adelaide, has taken out the best bar design and best identity design in this year's awards, announced on Wednesday.
The first retail space has opened on the 1880s landmark Beaumaris Hotel site since its redevelopment into apartments by the Edge Group. The Beau Kitchen and Cellar served its first customers on Thursday (November 17) and is already generating significant local interest. It is adjoined by the boutique wine shop Rack and Ruin.
Melbourne architects Edwards Moore are renowned for inventive design solutions. Now they've put their sass into an educational setting, transforming the William Angliss Institute - a training centre for careers in food, tourism and hospitality - with four themed hotel rooms, a mock foyer and a pretend aeroplane aisle.
Fooi-Ling Khoo is making a name for houses that engage with the street. The Malaysian-born architect, who moved to Brisbane with her family as a child, worked with leading architect practices before opening OOF! architecture in St Kilda. Acute House, her most recent project, really is "a cute" house by name and geometry.
Places Women make: Stories of the women whom have shaped our cities and places. Q&A with author Jane Jose.
"It was dark and depressing," recalls Meahan Callaghan. She had been sharing her Middle Park terrace, a typical Victorian, with her then six-month-old son, and was overwhelmed by the clutter. "When it's full of toys you seriously feel like, 'My life is gone! I live in a play centre'."
Australian projects dominated nominations in this year's global building awards in Singapore. Of the 48 countries with finalists in the World Architecture Festival last month, Australia had 42 shortlisted projects, followed by Britain (27) and Turkey (nine).
The 2016 MPavilion, an annual temporary summer pavilion (this year designed by renowned international architect Bijoy Jain), is ready to host more than 400 free public events covering art, design, fashion, architecture and sport.
A sculpture in the bathtub, a horse on the couch and a disco in the loo are just some of the ways artworks have been exhibited at what is emerging as Melbourne's most exciting art fair. The Hotel Windsor is, once again, about to be transformed by SPRING 1883, a high-end contemporary art show to be held as part of Melbourne's Art Week.
With an atrium designed to evoke a tree canopy, Melbourne's newest shopping precinct can be identified by 5000 cascading glass tubes in five shades of green, linking the upper and lower levels. At night it dazzles like so many emeralds and by day it filters the sunlight pouring through a vast glass ceiling.
Melbourne's status as the bar and cafe capital of Australia was once again cemented in the latest Eat Drink Design Awards, which celebrate great design in Australia's and New Zealand's restaurants, cafes and bars. Local style-setters took out several of the key categories, including best bar, best cafe and best temporary space.
The playful, the experimental and the innovative characterise entries in the 2016 Dulux colour awards. Now in their 30th year, the awards celebrate the effective use of colour in architecture and design.
New apartment development has skyrocketed in Melbourne since 2009 and their quality has become a hot topic. Apartments now make up nearly one-third of all new dwellings approved across the state and it is predicted that more than 35,000 apartments will be built across Melbourne between 2015 and 2017.
Tapping into Melbourne's enduring love affair with fashion, the NGV is running a walking tour of some of the city's great, if lesser-known, fashion locations.
The bold and thoughtful ways designers are bringing colour into commerce were on show as the winners of the 2016 Dulux Colour Awards were revealed, with the winning entries mixing retro elements with boundary-pushing palettes. Using colour to evoke history and place, plus the use of fresh combinations of hues, unanimously impressed the judges of the awards, which were presented in Melbourne on Thursday night.
The good bones of one North Melbourne beauty provided Foong and Sormann with fertile soil for a reno. Green Magazine is Australia's leading publication for inspirational stories on sustainable design featuring local and international houses, gardens and profiles.
The Jane, a sweet 46 foot cruiser is as beautiful inside as out, thanks to the very personal involvement of designer Rodney Egglestone of March Studios. The sun is caressing the horizon, the sea turning silvery grey as I hurry up St Kilda pier.
A rooftop is now a meadow on this inner Melbourne apartment block, providing joy for residents. Green Magazine is Australia's leading publication for inspirational stories on sustainable design featuring local and international houses, gardens and profiles.
Profiles
Amy Muir, 40, is the director of Muir Mendes, an architecture practice overlooking Flinders Lane. What's the buzz? The awards keep flowing for this rising architectural star. In December Amy won the Victorian Emerging Architect Prize, while in 2011 her practice's first project, the Law Street House, won architecture awards for the provocative remaking of a South Melbourne workman's cottage using steel.
Clare Kennedy talks to William McInnes about his latest novel and acting life. "I had this great teacher at acting school and he'd say, never believe how good people say you are, and never believe how bad they say you are, but err on believing the bad side, that'll keep you honest."
At 73, as feisty as ever, Germaine Greer enthralled an audience for over an hour at the Melbourne Writers Festival. In black, and in sync with the mostly female crowd, the famous Australian writer, feminist and scholar spoke eloquently about the quirks of modern Australian English, ranging from the irritating misuse of words to the loss of the apostrophe in place-names like Surfers Paradise and Hopping Dicks Creek, which could cause disappointment to some visitors, she observed wryly.
Ahead of her event this weekend in Bendigo, we speak to the acclaimed writer about growing up in, and writing about, Melbourne. Alice Pung, an author, a lawyer and guest at this weekend's Bendigo Writers Festival, is in a unique position to write a novel about inequality in Australia.
If you're ever at Melbourne Central with a gaggle of children who inopportunely need to pee, don't despair. A fantastic recent project by architect Clare Cousins that's well appreciated by the public is the innovative parenting room on Melbourne Central's second floor. Yes, I'm raving about what is essentially a public amenity.
From hot lead to computers to laptop, Berwyn Lewis witnessed dramatic changes over her forty-year writing career. The teenage typesetter who had a winning way with words became an award winning copywriter and later, a journalist. She tells her story to Clare Kennedy I grew up in Bowral, about 80 km south of Sydney.
If you love architecture, interior-design magazines and witty advertising features, chances are you've seen Derek Swalwell's photographs. In the past 15 years, his snaps of some of the most beautiful houses and buildings in Australia and Asia have been published in, among others, Houses, Monument, Elle Décor, Singapore Architect, Vogue Living, Inside Out, Blueprint Asia ...
Clare Kennedy talks about temples, tripods and terrific photos with high flying photographer John Gollings.
Hampton's Sally Hepworth, 35, has made becoming an internationally published author look easy. The go-getter mother-of-two (Oscar, 6, and Eloise, 3) last year secured a three-book deal worth almost $700,000, with book sales in the US (St Martin's Press), the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Architecture and interiors
A model for designing the suburbs in 2014 Victorian architecture awards
Making a safe place that didn't draw attention to itself was critical to the brief from a government agency to design a refuge for indigenous women in the middle-ring suburbs of Melbourne. From the street, the building needed to look like an ordinary house, says architect Kerstin Thompson, principal of Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA).
Melbourne's status as the bar and cafe capital of Australia was once again cemented in the latest Eat Drink Design Awards, which celebrate great design in Australia's and New Zealand's restaurants, cafes and bars. Local style-setters took out several of the key categories, including best bar, best cafe and best temporary space.
This new apartment building on Chapel Street was a derelict shopfront when it was acquired by the developer, says architect Elisa Justin of Justin Architects. But where some saw only decay, she imagined an opportunity for rebirth and regeneration.
TWR Issue 202 / July 9, 2014 | Taking perfect pictures with Derek Swalwell
New app has potential to disrupt commercial lease middleman
Joh Kirby, executive director of the Victorian Law Foundation (a former art conservator), and barrister Andrew Kirby share the house with their two teenage children. When Joh and Andrew bought the rundown former Royal Standard pub (circa 1915) on Faraday Street, it was being used as student digs, sleeping up to 17 people.
June 13, 2013 The Institute of Koorie Education Reviewed by Clare Kennedy Can a building change lives? Professor Wendy Brabham, director of the Deakin Institute of Koorie Education, is hopeful that the Institute's new building will make a real impact on the future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
The house known as Fairfield Hacienda is friendly by design. "You can sit in the courtyard and say hello to people as they walk past," says architect Antony Martin. The owners embraced his suggestion for a walled space at the front to take advantage of northern light and connect their lives more closely to the neighbours.
The futuristic 41X in Melbourne has carved a Lyon's share
Boyd Foundation on a mission to improve Melbourne's apartments
Callum Croker | Petals in evolution, 2014 A dress made from chia seeds, a bicycle projector, a 3D mandala and a quirky self-portrait made from Rubik's Cubes are among the works chosen from 3000 submissions for the 21st anniversary of Top Arts - a much-loved National Gallery of Victoria exhibition that offers an insight into ...
History and modern thinking transforms these good IDEA winners
The doyenne of Melbourne bridal wear, Mariana Hardwick, looks back on her past, with a little help from her clients. Classic. Elegant. Ladylike. These are some of the words used to describe the timeless style of fashion entrepreneur Mariana Hardwick and the eponymous bridal couture house she established all those years ago.
Former ugly duckling townhouse nets attention on world stage
Eileen Carney opened her first American Rag store after being sued by Levis for importing jeans from America. 21 years later, she's just finished revamping the vintage boutique. Eileen Carney's foray into the vintage fashion industry was not without precedent.
Well-groomed, understated and ladylike. The cool, restrained elegance that Hollywood actress and princess Grace Kelly personified is on display at the Bendigo Art Gallery. There's a scene in the classic Hollywood musical High Society where upper-crust socialite Tracy Lord, played by Grace Kelly, poses beside a circular swimming pool the day before her wedding.
Sunday night's Perfect runway one, for the 2015 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival, caught the hot young things who are making and shaping wear for the street to intergalactic planets and beyond.
A recent arrival has put the spring into the "Paris end" of Collins Street, that end of town with rich fashion heritage now mainly expressed through iconic global fashion brands. The "Paris" end of Collins Street, Melbourne. Photo: Craig Abraham The new location for luxury artisan atelier MATERIALBYPRODUCT (MBP) is No.
A new movement in sustainable design is generating interiors made from rubber tyres, skirts made from men's shirts and old furniture made new again. Mimicking the cycle of nature, a community of bold Melbourne designers are recreating and restoring.
It's designers like 2011 fashion graduate , 23, who give me hope for the future of the Australian fashion industry. Not only are her designs beautiful and wearable; her work is driven by a passion for sustainability. And for lovers of history and nature, there's another hook in this yarn.
urban architecture and landscape
You don't have to be a keen gardener to get a thrill out of the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show. Now in its 21st year, our annual horticultural hoedown offers something for everyone - practical tips for keen gardeners, inspiration for big dreamers and a visual feast for those with an eye for beauty.
Gardens In Cranbourne hailed as best landscape in World Architecture Festival
A rooftop terrace and hanging garden in South Yarra show the way
Docks are interesting places. Places where ships unload their catch, where fish markets flourish and passers-by add to a colourful sea of activity. But contemporary waterfront redevelopments, with their emphasis on a pleasing view for office frontage, have tended to erase the very elements that attracted people in the first place.