The site for Super Colossal is now live. There are a few dead links in there, but it is mostly complete. So head on over and have a look around! Gravestmor will stay up for about a month and then I will likely redirect traffic over to SC.

If you are a subscriber, the new RSS feed may be found here.

The Urban Islands studio is happening again SOON. Last year in the studio, run through Sydney University, students worked on projects that explored the industrial ruins of the site, the topography of the already tunnelled, chiselled and warped landscape, and constructed a stunning installation in the turbine hall.

Guest tutors this year are:

Morphogenesis, Supasudaca, and Sumo. (All of whom will be speaking at the next Pecha Kucha as well….)

Kickstarting the event will be a syposium at Sydney University on Monday July 16th and will tackle everyone’s favourite myth, that of “Bourgeois Myths and the Industrial Landscape”. Indeed these are my favourite kinds of myths and I am sure yours too so make sure you get in early!

The Review day is on Saturday July 28th and will take place on Cockatoo Island. If you have never been out to Cockatoo Island, this is a fantastic opportunity to rummage among the abandoned industrial radness as well as seeing some interesting student work and to have a few beers in the setting sun.

After five years of working at BVN, I am moving into private practice and starting up a new office - Super Colossal. A studio that will be centred on architecture, landscape, infrastructure and most importantly, a reckless urban optimism.

Gravestmor has been a lot of fun and for the time being it will stay up and running. Slowly, over the next few months however, it will meld into the Super Colossal site which will become a kind of Practice-Portfolio-Blog-Machine-Thing.

It is that time again. Again.

Pecha Kucha Volume 04 will be held next Thursday the 31st of May at the Commercial Travellers Association. Get there early to get a good spot last time the place filled up rather quickly….

New to Pecha Kucha? Look here and here.

See you there!

In the UAE, OMA have been getting busy in the desert:

(Image Source)

The project is for the RAK Convention Centre and Exhibition Centre in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE and comprises of a large sphere, booleaned by other large spheres and a long linear bar.

“What is left to be invented when it comes to the creation of a landmark?

So far the 21st century – in a desperate effort to differentiate one building from the next – has been characterized by a manic production of extravagant shapes. Paradoxically, the result is a surprisingly monotonous urban substance, where any attempt at ‘difference’ is instantly neutralized in a sea of meaningless architectural gestures.

RAK is confronted with an important choice: Does it join so many others in this mad, futile race or does it become the first to offer
a new credibility?

This project represents a final attempt at distinction through architecture:not through the creation of the next bizarre image, but
through a return to pure form.”

(Image Source)

Pure form. Yes indeed. The immediate comparison is not, as I know you are all thinking, Boullee, nor is it the Deathstar. Sure at first glance, it may appear to be the planet destroying super structure of our dreams - it is big, it is round, it has craters. But as we all know the deathstar only had the one crater, the one from which the laser beams were focussed on Aldaraan with such pleasing results.

So if not the Deathstar or Boullee, then what?

Released in the early seventies Panapet by Panasonic is a small transistor radio. It, like the convention centre, is not in space, is round, has several craters and it has no lasers. It is funny; the Panapet dates back to 1972 (I think), five years prior to the release of A New Hope and is such clear precursor to the Deathstar and yet it never gets a mention. Geonosian industrialist, Poggle the Lesser, Raith Siener and Imperial Officer, Grand Moff Tarkin get all the credit with poor little Panapet not rating a mention.

And so now, thirty years later, the strange little radio has spawned a second behemoth offspring, this one in the desert, on the outskirts of town, biding its time.

+ Thanks to Matt for the links.

Firstly, darch has been invited by the Museum of Contemporary Art to participate in the conversation space at the Craigie Horsefield exhibition that is currently showing.

Craigie Horsefield is an artist who focuses on exploring time and community through photography, with his photographs often developed and printed many years after they are taken. The MCA website tells us that:

“He has been a radical proponent of ideas concerning art and community since the 1960s, exploring the central role of the audience in relation to a work of art, and how the individual relates to society. Duration and time often influence his work, challenging our inclination towards instantaneous responses, and investigating the theory of “slow time”. His work has anticipated much current thinking in art practice concerning the way in which art relates to the wider community.

Shortlisted for the Turner Prize 1996, Horsfield has said: “The work I make is intimate in scale but its ambition is, uncomfortable as I find it, towards an epic dimension, to describe the history of our century, and the centuries beyond, the seething extent of the human condition.”

One room of the exhibition has been given over the a ‘Conversation Space’ - a place for talks, meetings, and various other happenings. DARCH is using the Conversation Space on Sunday’s each fortnight beginning this weekend, to hold a series of discussions on the city. Each week we will look at particular theme and will record a podcast and put on an interactive-exhibitioney-data-gathering-thing.

This weekend’s theme will draw on the concern’s of Horsefield and concentrate on the idea of ’slowness in the instaneous city’. We will start at 1pm so, if you are in town, drop by and have a look….

Secondly, Col Madigan is speaking at Tusculum next Monday night. Now 85, Madigan is one of Australia’s preeminent architects and responsible for the National Art Gallery. You should go to this. It will be good for the soul.

This is a frame from the trailer to Oceans 13 and I am fairly certain that the building shown does not exist.

Towards the end of the trailer the Brad Pitt character tells the All Pacino character

“Let em tell you what you don’t want. Your hotel in a twisted heap of steel and glass. That’s what you don’t want.”

which is certainly a difficult proposition to argue with.

Pecha Kucha Volume 03 took place last Thursday in the bowels of the Commercial Travellers Association. It was a great night, fantastic stuff on show and loads of people to check it all out.

As always, the grabs that follow are a poor representation of the content that was on show, so if you are intrigued then make sure you come along to the next on at the end of May for the full deal.

First up was Kate Bezar, editor of the wonderful Dumbo Feather magazine.

Brendan Cowell and Alice Babidge from Wharf 2 Loud spoke about their new paly which is currently in rehearsals, named Self Esteem, where the mysterious multinational CHAD is invading the lives of suburban Australia.

Hugh Snellgrove and Gabrielle Ulacco of the Sydney University Architecture School spoke about a project they have recently completed - and built a prototype of - for a low cost stand alone unit for bathing and cooking for use in Aboriginal commuties. The project was run by Col James and Paul Pholeros.

Kate Porter, ran the crowd through the commonly misunderstood world of carbon trading markets. From the Kyoto Protocol to the micro markets that are set up when corporations offset their emmsisions by giving away light bulbs.

Lisa Cahill is an artist who works in glass and creates beautiful, serene landscapes.

Matt and Mark of animation and design studio Sixty 40 showed their animation work for the MTV and the Comedey Channel as well as their band and their hosting duties for a burleque revue.

Tony Chenchow, Chenchow Little Architects showed three three finely crafted houses that Chenchow Little have designed.

Lou Weis spoke of the collaborative artowrks that he has been involved in curating and managing in Sydney and Melbourne.

Leanne Rule, AGDA ran a design studio out at Sydney’s in- vogue-industrial-harbour-property-of-the-moment, Cockatoo Island.

Mel Young showed her charming jewellery made up from found objects.

Stephen Collier, rounded off the evening with a presentation on corners. Lots of different kinds of corners, their place in cities, suburbs, and warzones.

The next Pecha Kucha in Sydney will be on Thursday May 31st. I hope to see you there, and I hope we have all the sightline issues sorted….

Its that time again…and it is pretty short notice I know…

But.

Pecha Kucha Sydney Volume 03 is on this Thursday 29th March at the CTA on Martin Place. So if you would like to see a whole bunch of really great jewellery, design, architecture, engineering, whatever, drop in. Bar opens at 6, presentations getting underway at about 7pm.

For Pecha Kucha novices, information on the Sydney gig can be found at the Pecha kucha Sydney page while global Pecha Kucha info is over at the Mothership.