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
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
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
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
Woods Bagot has designed an intriguing ellipsoid pergola to sit atop a proposed 18-storey building in Brisbane’s South City Square. The design comes as a response to market feedback from an original proposal by developers, with changes predominantly relating to improved functionality and occupancy in the building, as well as the provision of greater open […] More
A biomedical research centre has been approved for construction by the Victorian government . Denton Corker Marshall unveiled plans for the designs in January 2021, with Minister for Medical Research Jaala Pulford officially announcing receipt of planning approval on 11 April 2022. The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD) will be the country’s first hospital-based […] More
A disused warehouse in Sydney’s Chippendale could soon be home to an architecture gallery, under plans for its transformation designed by Smart Design Studio. The warehouse will be topped with a distinctive new roof to be made from an innovative, self-supporting Gaussian vault structure, that will hover over a column-free space below. The project to […] More
Powerhouse Parramatta will establish a biennial architecture, design and engineering exhibition and a new gallery after it received a $10 million donation from a Sydney developer.
The Holdmark Gallery, named after its benefactor Holdmark Property Group, will be the second largest gallery space in the new Powerhouse Parramatta, covering 2,300 square metres with ceilings eight metres high.
Associated programs that will be delivered alongside the new gallery include a summer school program created in partnership with Western Sydney University. This multi-disciplinary program will focus on urban design, architecture, engineering, and holistic approaches to the built form.
Vice chancellor and president Barney Glover said the program will “simultaneously develop students’ design thinking capability and advance practical solutions for issues directly identified by the local western Sydney community.”
Students will have the opportunity to engage with a western Sydney local council on a project to tackle real-world challenges in the built environment and generate solutions under the guidance of academics and industry practitioners.
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Designed by architects Moreau Kusunoki and Genton, Powerhouse Parramatta will be the largest museum in New South Wales, at 30,000 square metres. Image:
Moreau Kusunoki and Genton
Holdmark founder and chief executive Sarkis Nassif was born in Lebanon emigrated to Australia in 1987. He said his donation was motivated by desire to give back to the city that, as Nassif described, has “given so much to me.” Powerhouse Parramatta is Nassif’s first philanthropical gesture in the arts sector. The company will also become the principal partner of Sydney Design Week.
Powerhouse chief executive Lisa Havilah said Nassif has a migrant story that will resonate with many in the western Sydney community.
Powerhouse Parramatta is the area’s first cultural institution and will cost $915 million to build. The organization is hoping to raise a total of $75 million towards the project from private philanthropy. Powerhouse Parramatta is the New South Wales government’s largest investment in cultural infrastructure since the Sydney Opera House.
Construction is expected to commence this year with the museum opening to the public in 2025. More
