From its cracker opening lines onwards Martin McKenzie-Murray’s piece “Brand of dopes’ vainglory” in today’s @SatPaper is a superb reflection on test cricket. Read it and laugh (or weep depending on your side). #Ashes2025

Catherine McGregor’s beautiful, poignant piece that overlaps her personal history with a nation’s one. Superb writing. @SatPaper t.co/tu59ovFnM6

“I hit the deadline and I couldn’t spend any longer fucking things up” _ Brian Eno

Essential read on D&C. “How can any architect in their right mind claim to know what’s been installed on a building when others routinely change specification without regard to the documentation setting out what needs to be done?” @russellcurtis www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion...

“You give space to the listener - he can go inside and live there.” Beautiful observation by Bjork during her interview of Arvo Pärt in 1997. #arvopärt

Can’t understand why the Australian Parliament begins each term with a church service. How is this appropriate for the multicultural community it supposedly represents?

Never enough women’s toilets. Meanwhile men’s empty…the sooner we go all gender the better. #melbourneairport #allgendertoilets

On close reading… “As you read, a line might hit you. You feel struck. You pause. Here’s where close reading happens. Hold up. Linger with that line. Read it again, a few more times. What gives it its force here in its immediate moment? Work out its power.” defector.com/close-readin...

How about a “great government of allies”? Excellent thinking here from #richardflanagan

Interesting density stat from The Conversation. Worth a read. theconversation.com/victorias-pl...

“If Melbourne’s middle suburbs – those between two and 20 kilometres from the CBD – were as dense as those of Toronto, that increase in density alone could accommodate all of the 800,000 extra homes the state government plans to build over the next decade.” theconversation.com/victorias-pl...

‘The lost art of neighboring’ Savannah Fishel discussing intergenerational & communal living on #lifematters @abcnewsbot.bsky.social

‘Listening to the student voice to learn about thriving in vertic(all) schools’ What a great workshop full of insights - & videos - from an impressive range of students & principals too. Hosted by Prof Jill Willis & Dr Jenna Gillett-Swan #LEAConference #2025Odyssey #LEA

Tonight on @SBS Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes. Interesting timing.. #Auspol2025

It should be easy to obtain a planning permit for a new house such as this, regardless of heritage overlay. When heritage drives the design of new buildings we risk poor patterns being replicated. Better to thoughtfully reconfigure to reflect today’s living/amenity expectations.

Says The Australian. Love the irony.

Bandaids rather than wider reform of the major issues facing the nation - climate, housing, inequity etc - apparently enough to retain government because there is no competition. The serious problem of no serious opposition. www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politic...

Stupid. Isn’t the purpose of an Aus standard to set out specifications to help make products/services safe & reliable? Why then accommodate vehicles that increase injury to pedestrians & cyclists? Increase applicable tax not space for these beasts that btw kill streets too.

“Tradition is not something that is received as a legacy, but rather something that is built everyday.” - Gae Aulenti Aulenti’s adaptive re-use projects are more and more pertinent to our everyday. Eg her masterful transformation of railway station to Musee D’Orsay.

House Australia too. Make Melbourne a City of ‘Yes’. Balance risk & opportunity to ease adaption of existing buildings to house people. BVN hosted a terrific session last week at MPavilion - #citiesofyes - around just such possibilities. www.houseeurope.eu/19-join-now

Clifton Towers. 1963. A wedge shaped block of 9 apartments by Architects Lewis Martin and George Porter. One of several excellent towers along Oriental Parade in Wellington, NZ.

Almost there: 144 new dwellings in North Richmond for Homes Victoria. Architect designed for high amenity, high performance, safe, secure, accessible & modern public housing. 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms. We hope it offers a welcome & inclusive homecoming to residents, reflective of this community.

Ken Henry on populist governments acting in their, & their constituent’s, self-interest, not in the interest of future prosperity & equality. “I will state it plainly. Those who believe this nonsense cannot be trusted with the wellbeing of future generations.” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Very good use of balustrade

Eucalyptus cneorifolia, the Kangaroo Island narrow-leaf mallee. In silhouette such magnificent road tracery.

“For those of us who run, or have run, a practice, it’s all too familiar…It’s almost shocking how little has changed – the business of architecture, once the frills & flounces are removed, is basically the same.” Stuart Harrison on Maria Larkin’s Gromboyd book. architectureau.com/articles/gro...

Interesting read. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02...

Peter Cooley, founder of IndigiGrow, grew up learning to live off the land from his Bidjigal elders. He remembers being taught how to identify & collect what could – and could not – be eaten along the coast, whether plants or seafood. #NativePlants #Sydney #IndigiGrow #WildOz tinyurl.com/4fwxu4df

Loved seeing people occupying tram tracks at Collingwood Fitzroy border. Very chilled celebration & street takeover 👏👏👏 #midsumma #pridestreetfestival

A mighty firm corner holding street and lane edge. More on the merits of no setbacks. Otter and Smith Streets Collingwood. What a couple of elevations too.

"When environmental performance is reduced to an indicator like 'kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions', other crucial environmental qualities like biodiversity are rendered virtually invisible." - doi.org/10.1177/0007...

‘Demolition by decline’. A public housing tenant describing the strategy of justifying replacement via neglect. The buildings & grounds becomes so bad that it’s ‘more economical to replace than repair’. Reliable data & expanded understanding of ‘value’ required to properly evaluate.

What ever happened to the joy of home coming? Entry remiss

Oh Canberra you do make it hard to walk. Having crossed Lake BG via Commonwealth Avenue Bridge this is the obstacle between walker and ‘City’. Yes in part due to roadworks but still it will be a perilous, multi lane crossing.

What a waste of the front verandah. Bins in place of furniture. Time to centralize rubbish into street or block collection points. Return the verandah to people for their engagement with & enjoyment of street life.

Which is why state and federal governments should get on with it and act to reform a broken system. Now. #auspol The keys to the housing crisis www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topi... via @thesaturdaypaper.com.au

not to have a hot take but all the money the government allocates to insuring uninsurable single family houses is what should be spent building sustainable housing and doing actual climate mitigation. Sisyphean that as a society would rather set billions of dollars on fire every few years like this

Bishop Mariann Budde. Now there’s leadership. #bishopmariannbudde

Zuckerberg's 'masculine energy' got its first big win with Trump declaring there are only two genders. This is an agenda that will see laws passed to push gays back into the closet and women back into the kitchen. Our trans siblings are in the front line of this fight, so now more than ever

Summer reads 1/2 Fiction Olga Tokarczuk_The Empusium Bernhard Schlink_The Granddaughter: A Novel Jeff Vandermeer _Absolution Barbara Vine_A Dark Adapted Eye Ronni Salt_Gunnawah #booksky

What??? Even more street frontage dedicated to the accommodation of cars??? Even more concessions of street design to the very vehicles linked to pedestrian injury??? Wrong answer. A sure way to further diminish new streets. Downsize cars. Limit large ones to work /rural use.

‘State the problem in words as clearly as possible’ From Oblique Strategy of the Day... #BrianEno #PeterSchmidt A useful start to design.

Entertained by The Birds of Australia notes on the Willy Wagtail: ‘The chief call resembles the phrase “Sweet pretty creature”; it is frequently uttered during day or night, especially on moonlit nights. The alarm call is a chatter that suggests the rattling of a half empty box of safety matches.’

“Is this a moment where we should, in a radical way, rethink the way we live in the city?” says LA Architect Michael Maltzan. The fires raise “significant questions about the long-term sustainability of a city that is fundamentally based on sprawl & single-family development.”

‘It is not often that a group of wildly disparate architects are brought together to create something coherent. This could have been a blockbuster cultural quarter or a ragged collection of discrete monuments, but it has turned into something very different indeed.’ Bahrain’s on the itinerary

Fire ‘fighting’ is exactly the problem. Fighting = resisting the environmental & climatic dynamics of fire ecologies. It is bound to so often fail.

Here too, like Malibu, the ‘neighborhood’ is one of fire. Mike Davis in Ecology of Fear querying the wisdom of rebuilding - justified by clearing vegetation & fire resistant homes - rather than preventing further construction in areas of extreme natural fire danger. longreads.com/2018/12/04/t...

Noticing how useful a dead tree is to cockies - beak sharpening, general preening, coastal prospect. Now keen to retain what I wrongfully thought - as dead wood - should go.

“Listen to the rhythm of the universe… Listen to the universe pulsing” Oldie but a goodie. A marvelous thought for 2025. From Yalla Chant, Natasha Atlas w Transglobal Underground

I don't want my fridge to have a camera or Wi-Fi. I don't want my dishwasher to be smart. I don't want my washing machine to text me. In fact, I kinda miss knobs and dials and knowing big appliances would last 20 years and could still be repaired.