Innehållsförteckning för Habitus #47 - Design Culture från Habitus

Culture and community Does culture cultivate design? And why are we drawn to the designs that we are? What is it about certain patterns, forms or an overall aesthetic that gets my head nodding in appreciation and not yours? A lot can be said for culture cultivating design (religious or national). The very mission of Habitus is and has always been to unearth architecture, design, and its creators that respond to our very unique way of life across the Indo Pacific Region. This issue, the Design Culture issue, we took the opposite approach. We were interested to look at architecture and design that creates culture around it. In some articles it is a culture of appreciators, in others a culture of inclusivity, or of end users. Architect James Garvan has…

James Garvan began his practice, James Garvan Architecture, in 2016. But his story gets interesting well before then. Despite having family in the architecture and interiors professions, his original intentions were to follow the motions of his classmates and pursue finance. Before taking that leap, he took a gap year. With a base in London, James seized the opportunity to travel greater Europe and returned to Australia in awe of the architecture he had seen. He changed his degree to architecture and allocated the first two years to decide firstly, if he liked it, and secondly, if he was any good. Evidently it was a firm ‘yes’ on both counts. James was awarded the Sir John Sulman Award for the Most Outstanding Academic Record at the University of Sydney and…

Probably because they live in the glorious isolation of an island continent, Australians erroneously think they are unique. For example, they think they are the only ones with a ‘housing crisis’. In fact, this is an international phenomenon very much to do with the rapid growth of cities. This growth strains available property resources, forcing prices up and making property less affordable to a growing number of people. Add to this changing social values, stretched infrastructure, and a shifting economic landscape and you have the scenario for developing new housing models to respond to that changing environment. For Geoffrey London, Professor of Architecture at the University of Western Australia (who is working closely with the Western Australian government agency, Landcorp, to develop new affordable housing models) the issue is: “How…

At a time in which Australia had few truly multi-disciplinary design practices, Alan Synman, Charles Justin, and Michael Bialek – the S, J, and B behind the almighty SJB – sought an innovative way to diversify their offering. Coincidently, a gung-ho young interior designer with a desire to breach new frontiers was within their midst. Fresh out of RMIT’s Interior Design School, Andrew Parr had joined the acclaimed architectural practice in the late eighties as part of their budding team of in-house interior designers. “At the start, [SJB was] pretty much just architects doing commercial buildings and some houses,” says Andrew. Come 1994, after five years of designing office fitouts and residential interiors, SJB was ready for growth. “I wanted to forge the business into different directions such as hospitality,”…

The owners of this warehouse-style home, built circa 1894, in North Fitzroy knew they would eventually renovate and extend. Given they were occupying approximately one half of their current floor space, it was a matter of waiting for the neighbour’s home (also three levels) to come onto the market. Originally home to one of Melbourne’s grocery businesses Moran & Cato, a portion of the adjacent building included a corner store to sell produce. In the 1980s, the two became part of a larger development of 22 units. “We simply waited patiently for the ‘universe’ to be presented to us (read: ‘neighbour’s property’),” says owner Sheree Steele, a milliner, who shares this impressive home with her husband Gabriel and their two young children, Ethan and Annika. While the couple was working…

River House Gerroa ARCHITECT Ian Moore Architects LEAD ARCHITECT Ian Moore PROJECT ARCHITECT Maria Gutierrez INTERIOR DESIGN Ian Moore Architects STYLIST Tess Strelein BUILDER Lime Building Group JOINERY Leisure Coast Kitchens LANDSCAPING Outdoor Establishments IAN MOORE ARCHITECTS (61 2) 8354 1887 ianmoorearchitects.com FINISHES Walk Easy cork sheet flooring in Steel Grey from Comcork. Bianco Carrara marble slabs with honed finish from Bisanna Tiles on bathroom floors. Tallowwood weatherboards with oiled finish for external walls. Plasterboard finished with Vivid White paint from Dulux for internal walls and ceilings. Bianco Carrara marble mosaic tiles with honed finish from Bisanna Tiles. Aluminium framed windows and sliding doors with powder coat finish from AWS. Windows manufactured by Hanlons Windows. Altair 152 clip operable glass louvres from Breezway. Staron Solid Surface Resin for kitchen benchtops.…

ASIH JENIE TRANSPLANTED ROOTS #150 Based in Singapore, born and educated in Indonesia, Asih loves good stories and lives to tell them. She believes that behind every good design is a good story. She holds a degree in architecture and graphic design but prefers to make a living by telling stories (primarily) with words. She has worked and written for various lifestyle and design publications in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia since 2010 in various editorial roles. Most recently she was the Assistant Editor of Cubes Magazine and Indesignlive.sg. A self-confessed millennial, Asih is most drawn to the kind of architecture and design that delivers the most holistic, multi-sensory experiences. “Like a tropical building that makes the most of the climate for its inhabitants using local materials, or an…

NX IKO and ORLI feature HYDROSENSE – ground-breaking technology from the Phoenix Tapware design and engineering team. With HydroSense, water is transformed. Inspired by nature, the patented pending HydroSense technology delivers curved sheets that disperse midfall into dense, cascading droplets. phoenixtapware.com.au Luxurious linen house IN BED has released new-season and limited-edition designs in Rosewood and a beautiful Pinstripe linen, along with new heavy linen styles as a bedcover, pillowcase and cushion set. inbedstore.com Designed to create a focal point in the decor of the home, the SERIF TV was developed through a collaboration between two of the world’s most esteemed industrial designers, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. The Paris-based Bouroullec brothers specialise in creating furniture through their approach to industrial design. samsung.com Having introduced the first combi-steam oven into the private home…

This unusual warehouse-style home in Melbourne, formerly occupying part of a 1930s mechanic’s workshop and designed by the late architect Richard Swansson, celebrates not only the history of the building, but the memories of loved ones. Designed for the owner, Hedy, an installation and photographic artist, each object and artefact within this home is curated, ready to be captured on film. A founding member of the cultural collective, Contemporary Collective, with a number of individual and group exhibitions, Hedy’s home is a visual and tactile environment. With Swansson’s passing in 2015, creating his vision for this home (his last to be designed) was a milestone for Hedy. Work and home are intertwined in Hedy’s house, which she shares with her son Anton, a recent graduate in industrial design from RMIT…

Someone referred to the recently published Iconic Modern Australian Houses 1950-2000 as a survey book and it took me by surprise, in that I had never considered it in that light before. A survey looks down from above, from a position of great height and knowledge, whereas I built this book from the ground up, with a starting point of mild ignorance. Initially through an emotional and physical understanding of the work of Bruce Rickard (we live in his 1967 Marshall House) an intellectual appreciation developed. Subsequently, through a gradual process of research, many in-depth interviews and house visits, I came to understand the landscape of Australian architecture from the 1950s onwards. This book is my education on the topic. As a former magazine editor, I wanted it to have…

There are sites that can be either a problem or an opportunity. For architect Ian Moore, it is usually the latter – as was the case with this holiday home in Gerroa, on the coast south of Sydney. Set above a 4-5 metre sandstone cliff that drops down to a public reserve, the site overlooks not the beach, but the Crooked River and across to a dense clutch of trees which largely disguises a camping site. “We felt it was in a great position,” says Ian, “because it looked at the river, looked at the trees, but it was sloping down towards the back and it generated this opportunity rather than a problem in that we could get northern sun at one end and make the front of the house…

Beeline Design is a brand known for its understated designs and interesting use of materials; they design and create furniture which lends itself to a modern aesthetic but has a timeless appeal. They have continued to do so with their latest additions to the RIDGE COLLECTION. beelinefurnituredesign.com.au Born out of collaboration between Melbourne designers Thomas Cohen and Maxam Whiteley, THOMAS MAXAM has launched CANDELABRA 0001 – the first of several limited-edition designs from the luxury product designers. thomasmaxamstudio.com WAV E by Chiara Provasi is an evocatively curvaceous modular system that invites you to play with space in innovative ways. Elegant and freeform, this sectional piece can be configured to shape each unique environment, creating a sculptural centrepiece. chiaraprovasi.com The frantic pace of today’s world makes the space and time dedicated to…

The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree for multidisciplinary designers and partners Ruben de la Rive Box and Golnar Roshan, who both grew up with fathers who were designers. Golnar in an Australian-Iranian household and Ruben in the Netherlands. Many years and two university degrees later (Golnar studied Visual Communication and International Studies at UTS and Ruben Interaction Design at the KKU University of the Arts, Utrecht) they met working for Marcel Wanders in Amsterdam. Here, they set up a graphics department with the intention to bridge the interior and product teams. “That’s where we started to develop our multidisciplinary view of design and started to apply our thinking to objects, spaces and surfaces,” says Ruben. Next came London, where Golnar began working for Tord Boontje on projects…

If you’ve seen the Qantas jumbo jets painted with Aboriginal art – there have been five of them flying international skies over the past 25 years – you’ve come into contact with the work of Balarinji, a multi-disciplinary, Aboriginal-owned design agency based in Sydney. You may not realise, though, that the studio also works with architects and designers and is moving into the residential sector, as a way of telling important stories about Australia’s past and present. Founded in 1983 by life and work partners John and Ros Moriarty, Balarinji was named for the skin name of their two sons, and it emerged from a desire to celebrate the Indigenous stories and heritage of their three children. John Moriarty was born in the remote community of Borroloola in the Northern…

In the manicured gardens behind the National Gallery of Victoria stands a sculptural monument, cleft in two. Designed by Melbourne-based architects Aaron Roberts and Kim Bridgland of Edition Office and artist Yhonnie Scarce, In Absence is intended as an open cultural conversation through architecture. “Being an annual event, there’s a real opportunity for the commission to engage with a cultural and political dialogue,” says Aaron. “We saw that as a way to engage with ideas of colonialism, and untold histories in the Australian amnesia.” At the beginning of the creative process, Edition Office reached out to Yhonnie Scarce, an artist long admired by the studio, belonging to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples of South Australia. After weeks sharing articles and essays, and exploring ways in which they might work together,…