The business of architecture
This article is co-published with ArchiTeam. In July last year, ArchiTeam launched a working group tasked to find ways it might "educate the public about the value of architects through marketing and public outreach". This endeavour proposes to engage in both marketing and advocacy activities, a canny mix of pragmatism and altruism that I believe has the power to simultaneously promote our... Continue Reading →
The Robin Boyd Foundation's winter open day was held last month, with ten recent Australian Institute of Architects award winning projects open to visit. The unseasonably warm August Sunday was filled with at least 600 architects and architecture lovers roving around Melbourne, enjoying houses and apartments converted for the day into temporary museums. With our 3 year old and 7 month... Continue Reading →
In the early 1960s, during construction of the Sydney Opera House, Jørn Utzon and his office designed and documented his own house in Bayview, 30km north of Sydney (1965, unbuilt). Utzon agonised over the extent of windows facing a particularly beautiful view. Should the wall be fully glazed or only partially? After many weeks of... Continue Reading →
Who was he? The name, Robin Boyd, should be known to every Australian architect. He was a Melbourne architect prominent in the postwar era, but many decades ahead of his time. He was a proponent of an environmentally sensitive and locally specific adaptation of modernism, a teacher, a writer, an ambassador for the profession, and... Continue Reading →
Sir Thomas Gresham by Anthonis Mor van Dashorst (1565) What is it? A paraphrasing of Gresham's Law, an economic principle proposed in the 16th Century by adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Thomas Gresham. The law, bad money drives out good, described the devaluation of the precious metal content in circulating coins. When new, low... Continue Reading →
This is the 9th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we've accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe. 9. Community When:... Continue Reading →
What is it? An approach to architecture practice offered by Brian Donovan, principal architect of the former Donovan Hill. Donovan presented his work last week in the first instalment of a new lecture series, Zeitgeist. The series is a collaborative effort between the Centre for Cultural Materials Preservation and Robin Boyd Foundation, and will be... Continue Reading →
Not a great application letter It is a sign of the ongoing scarcity faced by the construction industry that architecture graduates are anecdotally having a lot of trouble finding work. The federal government's stimulus package has long since dried up and the big end of town is once again executing layoffs left and right. Though... Continue Reading →
Blue House by Neeson Murcutt What is it? The third of four annual open days run by the Robin Boyd Foundation. The 2012 winter event took place last Sunday on the Mornington Peninsula, with houses by Neeson Murcutt (Zac's House, 2011, and Blue House, 2012), Denton Corker Marshall (Emery House, 1999), Paul Morgan (Cape Schanck House, 2007), McBride Charles... Continue Reading →
Emery House from the west What is it? A holiday house for graphic designer, Gary Emery, by established Melbourne architecture practice, Denton Corker Marshall. Located in Cape Schanck on the Mornington Peninsula, the house was completed almost fifteen years ago yet boasts a timelessness that has preserved its elegance across a decade and a half... Continue Reading →