Table of contents for INDESIGN #71 - Design Pharmacy in INDESIGN

In the political playground that is commercial design, the health and aged-care sector has been too-often dismissed for its lack of creativity, imagination and resistance to change. Seen as the quiet, studious kid in a classroom of colourful extroverts, the sector has come under criticism for always towing the line, where its counterparts of workplace, hospitality and education revel in stepping over it. In this issue of Indesign, the design pharmacy issue, we reject the idea that health and aged-care is all medical-only thinking and look at its blossoming relationship with evidence-based design and, most importantly, pure creativity. In so doing we unearth the people, projects and revolutionary ideas that are re-writing the future of health and aged-care. From aging to ageless, the Australian design sector is repositioning the aged-care…

Established in 2000, Didier is an Australian design brand striving to produce meaningful furniture and lighting with smart personality and utilitarian charm. Founder and designer Ross Didier shares why responsive R&D is critical in implementing his future-focused vision for the output of his eponymous studio. “For me, design should always be underpinned by a strong philosophy that ideas, manufacturing and design are interwoven – an ‘engineered craft’. We started the studio in 2000 under the unified principle that our designs must be saleable, innovative, sculptural and most importantly useful. It takes a long time to be genuine to your own creative voice and I have made an eclectic range of designs since starting, so it’s pleasingly that our Didier designs are increasingly being specified into important projects both here in…

The ‘workplace revolution’ only dates back a little over 20 years. And the focus has been almost exclusively on the commercial office. But attention is shifting to other kinds of workplaces which are less to do with office space and more about the coal face – hospitals, schools and aged care facilities, intense environments where the efficiency, productivity and well-being of the workforce are even more crucial. Queensland architects, Fulton Trotter, are 70 years old and still basically a family practice. They specialise in education, health and aged care, especially in regional settings. They have a reputation for place-making, identity-building and fit-for-purpose buildings. Director, Mark Trotter, comments: “We’ve always concentrated on a very collaborative process with clients, the project being unique to that client and that place. When you look…

Luxury used to mean the consumption of precious objects and items. Then it became the consumption of exclusive services. Now, it’s all about “transformative experiences” – this is luxury 3.0. And Carr is pioneering this outrageous new archetype with one of 2017’s most Instagrammed projects. But here’s what your social feed might not have told you about the Jackalope Hotel… I hosted a talk recently at Sydney Indesign around the idea of experimentation, extreme creativity and kitsch. The consensus seemed to be that design could certainly stand to be more fearless especially when it comes to next-gen luxury. Burn the birch, crush the conservative and muffle the minimal was the basic sentiment. But hold it right there, cowboy. As it turns out, the weird-and-wonderful design approach of the 80s and…

The Working Capitol, Robinson Road Singapore Architect & Interior Designer HASSELL Project Manager Facility Asia Builder Tarkus Services Engineer Aurecon Quantity Surveyor PTD Consultants Duration 14 months HASSELL hassellstudio.com Furniture Arflex ‘Pecorelle’ armchairs and lounges, ‘GTV’ breakout chairs, Space Furniture. Tacchini ‘Kelly’ meeting room chair, Derlot ‘Picket’ stools, custom tables, Stylecraft. ‘Quadrant’ flexible lounges, Koskela. Lighting ‘IC’ wall ball lights, Space Furniture. Akari ‘1AD’ table lamp. Finishes ‘Chilli’ radiant dichroic film, 3M. Goats hair carpet, Tretford. ‘Coda 2’ fabrics, Kvadrat. ‘Waxed Melville’ marble like cork, pine plywood, Panelogue. ‘LS’ rubber flooring, Deco Expression. Timber flooring, Mafi. Fixed & Fitted ‘X Series’ glazed partition system, JEB. ‘Opendesk’ workstation system, Woodfix. Bendigo Hospital Architect Silver Thomas Hanley Interior Designer Bates Smart Builder Lendlease Structural Engineer Irwinconsult Services Engineer Norman Disney & Young…

A quick piece of trivia to get us started: The first ever-recorded bob was in 1890 – 127 years ago. During that milestone year, in an act of pure feminist defiance, French actress Polaire made huge waves by cropping her luscious locks into a short, bob style that was considered – for that time – highly unrespectable. And it remained taboo right up until the 20th Century’s First World War when, out of necessity, women ditched the inconvenience of long hair so that they could more effectively enter and serve the workforce while the men fought overseas. As time went on, people began to appreciate the empowering qualities of the hairstyle, and through celebrity figures such as 1920s film stars Colleen Moore and Louise Brooks, ‘the bob’ offered young women…

William Smart is a man who, by his own admission, has become an overnight success – despite the fact that he’s been in the business of architecture for 20 years now. It was a passing comment he made whilst accepting an impressive line-up of awards at the inaugural INDE.Awards (June 2017). That night he accepted two awards on behalf of his practice, Smart Design Studio, for the famed Indigo Slam residence in Sydney’s Central Park precinct. The third, The Luminary award, celebrated his own personal accomplishments in the field. But according to Smart, it’s taken every project he has ever worked on, big, small, or budgeted, to get to where he is today. Everything he’s done in the past informs the work of his future. “I moved to Sydney because…

Eight years ago Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie (HG) drew a line in the sand. They were already in an established partnership, but the goal-posts had recently changed. “It was important for us to use that moment to take stock and clarify the kind of work we wanted to do; how we wanted to be perceived as a practice,” says Guthrie. Together they had almost 40 years design experience. The body of work was there and the moment ripe with possibility. But Hecker and Guthrie were keen to put some definition around their practice. “We wanted to keep the work close, and maintain a sense of doing good work, which we felt connected to,” says Guthrie. In that workshop – a rare opportunity for the duo to step back from…

Has co-working been up-staged by the pervading popularity of an out-of-office culture? The answer is, not quite yet! In their latest design for The Working Capitol Robinson Road Singapore, HASSELL expertly subverts pop culture tropes to re-envisage co-working as a progressive yet playful model that speaks the language of the Millennial workforce. Imagine that Friday night overtime crunch: you’re hunched down at your desk, a lonely figure lost in the open-plan of just another high-rise tower office. And then you hear curious, excitable sounds coming from a nearby fellow occupant. Not something you expect to hear from your isolated office space. Looking out towards a neighbouring office tower, you spy a party of people milling in a double-height open space carved from the tower façade. Decked with greenery and a…

Place-specific design is so very de rigueur. But beyond the obvious, how is place-driven design being strategically integrated across both macro and micro aspects of a mega development? This was Terry Snow’s objective for his best-in-class Willinga Park Equestrian Centre – and Cox Architecture have delivered. Property developer, Terry Snow, already had the DA for an equestrian centre on his sprawling 860-hectare property at Bawley Point on the NSW south coast. According to Chris Millman, Cox’s design director for the project, this ticked all the boxes. But then Snow, inspired by Hobart’s MoNA, realised it could be much more – not just an equestrian facility, but a destination. He had already established a sculpture park and native gardens, so he told the architects, “open your shoulders” and make something for…

Designers are working in an exciting health and aged-care climate where the very definitions of the sectors are being questioned, challenged and redefined. Cox Architecture’s (formerly CODA Studios) joyous and uplifting design of Karratha Central Healthcare is a strong example of a multi-dimensional health facility providing medical services and training opportunities that contribute to the improved health and wellbeing of the regional community. The World Health Organisation defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing. In the Pilbara in Western Australia, Karratha Central Healthcare is not only working to improve the health and wellbeing of those who live and work in the region, but it is helping to foster a stronger society and community identity. The organisation’s bright and colourful new facility has been so well…

How can a single space simultaneously serve the needs of healthcare, education and community at all levels? In their most recent project for Cockburn ARC, dwp create the ultimate cross-sector blueprint for a hybrid health, fitness, education, community and culture centre for professional, intermediate and beginner users. A community recreation centre. A high-end health club. An aquatic centre and water park. An elite football training and administration facility. An education and research centre. A health and rehabilitation facility. It reads like a long list of separate buildings, but in fact this was the brief for a single complex given to the dream team of sports and community design, Sandover Pinder + dwp. “While there was only one contractual client, which is the City of Cockburn, there were really three other…

“I grew up in Adelaide and initially studied mechanical engineering at the South Australia Institute of Technology. I found Physics and Chemistry fascinating as the subjects allow you to discover how the world functions, down to its fundamental elements and governing laws. During my studies, I worked as a house painter to fund my education. In doing so, I found I was attracted to architecture because of a deprivation of spatial and environmental sensitivities at an early age; I suppose you could say it was a form of escapism. I spent 10 years as an interior designer and then went back to night school to complete my studies in architecture. Now that I can look back on the last 30-odd years, there was not a single person who influenced my…

“There are four children in the BSH family of brands; each characterised by a set of principles and beliefs as unique as their users.” The alarm clock rings. Time to get up, prepare the coffee and make breakfast: warm the bread rolls in the oven, and fetch the chilled orange juice, butter and jam from the refrigerator. Mix a smoothie, prepare scrambled eggs, all while quickly throwing the dirty laundry in the wash. Scenes such as this unfold everyday in households – no matter where you are in the world. Home appliances should help make everyday life easier for us all. The demands on these helpers have grown – these days it’s no longer enough for the refrigerator to chill or the oven to heat. It’s about the changing requirements…

The oft-opposing principles of medical-based thinking and evidence-based design have long been a sticking point for healthcare designers. The new Bendigo Hospital by Bates Smart and Silver Thomas Hanley shows us they need not be mutually exclusive. There is a sweet-spot to be found. It just takes an intelligent and intuitive design touch. “ It was about softening the architecture, giving it multiple visual layers to appeal to people moving through the space. So the built form becomes the restorative environment that replenishes them and takes a load off their shoulders,” says Bates Smart director, Kristen Whittle. As one of the practices responsible for delivering the multi-award-winning Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Bates Smart is a pioneer in healthcare design. That project is over five years old now, yet remains a…

With all this buzz around ‘human-focused’ design, architects and designers are having to think far more creatively around how to best integrate ‘responsiveness’ into workplaces – especially if your client is a rapid live news outlet. For New Zealand firm Warren and Mahoney, the design of Television New Zealand’s new Auckland headquarters was driven by their interest in the ‘power of people’ and the translation of their collective behaviours into the built form. Sited on an unforgiving thoroughfare in Auckland’s CBD, the TVNZ Television Centre was originally designed by Warren and Mahoney in 1989 – a concrete-framed building, clad in reflective glass and granite. 25 years later, TVNZ asked the architects to remodel and refit the 17,000-square-metre building to meet the new demands of digital content production and broadcast. The…

Tribe Hotel Group – an artfully curated guest-centric and refreshingly affordable design hotel alternative, created for the modern business traveller, the it nomad and the free agent – has launched its first hotel, Tribe Perth. Designed by Travis Walton Architeture, the space is an experiment in the role of the designer o “edit luxury” – and provide everything the modern traveller needs – and nothing they don’t. “ What was challenging, was trying to create an identity for a brand solely in an isolated hotel room, because I think typically that the guest experience is always going to be the arrival, reception, lounge, lift lobby then the final destination is the room,” says designer and architect, Travis Walton. “When you travel, unless you’re in a remote destination where you’re literally…

The healthcare landscape is ever changing in Australia, and the well-versed writings of Bernard Tschumi – “There is no architecture without events, without actions, without activities” – are just as relevant today as they were when taught at design school, according to Tonya Hinde, associate director and Victorian interior design leader at Billard Leece Partnership (BLP). “Health includes your emotions and health is all around us. It isn’t just about what the medicine does, it’s also about the space we inhabit,” she says, referring to Esther Sternberg’s publication Healing Spaces (2009). This is a key focus for Hinde. Over her 26-year career, Hinde’s work has often reflected a personal sense of storytelling and scale regardless of size, sector or typology, which: “goes beyond the flippant in design and gets to…

Whoever subscribes to the idea ‘life as we once knew it ends when you hit 70’ hasn’t checked out the Instagram page of Baddie Winkle (@baddiewinkle). Nothing bursts senior citizen stereotypes quicker than a browse through the account of this sartorially fabulous great grandmother, who at 85 became an internet sensation. Of course, sequins and tie-dye isn’t for everyone (retiree or no), but what this hugely popular social influencer’s online profile suggests is the attitude of an older generation, and indeed attitudes towards aging in general, have changed considerably. These shifts in social norms are being embraced worldwide and rightly so. In Australia alone, according to the government’s Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 15 per cent of Australians were aged 65 and over in 2014, compared to 8…

There’s a damn good reason for our collective aversion to health and aged-care spaces. For decades, our hospital visits have been tinged with the shudder-inducing blue-grey linoleum hue, a colour that reminds us of white lights, disinfectant smells, cold impersonal rooms and some dreadful motel-grade art. These sector stereotypes exist for a reason, where apart from designing-in technological upgrades and the occasional pastel feature-wall in triage, little has actually changed in our design strategies for hospital and senior living facilities. Recently however, these deep-rooted typologies have been recast as major opportunities for radical, design-led change. And the results are already creating tectonic shifts in design thinking around health and aged-care typologies. In their recent efforts for the St John of God Hospital (SJOG) in Geelong, for example, ClarkeHopkinsClarke (CHC) has…

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