21 February 2012: New product ideas and cutting-edge design from New South Wales’ engineering industry, fashion design schools and top HSC students will brace the floor of the Powerhouse Museum in new exhibitions and displays opening in February and March 2012.
The annual Powerhouse exhibitions, Engineering Excellence (open), designTECH (open) and Student Fashion (opens 24 March), unveil the best in engineering today, as well as the potential of our next generation of designers and innovators in New South Wales.
Powerhouse Museum Director, Dr Dawn Casey said: “These three displays offer such an exciting start to the year as we get to see and enjoy the creativity and enormous potential of our school leavers and graduating tertiary fashion students, to the revolutionary work continuing in our engineering industry.”
Engineering Excellence features the latest award-winning Australian engineering projects that have been undertaken in Australia and other countries. This year’s display includes the ground-breaking Flexigrid™ system developed by Finisar Australia, which allows telecom carriers to easily route the huge daily volume of virtual information along specially designed flexible channels. The system creates ‘slices’ for customers to use to create their own fixed frequency bandwidth for communication needs. Flexigrid™ was the winner of the prestigious Bradfield Award for the 2011 Engineering Excellence Awards program, an annual awards program held by the Sydney Division of Engineers Australia.
The work of a great humanitarian cause and project, Engineers Without Borders, is featured showcasing the education and training work of engineers to improve the quality of life and disaster recovery in areas of Australia and less-developed countries. Engineering solutions to achieve stable temperature and relative humidity conditions in and around traditional Indigenous log coffins that feature in a new extension to the National Gallery in Canberra is shown. A new idea, the Floating Solar Array, which floats solar arrays on water to produce electricity whilst reducing water evaporation on farm damns is displayed. The engineering behind the new city-bound bus lane on one of Sydney’s busiest roads, Victoria Road, to allow for the fast and clear transition between lanes and upgraded urban parkland, is also featured in the exhibition.
More than twenty major works by the 2011 HSC Design and Technology students – from household products, furniture and fashion to packaging and transport systems – present some clever ideas and solutions for everyday products and lifestyle needs.
Some of the unique projects on display in designTECH include: The Anzac Express, a non-stop train or light rail system that slows down to pick up a carriage of commuters whilst simultaneously dropping off a carriage of disembarking commuters; No Stale – Mate, a system for storing bread to limit bread from growing mould; Bin Buddy, which is attached to a car’s tow bar to help with moving heavy wheelie bins up and down driveways; DoorBrell that attaches an umbrella to the outside of a car to assist with getting in and out of a car in wet weather; and Shopalert, which attaches to the shopping trolley and scans product barcodes to keep a track of the total grocery bill and has an ‘allergy watch’ function to alert customers to certain allergens in products.
A spectacular display of eight garments by the top fashion students who graduated last year is on show again in Student Fashion next month. It features the work of the top student from four of Australia’s finest fashion design schools:- The Whitehouse Institute of Design, The University of Technology Sydney, The Fashion Design Studio at Sydney Institute of Technology, and Raffles College of Design. Since 1993, the Powerhouse Museum has provided a glimpse at the exciting potential of Australia’s next generation of fashion designers through the annual Student Fashion display, some of who are now well-known names in the fashion industry.
On View:
Engineering Excellence (1 February 2012 to February 2013)
designTECH (18 February to 13 May 2012)
Student Fashion(24 March to 28 August 2012)
Address: Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney
Telephone: (02) 9217 0111 or infoline (02) 9217 0444
Website: www.powerhousemuseum.com
Hours: 10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Christmas Day)
Admission: General admission $12 adult, $6 child, $8 student/concession and $30 family. Powerhouse Museum members and children under 4 years admitted free.
NOTE: Link below for more on Engineering Excellence and designTECH
www.powerhousemuseum.com/engineeringexcellence
www.powerhousemuseum.com/previous/destek11.php
Media information, images or interviews:
Mandy Campbell, Powerhouse Museum, Tel: 02 9217 0551/0422 9299 27 or mandyca@phm.gov.au
