Wk47 2024
Graphic Design/Music
Bureau Borsche - Showreel No. 5
One of the top, and my favourite, graphic design firms, Bureau Borsche, used to release their portfolios in the form of a video Showreel. This one was put together by an intern who also produced the soundtrack. It’s the best, and sometimes it’s worth to just leave in the background for the music.
If you don’t know Bureau Borsche, you do. They have worked with Balenciaga, FC Milano, Venezia FC, Dekmantel, Supreme…basically nearly all of the most impactful contemporary cultural institutions.
Architecture
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne by 3XN
3XN and Itten+Brechbühl have released their timber master plan design for a 10 building campus for the Swiss university. The material was chosen for its lower environmental impacts in order to help reduce the project’s embodied-carbon. The material, its properties, and sustainability considerations for the design are in line with 3XN’s project lineage, which has been pioneering sustainable and adaptive-reuse design for decades. You can read more about the project in Dezeen or 3XN’s website.
Itten+Brechbühl’s Temporary Sports Hall
The architecture firm used glued laminated timber to create a demountable sports structure for the University of Switzerland meant to be a temporary facility for the next decade. The concept and systems which form the structure will hopefully open the pathway for broader implementation in architecture. Once the building’s purpose at a site has been fulfilled it can be built elsewhere or have all of its components repurposed for another structure altogether. More on I+B’s wesbite.
Grab the Gabagool and $18M
The Staten Island mansion of Gambino head Paul Castellano is up for sale.
Mixes
Fashion
Sydney Fashion Week, Dead
Mid last week IMG, the up-until-then owner and organiser of Australian Fashion Week, announced it was abandoning its responsibilities in running the event. From the perspective of many Sydney-siders who were within the fashion world this was not incredibly surprising. The event had lost its appeal and global relevance over the years.
Though it undeniably served as a critical launchpad for Australia’s most renowned designers who went on to build greater careers overseas, it was not able to compete with the European incumbents in bringing the cache, attention, and most critically, capital required to support it. This announcement is a tremendous loss for local talent, who will now face even greater hurdles in order to promote themselves overseas. However, it is also an important case study for the challenges that arise when an outsider tries to match the established European and North American players in the game.
Without the attraction of big name models and labels it was difficult for AFW to attract foreign buyers and other influential industry players. This meant the return on investment, especially for emerging designers, was quickly diminishing. Furthermore, AFW isn't able to rely upon its location’s branding as much as New York, Paris, London ,etc. If you do a quick and unscientific desktop analysis between all of the world’s famous fashion weeks that is one of the factors — the location itself is world-renowned. If you take my hometown, Sao Paulo, for example it also hosts its own fashion week, but much like AFW’s, its ripples don’t seem to cross the ocean into Europe at all.
Hopefully a new organiser emerges to revive and revitalise AFW. But until then, AFW’s current state might perhaps be a hint that more lateral strategies would be better suited for Australia’s fashion market conditions such as leveraging Australian fashion publications with international presence in order to promote emerging talents in a more cost-effective manner. The Australian Fashion Council has announced it will be taking over with the aim of running the event as usual in May 2025, let’s see what strategy they adopt.
