Elizabeth Farrelly

4 weeks ago | thetawnyfrogmouth.com.au | Elizabeth Farrelly |Iain Walker

Paradise on earth? Our recent What’s Next? forum in Mona Vale almost had us convinced that, as several speakers insisted, the Northern Beaches is pretty much it. Even here, though, housing is becoming unaffordable, public transport is difficult, climate change increasingly threatens coastal erosion, storm surges and fire. So change must come. We think the best way to shape that change is to access the deep popular wisdom via a Citizens’ Assembly. What is a Citizens’ Assembly?

1 month ago | architectureau.com | Tom Grant |Elizabeth Farrelly

The TV shows a young couple standing outside a crisp inner-city terrace (“Whether you’re buying your first home…”), before transitioning to a blousy suburban McMansion (“…or housing a growing family…”). It’s an ad for some insurance company, but the unquestioned subtext is: it’s all about growth. If some is good, more is better. Is it, though? Just how out of touch can a cultural propaganda meme be?

1 month ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Elizabeth Farrelly

Fires and floods. The message is getting harder to ignore, assiduously as we try. It is increasingly evident that nature has something to tell us. Something urgent. Basically, we’re not on top. In Australia, whose edges we cling to like ants fleeing a hotplate, we’re hearing calls for a “managed retreat”  from the coast. At the same time, increasingly destructive bushfires advocate a similar withdrawal from the bush. Then there’s all the floodplains we’ve approved for development in recent years.

1 month ago | architectureau.com | Tom Grant |Elizabeth Farrelly

Just when you thought modernism’s Great Man theory of architecture might be safely entombed with the rest of that wildly destructive century, out pops a film like The Brutalist. Not since the 1949 film of The Fountainhead has an architecture flick been more seductive – nor more self-aggrandising, sententious and just plain wrong. Both films promote the misunderstood architect-hero.

Jan 20, 2025 | architectureau.com | Tom Grant |Elizabeth Farrelly

My favourite street sign reads “Beware. Pedestrians.” I love the implied image of pedestrians as fierce and ravening hordes that might attack some hapless car and devour it, bloodily, no questions asked. Yes! I think. Guerilla pedestrians! Those we need more of. Of course, the sign actually intends the opposite of this, a paternalistic protectionism that casts pedestrians as a victim class, deserving tolerance but not respect.