monument magazine

Role Models

Testing Reality: The Architect and the Model, curated by Mark Szczerbicki, is in its final week at Customs House, Sydney. The exhibition looks at the changing role of the model in architecture, especially relevant today as technology gets ever closer to usurping the place of the tangible. Testing Reality also sheds some light on the design processes of some of Europe's most prominant architecture firms including Jean Nouvel, EMBT, Lynch Architects and Bolles + Wilson Architects.

Testing Reality: The Architect and the Model, Red Room & Media Wall, Ground Level, Customs House, Sydney. Closes 1 November.

Art whirl

Last night's Art of Architecture presentation at the Art Gallery of NSW gave Peter McGregor of McGregor Westlake Architecture and Tony Chenchow of Chenchow Little the perfect platform to discuss their current practicein an 'artistic' context. I was hoping for more talk about artists collaborating with architects  

Chenchow Little's extraordinary work of art, Freshwater House. Photograph: John Gollings

It's alive!

Last night was the launch of Art & About and Laneways By George! Hidden Networks in Sydney's CBD, both luring Sydney-siders into viewing their city in an entirely new light - bringing attention to the hidden quarters and factions that we tend to bypass in our daily lives.

Highlights of Laneways By George include 'I Dwell in the City and the City Dwells in Me' where prosthetic skin oozes through the cracks of Bridge Lane as the sound of deep breathing fills the laneway.

Tactile yet grotesque, I could only bring myself to gingerly pat the 'flesh' while the less squeamish prodded and poked, and some just stood and watched in fascination as the city came alive around them. Herbert + Mason and ASPECT Studios' 'The Meeting Place' had our Editor discover her inner child and bounce between the taut yellow woven polyethylene cloth, while a suited Sydney-sider made a straight trek through the installation, missing the fun. Little Hunter Street should be a fun journey for drunken suits!

(click image to view hi res)