David Holland, the Australian Institute of Architects SA Chapter President has said “The appointment of Sydney architect Ben Hewett is a vital follow-up to the formation late last year of the Integrated Design Commission (IDC), and recent appointment of Tim Horton as SA Integrated Design Commissioner.”

The Integrated Design Commission offers the strongest national model for integrated design excellence, and will be a key initiative in enhancing the quality of Adelaide’s growth over the next 30 years.

“On top of this, we expect to benefit from Ben Hewett’s independence as a respected interstate professional, with experience in both practice and academia. We look forward to working with him and anticipate that Ben’s appointment will see a strong emphasis on practice-based research and innovation.”

Architects welcome appointment of SA Government Architect

Edited by Adrian Lahoud, Charles Rice and Anthony Burke, the new AD, Post-Traumatic Urbanism is wrapped and on the way to shelves now. For more, take a look at Adrian’s site by the same name here.

The special issue of Architectural Design includes contributions from Slavoj Zizek, Andrew Benjamin, Eyal Weizman, Brian Massumi, Tony Chakar, Mark Fisher, Todd Reisz and Michael Chertoff.

For your own copy click here.

Anthony Burke has been promoted to Associate Professor and has taken the position of Head of School at UTS in Architecture.  Although we will be busy, we will continue to consult as always. For Offshore this will mean we can further develop our research interests with the support of UTS and is a great development for us. We’ll probably end up cross posting a few events for UTS here, so watch this space. We’ll use this space to post new plans for UTS in the coming months, and link to a new site currently under development. This news broke at the UTS end of year show last year only a few hours before the police were called to shut us down.

Some other recent events of note;

-Our Friend Gerard Reinmuth of Terroir has been appointed a visiting professor at Aarhus in Denmark, and is reveling in the thought of bringing 120 Danish Students to UTS in March this year.

-David Burns of SO-AD has taken the position of Director of a new course at UTS Photography and Situated Media. David has been developing an amazing curriculum already with colleague Adam Jasper.

-Sam Spurr also has taken a role as course director for Interior Architecture at UTS and will be developing the course over the next year.

However, a random call from a speech writer for the Federal Minister for Trade Simon Crean alerted us to the fact it was in Kunming and being opened by said minister. Great! Now its at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou being opened by the Australian Consular General in Kunming, Sean Kelly, and part of a conference where other Australia practices, not initially in the exhibition, seem to be speaking to potential trade partners.

See this link here for an article we came across in the Life of Guangzhou website.

Credit to the Austalian Institute of Architects International for picking up the itinerary after the US, but finding out what’s happening has been impossible. If anyone has news, or better, photos of the exhibition, please send to us. The 16 exhibitors as well as ourselves would love to know what’s become of the exhibition and who’s standing in front of it.

Also reminds me of the black hole I found myself looking into when initially approaching the Australian Embassy’s in SF and NY to take an interest. It was clear that if it wasn’t indigineous painting or South Australian wine, there would be no place for architecture as a cultural export. Funny to see the dignitaries in front of it now drumming up business in China.

As we are just beginning to plan the next exhibition, lets see how ready the Australian Government is this time to help!!

image from Life of Guangzhou article

The exhibition will feature works by: AMID* [cero9], Emergent Architecture, Greg Lynn, Frank Minnaert, MVRDV, An Te Liu, Novague, NOX / Lars Spuybroek, Offshore studio, Alexandre Orion, Paul Curtis, Phooey Architects, R&Sie(n), Andrew Ross, Sasja Saptenno, Tomas Saraceno and Semiconductor.

Check HERE for more.

“Complex curvature, cascading geometries and agent based swarms – is architecture finally on the verge of embracing an idiom and methodology truly representative of our post-machine age?”

Check out the online version here featuring work from our UTS students. Also, see my interview with Tristram Carfrae and Philip Cox part one and part two.