Designer Choice

Like a zeppelin airship crash-landed in the Australian forest, Bellemo & Cat's 'Cocoon' is nestled artfully on a steeply sloping site.

The weekender is located in a dense, bushy, holiday hot-spot along Victoria's famous Great Ocean Road. The architects designed the house as an object; an ovaloid form floating high above the challenging site to capture the dramatic views.

Bellemo & Cat have a sculptural and evocative style that combines their passions of architecture and public art, and Cocoon is no exception. A development of their previous public artworks, Cocoon seems completely at home in its bushy hideaway - a rustic artwork by the beach. More...

When you've come so far, sometimes the only place left to go is backwards.

In a world where 20 mega pixel, mammoth, digital images with crystal clear quality and fully automatic settings is the norm, it seems there is more than just a passing nostalgia associated with retro style 110 film and 8mm home movies. A growing trend is developing towards toy cameras, designed to take unpredictable images with the character and raw qualities of these older film technologies.

Now introduce the the Digital Harinezumi, a new camera from Superheadz. Superheadz is a company made famous for their fantastic toy cameras, but now they have leaped into the market with a digital camera, an area as yet unexplored by (and somewhat contradictory to) toy camera makers.

Cleverly designed, the palm sized camera takes both images and video, and captures the mystical feeling of older-style cameras. The size and quality of the images makes it perfect for use as a journal-like device, allowing you to capture a days events and instilling a nostalgic atmosphere that the mind may ordinarily invoke.

The Gaudi Stool by Bram Geenen, inspired by work of architect Antoní Gaudi, bears similar surrealist qualities to many of Gaudi's gothic-esque works. The stool appears to defy gravity, but is surprisingly strong due to the beam-grid sub structures that Guadi often employed. By using modern rapid prototyping technology the stool can be made of thin carbon fibre. This technology also makes the product surprisingly affordable to manufacture.

Keep an eye out for this at designer stores, the Gaudi-chair is being develepoded as we speak as part of a collaboration with Dutch research institute, TNO.

Axel Peemoeller pointed out a really cool way finding system he worked on in Melbourne's Eureka Tower car park. Bound to eliminate any potential for frustration that car parks inevitably bring - guaranteed fun! Now, where did we park the car? It really is all a matter of perspective!

Amazing industrial designer La Chanh Nguyen from Switzerland has a range of homewares with one thing in common - they grow! Whether it's a moss covered bath mat or a herb growing utensil container, these inspired ideas will bring a little greenery to your home.

WOW. I can't work out whether some of these images, by Italian Photographer Franco Fontana, are alterered or not, but either way they are beautiful, graphically strong and inspiring.

Ashton Raggatt McDougal's recently completed Melbourne Recital Centre and Mebourne Theatre Company buildings set a theatrical tone to the growing Southbank Arts Precinct. The two combined buildings have distinct but complimentary treatments. The firm cleaned up at the recent Victorian Institute of Architecture Awards, receiving accolades in the public architecture, interior design and urban design categories, and it's easy to see why.