ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR

Miranda and I hit the ground running yesterday for day one of the Art Basel Hong Kong Art Fair. After an amazing breakfast at Café Grey on the 49th floor of the Upper House (swarming with familiar faces!) we headed to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre where works by over 2,000 artists from around the globe are spread out over two massive floors. The ground floor is filled with large-scale works, the first floor a little less intense: both floors echoed with a cacophony of accents – from French to Mandarin to German to Strine. Spotted: some extraordinarily elegant young Mainland Chinese being guided around by their advisors, barely looking before buying! I was chuffed to stumble upon some of my favourite Aussie galleries in the mix – Jensen Gallery and Roslyn Oxley9 to name a couple. A quiet dinner for four at the much-reviewed Hutong turned into a crazy banquet for fourteen, and the revelry continued way into the night. Deep breath – day two…

ACO2 – CHAMBER MUSIC TO MY EARS

The other night I had the honour of being invited to a rehearsal of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, directed by conductor and composer Richard Tognetti. A virtuoso violinist, Tognetti is a Wollongong boy who studied at the Sydney Conservatorium and as far as I can see (and hear!) his global reputation as an innovator, as someone who brings a fresh new perspective to the classics as well as developing an exciting new range of compositions, is totally justified. On the night in question he navigated us through some exquisite French pieces — from a Debussy Suite, to a wonderful Tango, to a couple of key pieces by Satie which were not only beautiful, but under Tognetti’s direction humorous, even hilarious! The man has established a repertoire that is a pure extension of himself and his own incredibly quirky style. The renaming of the ACO as ACO2 is an expression of this new energy — and you can witness it for yourself from the 13th to the 16th of June.

THE DEEP END

To celebrate the Australian Financial Review’s ‘Bespoke’ symposium to be held tomorrow at the Opera House, Jeremy Langmead, Editor of luxury website mrporter.com threw a decadent dinner at The Rockpool Bar & Grill. Now, I hate the words ‘world-class’ but they really can’t be avoided when referring to chef Neil Perry’s flagship establishment, set up within the haute luxe marble interior of a disused Art Deco bank. Soaring green-veined marble walls, faceted columns and a fine crenellated plaster ceiling make for one of the most majestic settings for a meal that was spectacular in its simplicity. (Think grilled Blue Eye with a crunchy potato gratin served up in a sparkling copper pan. Chic.) London-based  Mr Langmead seemed suitably impressed. As I expect guests at tomorrow’s symposium will be by his insights into editing in the age of e-commerce.

IN DA HOUSE

The latest issue of Houses magazine just landed on my desk, and I was delighted to read Adam Haddow’s review of our recently-completed Northern Beaches House. Haddow places NB House in the long tradition emanating from Philip Johnson’s Glass House of 1948 and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House of 1951 – and of course we are honoured to be counted in such lustrous company. It’s a seven-page story, with terrific pictures by Justin Alexander, and – this is something I really like about Houses magazine – several floorplans as well. They also include a full fact sheet of the various subcontractors we use – it’s great to see these excellent craftsmen getting a shout out. Houses magazine issue 91 – out now.

KEEP THE WOLFE FROM THE DOOR

From Bauhaus To Our House is a killer title for a book on architecture. But, I’ve always had the feeling that Tom Wolfe’s 1981 tome was a bit thin on the analysis. Thumbing through a vintage copy recently, I realised just how pernickety it really is. Dubbing Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius the ‘Silver Prince’, he positions him as the progenitor of a long line of modernists who would create houses like ‘insecticide refineries’ and develop cityscapes he calls ‘Rues of Regret’. Reductive? Sure. Axe-grinding? Very likely. And while his snubbing of the International Style for designing buildings like ‘duplicating-maching replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouses’ is witty, it is far from incisive. Clearly, in terms of architectural criticism, Mr Wolfe is lacking The Right Stuff. But I was happy to be reminded just what snappy dressers Gropius and Le Corbusier were. Respect.

SHADES OF GRAY

A friend of mine is in Paris at the moment, and just sent me the catalogue to the Eileen Gray show at the Centre Pompidou. Écoutez et répétez: ‘Eileen Gray/Centre Pompidou’ — it’s enough to send me running off to Mascot airport, Louis Vuitton duffel bag in tow. But I’ve got a lot going on in Sydney right now, so I’ll have to live this one vicariously…

In a lot of ways, Eileen Gray was the torch-bearer for women working in design and architecture today. Fully two decades before Charlotte Perriand signed up with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Gray had started to map out her path, establishing herself as a force to be reckoned with. An acolyte of the Arts & Crafts movement, her initial impact came via her luscious lacquered finished of very minimal low tables and sideboards. Totes Arts décoratifs. But then she added an extra edge, creating some of the most refined designs of our times: the iconic Bibendum armchair; that spectacularly simple tubular metal side table; the rugged, low-slung Transat chair… The lineup at the Pompidou Centre looks pretty terrific, though I have to say: it could have been even more magnificent had they managed to include Gray’s totally eccentric ‘dragon chair’, acquired by Saint Laurent in the 70s and sold for some $20mil in 2009, at the auctioning off of his estate.

SOUTH OF NO NORTH

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about context. The context of a building in its environment; the context in which a diverse group of people – for instance, the ‘family’ here at Tobias Partners – act and interact; the context on which an art work is brought to life, the dialogue it engages with other works, other artists, other periods in time. This last stream of thought has been greatly stimulated by the latest chapter of the South of no North series at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The premise is very clever: to choose an Australian artist and show a suite of his of her work in parallel with the work of two non-Australian artists. This time around, the Australian painter is Noel McKenna, the international guests: photographers William Eggleston (USA) and Laurence Aberhart (New Zealand). 

Of different origins, generations and essential intent, all three nonetheless share a fascination with the everyday; the beauty to be found in the quotidian; often through transposing scale, from the grandiose to the very intimate, and shifting the context of the familiar to the strange. While Aberhart works mostly in black and white, and Eggleston and McKenna tend to opt for colour that pops, the curator has managed to draw a red thread through the work, creating a frisson of recognition along the way. A unique curatorial concept — bravo to the MCA!

BEAUTIFUL DISASTER

For any architect who upholds the essential tenets of Modernism, March is the cruelest month. It was on March 16th 1972 that the first stage demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St Louis took place. I remember watching the video footage as a student, completely mesmerised as the first of 33 eleven-storey rectangular tower blocks imploded. A Corbusier-inspired piece of master planning, the 23 hectare site was designed to provide low-cost housing for (often black, often aged) residents of the Missouri capital. But twenty years after its inauguration, the complex had been allowed to fall into a state way beyond repair.

The demolition was a beautiful disaster; so compelling, despite the message it conveyed re the shortfalls of the Modernist canon. (And it was a disaster that found an echo some thirty years later in the spectacular collapse of New York’s World Trade Centre – by a strange twist of history, Minoru Yamasaki was the architect of both structures.)

But, perhaps even more destructive – at least in the symbolic sense – was the fact that the dynamiting of Pruit-Igoe allowed architectural theorist Charles Jencks to later quip that it marked “the day Modernist architecture died”. In Jenck’s theory, it hailed the beginning of that grab-bag era known as Post Modernism. Thankfully, history proved Jencks wrong – in Sydney’s own Tamarama, the renovation, rather than (often called-for) demolition, of the Corbu-inspired Glenview Court attests to that. Long Live Modernism!

Watch here: VIDEO LINK

ARCHI-TYPES

Intelligent, sensitive exhibitions of contemporary architects and the houses they make are rare. Intelligent, sensitive exhibitions of a group of contemporary architects, together, in one space (we are, it must be said, a notoriously competitive lot…) are even more rare. So when I first heard of Dale Jones-Evans’ Icons By Icons show late last year, I was intrigued. Originally unveiled at the Studio Becker showroom in Redfern, the same show opens again tonight, this time in the more intimate space of the Australian Institute of Architects’ HQ in Potts Point.

The show is the first in what Jones-Evans has conceived as a ‘series of three intergenerational exhibitions’, starting with the undisputed maestros such as Glenn Murcutt, John Wardle and Denton Corker Marhsall; the next to feature their successor generation, and the third intended to showcase the work of rising talent.

By focusing specifically on practices along the Eastern Seaboard, Jones-Evans is making a case for the singularity of the housing style that we in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane have articulated. Specifically, he focuses on the work of the Melbourne offices of Denton Corker Marshall; John Wardle; McBride Charles Ryan; and Sean Godsell, the Sydneysiders Alex Popov (PopovBass); Durbach Block Jaggers; Glenn Murcutt; Luigi Rosselli; Peter Stutchbury, and Brisbanites Donovan Hill and Kerry + Lindsay Clare. He even hints at key characteristics that have begun to coalesce into city-specific styles that allow us to identify the output of practices and practitioners according to climate and geography. But I’ll say no more here – best go see the show to get the scoop on that.

To my mind, this exhibition speaks to a new sophistication in the way that we, as architects, and the public in general, perceive and reflect on architecture and the built environment. If I wore a hat, it would be tipped.

ICONS BY ICONS

An exhibition of 24 houses by 12 of the best Australian architects

Opening 6.30pm 22 February, Closes 5pm 28 March

AIA Tusculum 3 Manning Street, Potts Point, NSW 2011

Curated by Dale Jones-Evans Architect and Adjunct Professor of Architecture UTS

Sponsored by Studio Becker www.studiobecker.com.au and the AIA NSW

GET YER UTZON

The Utzon Room is one of those magical spaces I can only imagine existing in Sydney. Tucked under the eaves at the North-East end of Jørn Utzon’s iconic Opera House, it’s an elegant, intimate room designed for receptions and parties. But its folded concrete beams and soap-washed Blue Gum floors also mean that its acoustics are no less majestic than the view – overlooking Farm Cove and across the Harbour to the Heads. A perfect salon, then, in which to listen to chamber music. Which is just what I will be doing next Sunday the 24th when pianist Dejan Lazić regales us with his masterful repertoire of Scarlatti and Bartók. The thirty-something Croatian only made his debut with the BBC Philharmonic in 2011, and I’m intrigued to hear how this new talent tackles two of my favourite European masters of the sonata. The Utzon Program is a savvy lineup of visiting and local talent, throughout 2013. Book your seats, or make a donation to the Opera House. See you there!