News location:

Canberra Today 14°/18° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / Rachael has designs on Canberra

The Museum of Possibilities.

“CANBERRA is most definitely a design city,” says Rachael Coghlan, CEO of Craft ACT and artistic director of the fifth Design Canberra Festival.

“When I look on the ‘axis’ from Mt Ainslie it takes my breath away,” she adds, summing up the collective feeling.

With visitation numbers of 94,455 in 2017, up 37 per cent from the previous year, the numbers for Design Canberra are “enough”, she says.

“We want to keep the free spirit of the event, so most events are free, although there are some ticketed ones, like the bus tours and the opening party at Monaro Mall,” Coghlan says.

“But the whole festival is a collaboration with the community.”

This is the third year running they’ll be holding the popular “Living Rooms” venture, in which people can get behind closed doors into beautiful, architect-designed houses enlivened by pop-up exhibitions of works on sale by local artists.

If you call Canberra a “design city”, you can’t get away from history – everyone’s heard of the Griffins, Walter and Marion, but it didn’t stop with them and this year’s architecture tours, presented by local enthusiast Martin Miles, will look at the 2018 Design Canberra theme, “geometry”, and at one of the city’s most important living modernist architects Enrico Taglietti, still going strong at 92.

Kengo Kuma Laboratory.

Access to artists’ open studios is another successful aspect of Design Canberra, where you can just walk in, but they’re trying to focus it over weekends and assist people to get around and see Canberra‘s art-makers.

“There’s a strong move in Australian society towards making things by hand and slowing down, towards making something that lasts,” Coghlan says.

“It’s probably a reaction to the disposable society.”

Among the other inspiring global design figures coming this year will be computational super-designer Dave Pigram from the firm ETH Zürich. He went to Giralang Primary School, which was designed by – who else? – Enrico Taglietti.

The festival’s international line-up also includes Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, whose work “Namako” is a three-metre-high, 12-metre-wide ephemeral architectural installation on Aspen Island involving 40,000 zip-ties.

The program shows a smorgasbord of music, poetry, night adventures and above all, quirky events that stretch the parameters of design.

For one day only, on November 22, in “Museum of Possibilities”, Montreal’s “Daily Tous Les Jours” will transform City Hill into a field of balloons which will invite visitors to share their dreams and visions for Canberra.

Design Canberra, November 5-25, book at designcanberrafestival.com.au

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews