wabi-sabi

people still chase those perfect rooms.

“Perfect” interior décor can be captivating in photographs, but underlying the flawless arrangement of drapery, wallpaper and furnishings is a palpable fear of anticipation — when will this mirage of a showroom become, you know, “used?”

You can’t dance in a corner.

But many people insist on turning their houses into some kind of fetish that delivers a voyeuristic thrill — rooms to look at, but that have little capacity for real life.

Visually perfect in every way,but ultimately inhospitable.

At the pub, I canvass some opinions. Some have been energised by the debate, others traumatised.

Frustrated by this turn of events and starved of open conflict, at this point I decide to suicidally launch myself into the fray. I was supposed to write about the conversation, not get involved, but here I am pointing out the elephant in the room. “I don’t like the building,” I tell Marshall. He gives me the dead eye and says, “so what?” Well, I think, if the building wasn’t flawed and problematic, why would we be having this debate? Wouldn’t Marshall be delivering a triumphant lecture instead?

By now, the conversation has devolved from prize fight to ping pong match, with no one willing to land a punch.

Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)

There was an air of expectation in the room, tensions charged by the prospect of imminent bloodshed.

“When we can, we like to use colour, and strong colour at that – it lifts people’s spirits,”

By operating between the foyers they avoid the previous state of confusion where visitors were deposited mid exhibition with no clear understanding of which direction to take

Access has been a major consideration of the renovation and to this end elevators travel to all floors while the George Street entrance is a gentle rise, free of stairs.

From the foyer, the floors are connected by a raw and open staircase that provides cohesion while allowing an abundance of light to flood the foyers and spread inwards to the exhibition spaces.

a tour de force of cinematic obsession and an absolute delight to watch. It is also a parallel work to Marking Time, one of two curated exhibitions that were on view in the main exhibition spaces.

Programmatically, Marshall has placed the foyer as a fulcrum at the juncture of old and new. This is visually reinforced from the quay, where the museum is now entered via a substantial plaza and grand staircase of broad cement stairs creating an undeniably extravagant sense of arrival. Leading the visitor upwards is a commissioned wall work of orange triangles, Tango, 2012, by Helen Eager. From George Street, the entrance is less grand, but a vast improvement on the confusing previous incarnation. To the south, the older part of the museum exists as large corridors that open and flow through a variety of exhibition spaces.

To say that there has been a lot of hoopla around the MCA’s renovation would be something of an understatement

During this summer's drought, which landscapers say damaged even sprinklered lawns and cut into their crews' productivity, Mr. Alfredo's company has made deliveries of 6,000 gallons of water, at about $1,000 a tankerload, to a number of customers' lawns.

In the Eisenhower era, they called this keeping up with the Joneses, and something of the same materialism and competition has returned in a decade of similar prosperity and political complacency.

Gallup Organization

Despite environmental concern with pesticides and herbicides and a brief fling with prairies and meadows in the 1980's, many suburban males want their lawns to look like ballparks and putting greens.

Lawns, once again a suburban status symbol, are bigger.

In a development of similar new houses with mostly burnt, brown lawns lumpy from the excavator's backhoe, his is the really green, rolling, luxuriant one, the one with mowing lines like straight brush strokes up and down a fine piece of suede.

In the Twentieth Century, Corbusian Modernism eventually had a monumental impact on London’s streets and skyline. Again the catalyst was in part a disaster - the havoc wreaked by the Luftwaffe and the need for rapid reconstruction - and the solution was political

When we were in Chicago at the end of June, the city launched its own bike share scheme. New York already has one.

I believe that cycling might just be the catalyst for a 21st Century urban renaissance.

And the trend’s not anomalous to London: Wikipedia reports that there are 535 cycle-share schemes in 49 countries, employing more than half a million bikes worldwide.

London’s cycle hire scheme, named after mayor Boris Johnson – was the clearest indication to date that cycling was no longer just for a minority of fanatics but a healthy, efficient and sustainable mode of transport that city planners wanted in their armoury.

“Not enough women designers are given the recognition that they deserve,”

Forty or fifty years ago, the workforce was overwhelmingly a man’s world. In the design field, many women may have been assistants or “office girls” and so few held the top titles, such as art director or creative director. In a basic sense, women’s careers have rarely followed the same path of men’s, since there has historically been immense pressure placed on women to be solely homemakers and nurture families

three hundred and twenty-three independent designers listed — twenty-two women.

And while we can claim more progressive (and equal) laws and beliefs in present day society,

It is often discussed, academically and informally, that the presence of female designers missing from the history of graphic design is a sore oversight of the profession.

The amazing keynote of the Peacock Room, given its crowding with visual incident, is simplicity. Its many elements are indeed harmonic—orchestral, in effect—and resilient, as proved by the design’s unplanned hospitality to Freer’s ceramics.

limited number of blue-and-white pieces similar to Leyland’s. The effect is wonderful.

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Middle Eastern earthenware and stoneware ceramics,

blue-and-white Chinese porcelains.

marvel of modern technology: central air. The heating, air-conditioning, and bright lights eliminated the need for windows, so in the 1950s and ’60s, stores without windows were built inside new shopping malls.

So you follow that path, which leads you where the store wants you to go. It leads you away from the exits and toward the interior. When you want to go up, the elevators are always hidden so that you’re more likely to take the escalator. Once you get to the next level, you have to walk all the way around the other side to keep going up, so you see everything showcased on that floor.”

t seems that the 2008 recession and dominance of the Internet—where you can buy anything and everything with a few clicks

“Today, we shop as if we know about everything that we’re shopping for, but in the mid-century, you trusted your department store.”

About 20 percent of the 2,000 largest U.S. malls were failing in 2008, and by 2012, only 1,513 remained in operation. Current numbers predict more than 200 existing big malls will collapse in the next 10 years.

The frame “is a tour de force, absolutely the most creative and involved surround for a painting that I have ever seen,

The image was widely distributed in Europe, and in America it has adorned postcards, postage stamps and coffee mugs.

“is one of the most frequently reproduced images in American culture,”

“It’s like the boat that was built in the basement,”

is one of the largest paintings in the museum, measuring 21 feet wide and 12 feet high.