Tag Archive for 'australian design'

Celebrating Christmas with Australian flowers

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When was Australian flora first used to celebrate Christmas?

Collection: Powerhouse Museum.

(Image: from Christmas bells floral design, Plate, porcelain by Reginald Austin for Royal Worchester, England , retailed by Flavelle Bros Ltd, Sydney, 1912-14.)

Letters from settlers in the colony of News South Wales in the 1830s described the use of Australian native plants like Christmas bush and Christmas bells. They replaced the traditional red and green of European holly and ivy. Louisa Anne Meredith, a writer and artist visited the colonies in the 1830s and describes Christmas at Parramatta

“We used to meet numbers of people carrying bundles of beautiful native shrubs to decorate the houses, in the same way we use holly and evergreens at home… it is a handsome verdant shrub, with flowers, irregularly flower shaped and go from green to crimson in colour” *

Australian natives are significant as ‘Christmas plants’ in various parts of Australia. Many Australia homes feature bunches of red Christmas bush as decorations for the festive season.

The Museum’s collection reflects the use Australian flora in a range of decorative and applied arts like glasses, cups and plates (such as the one above), bowls and this card case.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

(Image: A1707 Cardcase, sterling silver / enamel /leather, Christmas bell motif, Germany, 1912)

Adorned with Christmas bells this case was exhibited by the Museum at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition, San Francisco, 1915.

It was acquired by the Museum for its spectacular ‘Australian Flora in Applied Art ‘ exhibition of 200 decorative arts objects made mostly in England, for the Australian market. The exhibition opened in 1906 with new objects added until the 1930s.

Australian flora was also used in building ornamentation like this stained glass design.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

(Image: Stained glass panel, eucalyptus, waratah, flannel flower and Christmas bush design, lead, glass, made by George Hulme, Sydney Technical College, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1900-1907)

This beautiful glass consists of sinuous tendrils of eucalyptus framing sides and bottom. The central portion is a columnar arrangement of waratahs, flannel flowers, Christmas bush and native fuchsia (elopea speciosissima R Br., Acinotus helianthi, Ceratopetalum gummi ferum, Epacris) in shades of red, green, yellow, pink and brown.
The Museums collections also houses botanical models, like this one of a Christmas bush.

The models were used as educational tools showing in detail the workings of plants. You can also see an earlier 20th century version of this Museum’s label with it.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

(Image: D10202 Botanical model, (fruit of Christmas Bush), mixed media, modelled by A E Rice, coloured by Charles Toms, Sydney Technical College, Sydney, Australia, c. 1900)

*126-127 notes and sketches of New South Wales during a residence in the colony from 1839 to 1844,Mrs Charles Meredith, Sydney Ure Smith and national trust, 1844

World’s smallest ultrasound machine on display

Published by Angelique Hutchison 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Signos pocket-sized ultrasound system by Design+Industry and Signostics. Image courtesy of Signostics.

The world’s smallest ultrasound machine is now on display in the Australian International Design Awards exhibition. The Signos Pocket Sized ultrasound system uses high frequency sound waves to look at organs and structures inside the body. It weighs in at only 300 grams and is the size of a mobile phone.

Doctors in emergency care or remote locations can use it to examine patients quickly and easily. The high resolution screen shows images instantly, and the inbuilt microphone allows doctors to record notes.

Signos pocket-sized ultrasound system by Design+Industry and Signostics. Image courtesy of Signostics.

The Signos is of particular benefit in emergency medicine. It can be worn around the neck like a stethoscope and provides quick scanning and triaging of patients. It can detect internal fluids or trauma or the presence of a heartbeat. The device has potential for use in rural and remote areas where larger, more expensive machines are not available. It is also being used in veterinary applications.

Developed by Adelaide-based Signostics and Sydney/Melbourne-based Design+Industry, the device has been approved for use in the USA, Australia and Europe. Signostics has its global sales and marketing in Silicon Valley, California.

The Signos Pocket Sized ultrasound received the Powerhouse Museum Design Award at the Australian International Design Awards ceremony for its potential to make a significant improvement to the quality of the environment, health or wellbeing. It also received an Australian International Design Award in 2010.

Australians were instrumental in developing ultrasound technology in the 1970s, and the Museum holds one of the orignal UI Octoson machines  in the collection.

Award-winning surfboard design

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Meyerhoffer surfboard by Modern Longboards, Thomas Meyerhoffer and Global Surf Industries. Courtesy Australian International Design Awards, part of Standards Australia.

One of the products featured in this year’s Australian International Design Awards exhibition is the Meyerhoffer Surfboard. It is a distinct hybrid surfboard design, and behaves like both a longboard and a shortboard. You can stand on the back and turn the board easily like a shortboard, and you can also nose ride on the front like a longboard. Designed by California-based Thomas Meyerhoffer, it was developed in partnership with Australian-based company Global Surf Industries. The combination of the shape of the board and a lightweight SLX epoxy material make for a truly unique product. The board received an Australian International Design Award in 2010.

This board is the latest of several Australian innovations in surfing technology that have been displayed and collected by the Museum. In 1980 the development of the three fin surfboard by Simon Anderson was considered the most significant change in the 80 year history of surfboard design. The development of the FCS removable fin system was a second major innovation in surfboard design.

Another unusual Australian approach to surfboard design and manufacture was the Bambu surfboard designed and made by Mei Yap Gordon and Shale Gordon in Byron Bay. This bamboo surfboard received an Australian Design Award for Industrial Design in 2002 and was displayed at Powerhouse Museum. With a core of polystyrene foam with a covering of bamboo veneer embedded in epoxy resin, it has its primary strength stored in the outer skin resulting in a more flexible board. The weight of the board is distributed away from the centre of the board and it is lighter, faster and more durable than conventional boards. The use of natural bamboo on the exterior reduced the need for extensive use of resin and fibre glass. It also gives the board a natural ‘eco-friendly’ aesthetic.  

FCS H-2 surfboard fins designed and made by Surf Hardware International, Talon Technologies and Metro Solutions, 2004.

In 2005 the FCS H-2 surfboard fins received the Australian Design Award of the Year and were also displayed at the Museum. These fins represented the introduction of a hi-tech approach in what had traditionally been a handcrafted industry. They were a result of a unique collaboration between hydrodynamic and materials experts, manufacturing consultants, world champion surfers and fin makers. The fin has a different geometry than previous fins and is made from a lightweight aluminium and fibreglass composite material. The design was developed using scientific tank flow testing and refined by use in the ocean. This was a new approach to improving surfboard performance by focusing on the design of the fins themselves rather than the shape of the board.

Latest Australian product design on show

Published by Angelique Hutchison 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Museum’s annual selection from the 2010 Australian International Design Awards is now on show as part of Sydney Design 2010.

Emotiv EPOC by 4design and Emotiv Systems. Courtesy Australian International Design Awards, part of Standards Australia

This year’s exhibition includes a gaming headset that reads brain signals and facial expressions and a pocket-sized ultrasound system. Student concepts including a device that stores a heart during transit before heart transplant surgery and a light tanker used as a fire reconnaissance vehicle in bushfires are also displayed. Ten industry products and six student design concepts from this year’s awards are on display. The Museum’s selection is made from the finalists and is based on good design, innovation and the potential of products to improve our environment, health or wellbeing.

Since 1992 the Powerhouse Museum has been building the country’s first collection of contemporary product design selected from the prestigious Australian International Design Awards. The winning products have been displayed in the Museum and some have been added to the permanent collection of Australian industrial design. Products are selected because they show potential to become important in the life of Australians, be significant to Australian industry or provide an opportunity for Australian design to be recognised in the global marketplace.

The products selected by the Museum reflect the diverse range of entries in the Awards. The first Powerhouse Museum Selection in 1992 included the HPM Fanlight and Surgeguard power surge protector, products that are still in the marketplace eighteen years later. Since then the selection has ranged from simple everyday items such as the Clark sink plug to specialised technologies such as the Mine Site Integrated Communications Cap Lamp. Design for sustainability has been of constant interest throughout the selection, represented by products such as the Kambrook Axis kettle, Rainbank pump controller and Caroma Smartflush toilet. Medical technologies have also featured strongly, from the Bionica ambulatory drug infusion pump to the Cochlear implant.

Décor wine coolers – 1980s Australian product design pt3

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My earlier posts about 1980s Australian product design highlighted some serious and important Australian designs from that decade. Now for something different – something that represents the good times and the rise of a food and wine culture in Australia in the 1980s – the Décor wine coolers.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Graphic design by Andy Schmid.

The Décor BYO wine carrier was designed in 1978, but was the beginning of a range of products developed by Décor in the 1980s. It was very different from any other product on the market. It holds two bottles of wine or four drink cans, and the removable chiller can be frozen before being placed between the bottles to keep them cool.

The inspiration for the carrier came in 1978 when Décor founder Brian Davis attended an Australian Design Awards presentation, saw a canvas or hessian wine carry bag win an award and decided that his company could make a better one. The Australian practice of ‘BYO‘ began in the 1960s and dining out and wine consumption became popular in Australia from the 1970s. Prior to this plastic bags filled with ice cubes had been used to carry wine to restaurants. Sounds very messy!

Richard Carlson was employed to design the wine carrier and quickly developed the final design. The wine cooler had widespread success and was winner of an Australian Design Award in 1979 and the 1980 Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design. In 1980 the wine carrier was being manufactured under licence in USA, Sweden and West Germany and continues to sell more than 30 years later.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Décor decided in 1984 to take the same approach with a different product, the wine cask cooler. The idea for this new product sprang from the changing preferences of Australian drinkers – cask wine was becoming more popular and Décor decided to meet the needs of this new trend.

Again designed by Richard Carlson, over a period of two years, it holds the bag of wine from any four litre cask carton. The design presented many challenges for Carlson. He said, ‘fitting the cask bag into a box was like fitting a dozen pillows into the boot of a car’. However his ability to think in terms of mass, volume and space allowed him to translate an awkward situation into an elegant, useful solution which won an Australian Design Award in 1986. The cooler features a wedge shaped chiller bottle for the wine bag to sit on, this makes it easy to get all the wine from the bag.

This product indicates the popularity of wine sold by the cask, first introduced in the 1960s by Angoves Wines. Usually the cheapest wine available, the bag reduces the air contact with wine so once it is opened it lasts longer than wine in a bottle. In 2009 around 40% by volume of the wine sold in Australia was cask wine. Although now the cask is called a ‘soft pack’ and is often a smaller two litre bag containing the same wine as is sold by the bottle.

Along with the wine cask cooler Décor developed a new wine carrier, ice buckets and picnic hampers as a complete range of products. The company won more than 250 Australian Design Awards over the 1980s alone. In 1984 Richard Carlson was awarded the Design Institute of Australia Gold Medal Award for Industrial Design and Andy Schmid, graphic designer, was awarded a Design Institute of Australia National Award for graphic design. Décor founder Brian Davis, along with designers Richard Carlson and Tony Wolfenden were inducted into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame in 1996.

Pedestrian button – 1980s Australian product design pt2

Published by Angelique Hutchison 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

 

Powerhouse Museum photography. © all rights reserved

The next instalment of my favourite Australian designed products from the 1980s continues on with the transport theme. 

The pedestrian button, found at a pedestrian crossing near you, was designed in 1984. But it is really the product of research and development done in the 1970s in response to public pressure on government.

In 1967 a member of the public asked the NSW Department of Main Roads (DMR), now the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), to introduce pedestrian traffic signals he could hear. At a city crossing, the RTA installed some bells and buzzers on both sides. Blind pedestrians were meant to cross when the buzzing sound replaced the ringing. Unfortunately they found that when the bells broke down they sounded like buzzers, which could cause deadly confusion in blind pedestrians.

The next version, installed in 1976, had a two-rhythm buzzer and included a vibrating panel to touch, because many vision-impaired people also have some loss of hearing. This new device was developed by acoustic and vibration engineers Louis A Challis and Associates. It had two different signals for ‘Walk’ and ‘Don’t Walk’, and the sound level was automatically lowered in response to background noise, reducing annoyance to people living near a crossing.

In the early 1980s Sydney consultants Nielsen Design Associates were asked to redesign the device to make it vandal-resistant. The new unit was made from cast aluminium with vandal-proof fixings. The large magnetic button (tested to withstand millions of pushes) is easy to find and push. A Braille arrow on the vibrating plate indicates the direction to cross. Listen to the different ‘Walk’ and ‘Don’t Walk’ sounds here.

More than 25 years later, the pedestrian button is still working well, and has been used in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, South Africa and the USA.

Baby capsule – 1980s Australian product design pt1

Published by Angelique Hutchison 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Visiting The 80s Are Back exhibition I wondered: if I had to pick the best in Australian product design from the 1980s, what would it be? A Sunbeam kettle or the décor wine cask cooler? The Stackhat or a Caroma toilet? Perhaps a mop bucket or an early ResMed CPAP machine? The 1980s was a productive decade for Australian industrial designers, and the Museum holds many examples of Australian products from the era. So I’ve decided to bring out a series of my favourite Australian-designed products from the 1980s.

Beginning with an innovation that has without doubt saved many lives – the baby safety capsule. Developed 26 years ago, this product is still one of the safest child restraints on the market. In Australia, babies up to six months of age must use rear facing restraints and new child restraint laws introduced this month recommend that children face the rear of the car until age four. All child restraints sold in Australia must meet strict standards, considered to be some of the most stringent in the world.

Of course safety standards haven’t always been this strict. Wearing car seat belts has only been compulsory in Australia since the 1970s and this is when restraints for children began to come onto the market. Babies were either held in arms or travelled in a traditional bassinet that lay across the back seat, secured by the seatbelt with a protective net over the top. There was no really secure way to protect babies in a smash until the baby capsule was developed in 1984.

Rainsfords (later called Britax Childcare), the makers of the Safe-n-Sound child seat restraint, came up with the idea of the capsule. It consists of a bassinet inside a base that can be secured by a seat belt. A release mechanism allows the bassinet to rotate in a crash, keeping the baby more upright and distributing forces uniformly over its body; at the same time, the bassinet pushes against an impact-absorbing bubble in the base. The capsule was designed to fit in an adult seat space. The bassinet can be removed from the base to carry the baby around outside the car.

The capsule was designed by PA Design (later known as Invetech) with Rainsfords Safe-n-Sound and took five years of research and development. It won an Australian Design Award and Design Council Selection in 1985 and the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design in 1986. The design was improved by the introduction of a harness in 1991 to replace the Velcro body band on the capsule in our collection.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of 1980s Australian-designed products. In the meantime I’d be interested to know – what is your favourite Australian-designed product of the 1980s?