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    Entries open for Vivid emerging designer awards

    Entries are now open for Australia’s longest running competition for emerging designers. For 19 years, the Vivid Design Awards has endeavoured to unearth the newest talents across furniture, lighting and object design. The award has helped to kickstart the careers of many prominent Australian designers, including Nicole Monks, Edward Linacre, Adam Markowitz and Dale Hardiman. […] More

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    Studio: James Walsh

    Since James Walsh won the 2020 Australian Furniture Design Award, the spotlight has been shining brightly on his studio practice. The Sydney-based furniture and industrial designer, who graduated from RMIT University in 2017, is daring in his materials-focused approach and commitment to process-driven outcomes. “It’s about finding a clean balance between natural materials and old and new processes to produce original, exciting objects,” he says. “And while testing ideas and learning by doing is often the most unpredictable part of the design process, it’s also the most thrilling.”

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    For the legs of the Anthropic Bench, James modified the raw materials used in rammed earth to incorporate recycled glass. Image:

    Courtesy James Walsh

    His award-winning Anthropic Bench not only blew the judges away with its intelligent assembly, it also stands as testament to his mastery. Using a combination of rammed earth and recycled glass filings, James handmade the robust form’s legs and finished it off with a solid timber top that sits in place without fasteners or adhesive. It’s an exquisite study in refined detailing and perfectly highlights his rigorous approach, which in this case reimagines an ancient technique with sustainability front of mind.
    The bench may be one of his more ambitious pieces, but his smaller objects are no less adventurous. Spaghetti Bowl, for example, is handmade using a grout-based caulking gun, lending each finished vessel a unique appearance, while the Igneous Wall Light (in collaboration with designer Ash Allen) was developed through the re-forming of volcanic rock. James didn’t even do an initial sketch, let alone try to predict how the light would turn out. Rather, he allowed the material to guide the outcome: a slim, circular form with striking natural patterning.

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    The Igneous Wall Light, designed in collaboration with Ash Allen, is made from waste material generated in bluestone re-forming. Image:

    Courtesy James Walsh

    Every one of James’s designs, regardless of scale, has a distinct architectural sensibility to it. Strong angles, curves and lines characterize his portfolio and imbue his pieces with a conceptual resolve that acknowledges past traditions, while revelling in a very contemporary aesthetic. Unsurprisingly, James finds inspiration in nature too. As he explains, “So much can be learnt and so much enjoyment can be felt from simply sitting in a natural environment and reflecting.” In regard to other designers, he’s inspired by those with an arts-based approach, such as Max Lamb, Formafantasma and Maarten De Ceulaer, and admires the work of studios like Form Us With Love.
    As part of his Australian Furniture Design Award win, James is currently developing a new design for production and distribution. He continues to work as an industrial designer at Vert Design and is participating in upcoming group exhibitions as well. If his recent success is any indication of what the next year holds, then James is in for quite a ride and all expectations surrounding his new work are entirely justified. More

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    Bates Smart wins competition for Parramatta tower

    Bates Smart has won a design excellence competition for a 57-storey commercial tower in Parramatta. To be named Burramatta Place, the proposed tower at 87-91 George Street will take its cues from designing with Country principles as well as the colonial architecture of a neighbouring building. “Our design for Burramatta Place carefully considers its place […] More

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    Design update to $541m Ballarat hospital redevelopment

    The Ballarat Base Hospital will be getting two new entrances as part of its $541.6 million redevelopment, with the main entryway relocating from its former Drummond Street position. State MP Jaala Pulford just released designs for a new main entry on 13 April, which will relocate from Drummond Street to a new Sturt Street location. […] More

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    NGV Contemporary receives $100m donation

    The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has received a donation of $100 million from trucking magnate Lindsay Fox and his wife Paula towards the construction of the new NGV Contemporary. The winning design for the new landmark, by a team led by Candalepas Associates, was released in March following a national competition. The new gallery […] More

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    UQ opens net-zero emissions research building

    The University of Queensland (UQ) has opened a new building at its St Lucia campus that could harbour the key to Australia’s net zero emissions potential. The Andrew N. Liveris Building is 11 storeys high, covering 2,000 square metres of teaching space and 480 square metres of laboratory space within the university’s School of Chemical […] More

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    DJ Kay Slay, Fiery Radio Star and Rap Mixtape Innovator, Dies at 55

    DJ Kay Slay, who served as a crucial bridge between hip-hop generations, developing from a teenage B-boy and graffiti writer into an innovative New York radio personality known for his pugnacious mixtapes that stoked rap beefs, broke artists and helped change the music business, died on Sunday in New York. He was 55.Slay had faced “a four-month battle with Covid-19,” his family said in a statement confirming his death.Few figures in hip-hop could trace their continued presence from the genre’s earliest days to the digital present like he could. In late-1970s New York, Slay was a young street artist known as Dez, plastering his spray-painted tag on building walls and subway cars, as chronicled in the cult documentaries “Wild Style” and “Style Wars.”Then he was the Drama King, a.k.a. Slap Your Favorite DJ, hosting the late-night “Drama Hour” on the influential radio station Hot 97 (WQHT 97.1 FM) for more than two decades before his illness took him off the air.“Cats know it’s no holds barred with me,” Slay told The New York Times in 2003, when the paper dubbed him “Hip-Hop’s One-Man Ministry of Insults.” In addition to providing a ring and roaring encouragement for battles between Jay-Z and Nas, 50 Cent and Ja Rule, Slay gave an early platform to local artists and crews like the Diplomats, G-Unit, Terror Squad and the rapper Papoose, both on his show and on the mixtapes that made his name as much as theirs.As mixtapes evolved from homemade D.J. blends on actual cassettes to a semiofficial promotional tool and underground economy of CDs sold on street corners, in flea markets, record stores, bodegas and barber shops, Slay advanced with the times, eventually releasing his own compilation albums on Columbia Records. Once illicit and unsanctioned, mixtapes now represent a vital piece of the music streaming economy, with artists and major labels releasing their own album-like official showcases that top the Billboard charts.“You were really the first to bring the personality to the mixtape,” Funkmaster Flex, a fellow Hot 97 D.J., once said to Slay during a radio interview. “That was very unusual. We were just used to the music and the exclusives.”Slay, who became immersed in drugs and spent time behind bars before making it in music, responded, “I had to find an angle and run with it.”He was born Keith Grayson in New York on Aug. 14, 1966, and raised in East Harlem. As a child, he was drawn to disco, dancing the Hustle; when early hip-hop D.J.s began turning breakbeats from those songs into proto-rap music, he traveled to the Bronx to observe and participate in the rising culture.“I had to see what was going on and bring it back to my borough,” he told Spin magazine in 2003. “So I used to hop on the 6 train and go up to the Bronx River Center [projects] to see Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation rock.”He soon took up the affiliated art forms of breakdancing and graffiti, even casually rapping with his friends. “Every element of the game, I participated in,” Slay told Flex. But street art became his chief passion, first under the tag Spade 429 and later Dez TFA, which he shortened to Dez.“I wanted a nice small name that I could get up everywhere and do it quick without getting grabbed,” he said at the time. “You’re telling the world something — like, I am somebody. I’m an artist.”Amid the city’s crackdown on graffiti, Dez took on the name Kay Slay (“After a while you get tired of writing the same name,” he said of his street-art days) and developed a fascination with turntables. “Boy, you better turntable those books,” he recalled his disappointed parents saying. But in need of money and with little interest in school, he soon turned to drugs and stickups.Kay Slay at MTV Studios in 2007. “The game was boring until I came around,” he said. Brian Ach/WireImageIn 1989, Slay was arrested and served a year in jail for drug possession with intent to sell. On getting out, he told Spin, “I started noticing Brucie B, Kid Capri, Ron G. They were doing mixtapes, doing parties and getting paid lovely.” He sold T-shirts, socks and jeans to buy D.J. equipment and worked at a Bronx facility that assisted people with H.I.V. and AIDS.“I can’t count the number of people I saw die,” he told The Times of that period. “Working there really made me begin to appreciate life.”In the mid-1990s, Slay found the professional music business still unwelcoming, and he began to call out, in colorful language on his releases, those label executives he thought of as useless. “I told myself I would be so big that one day the same people I was begging for records would be begging me to play their records,” he said.It was that irascible spirit that helped endear him to rappers who had their own scores to settle. In 2001, Slay had a breakthrough when he premiered “Ether,” the blistering Nas dis of Jay-Z that revitalized headline hip-hop beef following the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. His radio slots and mixtapes became a proving ground, and he later started a magazine called Straight Stuntin’.“He’s like the Jerry Springer of rap,” one D.J. told The Times. “All the fights happen on his show.”Slay’s gruff manner and mid-song shouts would go on to influence his contemporaries, like DJ Clue, a one-time rival, and those who followed, like DJ Whoo Kid and DJ Drama. Alberto Martinez, the Harlem drug dealer known as Alpo, who was killed last year while in witness protection, even hosted a Slay tape from prison.“The game was boring until I came around,” Slay said.He is survived by his mother, Sheila Grayson, along with his best friend and business manager Jarrod Whitaker.In Slay’s on-air conversation with Funkmaster Flex, the other D.J. marveled at the creativity of Slay’s boasts and threats — “If you stop the bank, then I’m gonna rob the bank!” — and asked his colleague if he ever regretted the shocking things he’d bellowed.“I said some foul things, man, on some mixtapes when I was not in full touch with myself,” Slay replied. “But I’m not angry at myself for doing it, because the boy that I was made the man I am today.” More

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    Architectus designs WA’s first centre for domestic violence refugees

    Western Australia’s first purpose-built centre of women and children escaping domestic violence has been approved by the City of Perth.
    Designed by Architectus, the Ruah Centre for Women and Children will be a $20 million seven-storey building to be located on Shelton Street in Northbridge, replacing Ruah’s existing building.
    The centre will provide a safe and welcoming place with short-term accommodation for more than 300 women and children annually.
    The centre will also house a comprehensive range of services, including physical and mental health support, counselling, support for addressing alcohol and drug issues, legal services and employment and life skills education.
    “Western Australia has one of the worst rates of family violence related assaults in the country, and there is a critical shortage of safe, secure accommodation for women and children escaping violence,” said Ruah CEO Debra Zanella.
    “There is currently nowhere in Perth that combines accommodation with the kind of comprehensive support we will be providing. We believe all women and children experiencing trauma from abuse deserve a place where they can be safe, and where their total needs can be met.”
    The design of the building takes a trauma-informed approach that acknowledges how the physical environment can significantly impacts a person’s moods, sense of identity and wellbeing. It integrates the principles of trauma-informed care to create spaces that will promote a sense of calmn, safety, wellbeing and healing, as well as a sense of belonging and support, particularly for Aboriginal women and those from diverse backgrounds.
    The centre will also support collaborative research into the social issues related to domestic violence and contribute a body of knowledge to the community services sector.
    “This new centre will be a place where women and children can create a new and much brighter future,” Zanella said. “Importantly, it will also be a place where we build sector capacity through collaborations and research, and where we also work to shift community attitudes that allow family violence to continue.” More