palette places

In the words of Miss Lush the world has gone palette-o-rama mad! I don't know about you but I seem to be seeing them all over! We love palettes so here are some of our top palette picks:

Amber's number 1, The Palettenhaus in Linz...

The Kinglake temporary village, constructed by Monash University students in consultation with Emergency Architects...

My personal fav, Mano Ponnambalam and Jenny Heim's ILLUMS BOX, a 2009 Sculpture by the Sea entry...

and lastly Section8 in Melbourne where thirsty vistors can lounge around and grab a drink from the shipping container bar (a container-o-rama blog will be featured next!)

The Social Studio

On a recent visit to Melbourne I stumbled across this great community concept. On first glance you expect this Smith Street studio to be just like any uber trendy cafe/clothing store that Melbourne so often delivers. However The Social Studio provides a unique opportunity for young refugees to not only use their style and skills to produce a clothing range but offers them emplyment, advice, encouragement, counselling and training.

At a time when it is becoming more and more important to reuse and recycle The Social Studio collects excess manufacturing material and reconfigures it into funky fashion! Take a look at their website, such a fantastic social enterprise!

category of culture

Peter Rich Architects have recently won the World Building of the Year award for the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa at the World Architecture Festival held in Barcelona earlier this month.

This is an authentic, beautifully crafted and culturally deep rooted building. A very deserved winner I say.

More info and images can be found here.

blog action day + cc

Blog Action Day is upon us again and this year the focus is on Climate Change (poverty was the central theme for 2008 - see our entry here). Spurred on by Practical Action bloggers, b+c have once again signed up to join an 8000+ blogging community to support this day of action. The aim is to unite the worlds bloggers and to raise awareness of key issues - and what a timely theme this is! With Copenhagen looming it is so very important to generate discussion around issues of climate change, adaptation and most of all how the worlds poorest nations who currently don't have a voice are being affected. 

There are other ways you can take action such as 350 (October 24),  The Wave (Dec 5, London)...  but if you want to make a start TODAY g0 a blogging and register here! 

10 to the 100

Google project, 10 to the power of 100th is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible! Sounds too good to be true...

With a list that has been whittled down to 16, you can now help make the decision as to what Google spends their $10 million on! So best get voting! To do so visit here before October 8.

mixing it up

Every now and then it is good to mix things up and offer a little spice to life! Our dear friend has done just that with the utterly genious make me a mix tape. It is truly a joy and not just because you can whittle away hours of "meant to be at work time" listening to her fav tracks but you will always, without a doubt come away with a smile on your dial!

However, we must ask her forgiveness for not mentioning this earlier! In fact I have been meaning to tell everyone of this ladies talents for a while now but have been too busy trying to get through hours of her mixing madness that I haven't had a chance!

I am listening to the latest mix now and I can highly recommend it! Love your work Miss Katie Dazzle x

HOMEmade

We previously blogged about Anna Heringer and the inspirational Handmade school in Bangladesh here. After hearing her speak at the Finland Symposium I thought we should update you all with the latest HOMEmade project. These three family houses are a tribute to local craftmanship, a testament to true community participation and basically a great lesson in how to provide modern, functional design that is appropriate to its surroundings. Oh and did i mention that they are also beautiful?

Anna has been nominated for the CurryStone Design Award and we wish her all the best! While I am at it, also in the running for this award is Rob Hopkins from Transition Network fame. If you haven't heard about the new wave that is Transition Town then you should definitely jump on board... Rob wrote the Transition Handbook and since then more than 200 towns have taken on the Transition principles. The first Transition Town was started in 2006 in Totnes, UK where the community banded together to grow local food, lower their energy use, plan more pedestrianised paths and cycle ways and even create their own currency to boost their local economy. It just shows what can happen when communities work together...