Table of contents for Issue 54 in Artichoke

In issue 42 of Artichoke we published an essay titled “The Future of Hotels.” Co-written by Bates Smart design director Jeff Copolov and associate director of interior design Jan Eastwood, the article listed ten key drivers that would shape future hotel design. It is three years since we published that article and many of the drivers noted in it, such as the environmental footprint, a point of difference and “hotels as home,” still resonate today. But Copolov and Eastwood’s essay couldn’t have predicted the impact one particular disruptor would have on hotels: Airbnb. Valued at $25 billion (more than the 58-year-old Marriott chain), Airbnb proves that new platforms can quickly blindside a long-established industry. Airbnb has had extraordinary success, but arguably it fails to offer the design quality and consistency…

(1) Pendant Light by Studio Twocan Studio Twocan is the creative studio of sisters Maddie and Becc Sharrock, whose work celebrates rich colours, pattern and texture. As part of their Cement Ceramics collection inspired by Australian landscapes, the Pendant Light uses only a few elements to create maximum effect. Cement was chosen for its raw honesty, and the cylindrical pendant is coloured with intense pigments and polished with natural oils, resulting in each piece being unique. Studio Twocan studio-twocan-shop.com.au (2) Lady Carolina by Biasol Design Studio and Elle Critchley Biasol Design Studio and Elle Critchley have transformed a pre-existing beer-hall-inspired interior and a traditional East Brunswick exterior into Lady Carolina, a Latin American food and drink venue in Melbourne. The design team created two different personalities at Lady Carolina: the…

If your visits to Chippendale in Sydney have been few and far between in recent years, you’d be excused if you didn’t recognize the place. What was once a grungy (real estate speak for “dodgy”) quarter girt by peak-hour traffic and train lines now has bona fide dining spots, art galleries, a Jean Nouvel highrise and a really good bakery. The (new) Old Clare Hotel sits right in the midst of these nascent hotspots, on the corner of Broadway and Kensington Street, on the former site of the Carlton and United Breweries (C.U.B.) administration building and The County Clare hotel, a pub designed by architect Sidney Warden in 1940. There’s a lot of nostalgia for both these old beer shrines, from locals and those behind the new hotel, and that…

The annual Eat Drink Design Awards provides a unique opportunity for architects and designers to join with their hospitality clients to celebrate the best Australasian eating and drinking projects. Endorsed by the Australian Institute of Architects and the Design Institute of Australia, the Eat Drink Design Awards is now entering its fifth year. The program continues to grow, with a record-breaking 176 projects entered into last year’s awards program. Once again, entries will be judged by an eminent jury drawn from the hospitality and architecture industries. The 2016 jury comprises Hamish Guthrie (director of Hecker Guthrie), Julie Gibbs (food guru and cookbook publisher), Adele Winteridge (director of Foolscap Studio), Terry Durack (chief restaurant critic at The Sydney Morning Herald) and Cameron Bruhn (editorial director of Architecture Media). The 2015 awards…

For the 2015 Lexus Design Pavilion, a stable of worldclass creatives, including designers, chefs and installation artists, was assembled to create a marquee that represented Lexus’s penchant for luxury and design. For a second consecutive year, Melbourne-based interiors firm Mim Design and sustainable artist Joost Bakker were charged with the pavilion’s design, inspired by the concept of “a journey of the senses.” Over six weeks, Bakker clad the three-storey pavilion in metres of recycled and rusted wire, effectively creating a bird’s nest in the Birdcage. Inside, Bakker hung thousands of pink tulips from the ceiling, creating a memorable canopy of foliage and flowers. Mim Design separated the pavilion into distinct zones spread over three levels. Lexus chief designer Nicolas Hogios’s life-size polystyrene sculpture of the company’s New Generation RX vehicle…

On 5 November 2015, the DIA was called before the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the establishment of the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA). The committee was established in response to widespread concern in the cultural sector and wider community following changes to existing Australia Council funding arrangements as part of the 2014–2015 Commonwealth Budget. The DIA appeared as part of a panel with Object: Australian Design Centre and Museums & Galleries NSW. The inquiry’s final submission was made by Australia Council CEO Tony Grybowski and chair Rupert Myer AM. The DIA believes that design is integral to the cultural “ecosystem” and values and celebrates all artistic practice. On this basis, the DIA elected to advocate for a review of the NPEA program.…

For his eleventh hospitality offering, Melbourne restaurateur Jason M. Jones envisioned a cafe as relaxing as the most welcoming of residences. The aptly named Second Home is an unassuming pocket of calm activity situated in Melbourne’s leafy north-eastern suburb of Eltham. It was a labour of love for Jones and his partner Brahman Perera, also the project’s interior designer, who worked together on the design process to realize their concept for a laidback dining experience. The interior’s striking lack of pretension reflects the couple’s personal taste and styling, but is also due in large part to the restrained architecture. Set back from the road, the brown brick building was designed by self-taught architect Alistair Knox as a light bulb factory in the early 1970s. Since that time, the generous 280-square-metre…

It’s late in the day and the elegant streets and squares of central London are as quiet as they get. In the soft, evening light the hustle and bustle of the metropolis yields to its historic silhouette. Just south of Oxford Street, in Mayfair’s tranquil Brown Hart Gardens, the white facade of an Art Deco palazzo lights up the Victorian quadrangle. In 2014, this elegant neoclassical pile, originally designed as a parking garage by architects Wimperis & Simpson in the 1920s, was thoughtfully reimagined as The Beaumont, a seventy-three-room five-star hotel. This endearing urbanity is presided over by ROOM by Antony Gormley, a three-storey-high anthropomorphic sculpture by the Turner Prize-winning artist. Sitting atop a ready-made plinth on the south-west side of the hotel’s facade, this monumental, cuboid figure is crouched…

Gijs Bakker’s career spans fifty years and not one of them dull. His first piece, Golden Onion, a sperm-shaped bracelet designed in 1965 was the beginning of a rich, varied and invigorating output that shows no sign of slowing down today. Bakker refers to himself as a “jewellery designer” and since the Dutch aren’t big on disingenuousness, I have to take him at his word. But of course he’s much more than what might be seen as a mere bijoutier. His adhesion to the mantle is in part to reinforce his challenge to our preconceptions. “Never assume,” is a recurring “Gijsism.” “What I love about jewellery is that it is totally unnecessary,” he smiles. Bakker smiles a lot – the way I imagine a cardinal might smile, knowingly. I can…

Robert Backhouse I want to kick off with a question to Clive about the concrete and fixed “big table” in workplace design – and being very literal about concrete in the sense of the people connection – versus the use of more flexible and moveable elements, such as trestle tables. It’s almost from one extreme to the other – from concrete to the ramshackle loose fit. How do you get the same cultural spirit out of these scenarios, despite the scale or the different approach? Clive Wilkinson Well, I think the big table notion was [at first] regarded as ridiculous by pretty much everyone. And I think the surprise was that it actually worked, which is what we saw at The Barbarian Group table (a New York project completed by…

Leanne Amodeo is a freelance architecture and design writer, currently based in Adelaide. She has contributed to both national and international publications and is a former editor of Monument and Inside magazines. — Second Home (page 22) Peter Bennetts is a Melbourne-based globe-roaming architectural photographer whose work appears in internationally acclaimed publications. — Jimmy Grants Richmond (page 28) Sing D’Arcy is a lecturer in the interior architecture program at the University of New South Wales. He coordinates the technologies stream as well as teaching in the final-year design studio. — Little National Hotel (page 64) and Paramount by The Office Space (page 102) Brooke Holm is a photographer whose work traverses dramatic landscapes, conceptual still life, considered interiors and architecture. With defining attention to detail and a unique eye for…

Upon entering souvlaki restaurant Jimmy Grants’ new Richmond spot, something feels deeply familiar. The hallmarks of so many suburban family homes, particularly migrant homes, are present – the cream brick, the brass light fittings, the mishmash of retro wallpaper. It almost conjures up that mixed smell of cleaning products and cooking that permeated through the family homes of old childhood friends. It’s comfortingly familiar, and feels a little like home. The inspiration for the restaurant came from owner George Calombaris’s first family home, which his parents settled into as new migrants in the 1950s. The name Jimmy Grants comes from Australian rhyming slang for immigrant. The tagline that is scattered throughout the venue, “There’s a little bit of Jimmy in everyone” sums it up. Jimmy Grants is the collective story…

For people outside the design profession, it is often the finished product that most represents what designers do. Yet for those within the professions of architecture and interiors, the reality of practice is embedded in the processes and dynamics of teamwork and collaboration. The success or failure of a completed project is, more often than not, demonstrative of the efficacy of the team – the client, contractors, consultants and designer. Commonly today, the procurement and delivery of most mid- to large-scale projects does not favour an integrated collaborative approach; instead, each parcel is bundled up into its discrete billable and deliverable segments. Rejecting this mode of working, Woods Bagot and The Office Space (the client and builder) have collaborated on Paramount to produce an interior of outstanding quality, both in…