After a few days at the Hong Kong Art Fair, a lot of the art posse headed off to the Venice Biennale and then on to Art Basel. By the time they get back from their European jaunt, things will be really warming up for the inaugural Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. Yep, Sydney is about to dip a toe into to the increasingly choppy waters of the international Art Fair circuit! And as an Ambassador and member of the Advisory Council – along with such local luminaries as gallerist Rosyln Oxley, art consultant Mark Hughes, collectors extraordinaires Sue Cato and Dr Dick Quan, among others – I am proud to rally behind our fearless leader Barry Keldoulis to make this an event to remember. To date, more than 75 galleries from around the world have confirmed their presence; that’s a massive vote of confidence in the vitality of the Sydney art scene and the capacity of the city to attract international visitors. Big-name galleries will be offset by smaller galleries and artist-run initiatives, making sure Sydney Contemporary ’13 (it’s official name) runs the gamut of big guns and rising talent.

See you at Carriageworks, September 19-22nd!

Doing great work for a great client is so rewarding. Seeing that work recognised by a jury of our peers is awesome! So happy, then, that our design for the Tongue n Groove showroom has scooped the Best Retail and Best in State prizes at the 2013 Australian Interior Design Awards. In a very real sense, this award recognizes the client’s audaciousness of brief as much as our response to it. At a time when retail is suffering enormously, it is our belief that strong, conceptually coherent design will win the day, forging a path ahead of the pack. As online shopping becomes increasingly common, retail today has to be a total immersion experience.

Thanks to the jury for commending the ‘clarity, assuredness and spirit’ of the project – we take it as the Tobias Partners motto. My thanks also to Edmund Spencer and Pia Wolanski of Tobias Partners for their invaluable input as well as builder Joshua Clapp for the excellence of his craftsmanship.

It’s always a delight to see Tobias Partners’ projects featured in the press. For the affirmation, of course. But also, and even more importantly, for the pleasure of reading the critics’ interpretations of our work. I was particularly thrilled to read Chris Pearson’s insightful interpretation of our recently completed, somewhat sprawling house in Bronte in this month’s Belle magazine. Pearson digs right back to my roots, even before I set up my practice – touring Europe’s classical architectural gems with the late, great interior designer John Coote, and quite rightfully hones in on my fascination with Palladian villas. While this Bronte home is avowedly down-to-earth in its glamour, I gleefully accept Chris’ point about “proportion, scale and gravitas”. Recommended reading.

Well, it was a whirlwind tour of the Art Basel Hong Kong Art Fair – and the takeaway is pretty positive. Whilst the timing (so close to Frieze in New York and the Venice Biennale) led me to think that a lot of the top-notch stuff was withheld, the turnout was impressive nonetheless. What was particularly interesting – beyond the extraordinary Jean-Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian Gallery – was the evolution of contemporary Chinese art in the world today. No longer is it dominated by the reverberation of anticommunism, an entirely new aesthetic feels to be afoot. Zhu Jinshi’s The Reality of Paint show at Pearl Lam Galleries is a case in point: rarely have I seen so much paint in an artist’s work!

ABHK was also, in a sense, the first (unofficial) off-shore meeting of the advisory panel of the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, to be held this year from 20-22 September. Roslyn Oxley, Tim Etchells, Sue Cato, Mark Hughes, Lucy Turnbull, Dick Quan, led by wonderful CEO Barry Keldoulis. It’s an exciting lineup for what is shaping up to be a very lively moment on the international art calendar. More news on that, very soon.

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…

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.

Last week saw the inauguration of the TP-designed library of the Montessori School in Bondi. Total disclosure number 1: my wife Miranda Darling is, among many other talents, a published author. Total disclosure number 2: my two boys, Samson and Griffin are enrolled as students at this school. These facts made the importance of reading – a reality sometimes relegated to the realm of abstract truism – a total home-grown truth, indeed our focus here at Tobias Partners as we worked on the design and delivery of a key component of this terrific school’s offer.

We are really chuffed to have been able to have made a significant donation to the library through design, documentation and management of the library project. Keeping it simple, we opted for a gridded structure in unfinished ply wood that took full advantage of the natural light flooding into the library precinct of the building. Leaving the room as uncluttered as possible means that the children can interact with the books in an organic rather than regulated manner.

Tony Kay, Deputy Mayor of Waverley, and the school’s principal Bill Conway both seemed to highly enjoy Deborah Abela’s reading from her very excellent Max Remy Spy series. Or perhaps they were happy about the rice paper rolls, donated by that feisty – and generous – entrepreneur, miss Nahji Chu.

(LINK to more images)

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.

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.

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.