The Bund Restaurant - Melbourne

© Photos by Craig Mullins

The Bund Restaurant, designed by myself - Craig Mullins and Nicole Shen, is now open! (however not fully finished, still missing booths, timber feature wall, bronze mirror feature wall, curtains, sharks etc - all the usual things). 206 Bourke St, Melbourne CBD (Chinatown entrance, level 1 behind Dragon Boat). Come and try some delicious shanghainese cuisine, bookings can be made on 9663 0005.

Plaza del Torico - b720 arquitectos

"This projects is the remodeling of a square of 1,798.76 sqm surface and arcades that surround it of 1,047.01 sqm, with the renewal of its pavement with basaltic stone pavers. Under gradient, a gallery of connection between the two tanks, Somero and Fondero, and museum area with a total of 409.56 sqm has been projected. This campaign has sought to improve the flow and public participation through the connection between the two tanks that allows the display Albellón and reuse cistern Somero as space for future exhibitions.

The intervention focuses on the complete renovation of the appearance of the square, its pavement, their porches and facades, following a carefully designed lighting. And assumed, in addition, the recovery for the public of the tanks that are placed under the square, elements of great value and artistic heritage."

Architectural Fashion: Frank Gehry for Gaga

"Gehry designed a hat for Lady Gaga to wear to a benefit at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art. It sounds like the move from buildings to headgear was a little challenging for our favorite Canadian-born starchitect, who drew the initial design for the hat on his iPhone: "Since I've never designed a hat before, I was afraid she wouldn't be able to walk....I did have an idea that involved people with sticks holding it up, walking behind her. I didn't know how far I could go with this thing."

The Guggenheim’s Wright Restaurant

"It would have been easy to design the Guggenheim Museum’s new Wright Restaurant, which opens to the public Friday, exactly as Frank Lloyd Wright himself would have wanted it: among the 400 drawings he made for the 1959 building, a few were devoted to a ground-floor dining space, though not one particularly suited to a contemporary audience. “The layout was very simple, almost monastic, with clusters of tables aligned with the portholes,” said the architect Andre Kikoski, who designed the restaurant. But, as he explained, “it wasn’t conducive to social interaction, and it certainly wasn’t about the integration of art.” Rather than executing Wright’s original sketches, Kikoski turned the space — most recently a generic cafeteria with brown carpeting — into a modern homage to the legendary architect, who designed the museum to harmonize with the artwork within.

But most of Kikoski’s efforts were spent attempting to evoke the movement of the building’s signature ramp — short of making diners seasick, of course — by exaggerating the arced perspective of the room and filling it with highly tactile materials. “The same way you view the art differently from different points in the spiral, what you see from across the space isn’t the same as what you see when you get closer,” he said. The wall behind the Corian bar is lined in fiber-optic wood; the metal bar front has a textured patina; and mesh stretched behind the blue leather banquettes is patterned with a tiny version of Wright’s “primitive initial,” the football-like shape of the rotunda’s columns and fountain, which formed the basis for Kikoski’s floor plan. Wright, whose many utopian fantasies were on view in the Guggenheim’s recent 50th anniversary retrospective, was never shy about embracing the future. It’s nice to see the museum thinks along the same lines."

'1901' + 'Lizstomania ' - Phoenix (Live Street Performances in Paris)

'Alive' Where the Wild Things Are Version - Kid Cudi feat. Ratatat

'Crawl' - Chris Brown

Best song off Chris Brown's new album 'Graffiti', awesome vid directed by Joseph Kahn.

World's tallest living wall takes root in Sydney

"Renowned French botanist, Patrick Blanc, has created the world’s tallest vertical garden at a residential development in Sydney’s inner west. However, the 33-storey north-facing green wall is merely a “practice run” for Blanc’s even bigger installation planned as part of the $2 billion Central Park development at the former Carlton Brewery site on Broadway.

The living artwork, currently installed at Frasers Property’s Trio development in Camperdown, uses 4,528 native Australian plants from 69 different species that are fed by a grey-water, dripper-irrigation system. “You can observe many of these species growing wild on maritime cliffs or along the cliffs and rocky slopes in mountainous areas, making this project a kind of ‘Botanical Vertical Garden’,” Blanc said.

In collaboration with Pritzker prize-winning French architect Jean Nouvel, Blanc will also add vegetal wall panels to two residential towers as part of the Frasers Broadway development. These living walls are set to reach up to 150 metres in height and cover up to 10 times the area of the Trio prototype. Blanc, who is credited with inventing the concept of a vertical garden, told Architecture & Design that he is experimenting with the use of tubes and pyramids that can be entirely clad in plants as part of his work on the Frasers Broadway project.

As well as providing a green aesthetic, vertical gardens can also offer a reduction in energy consumption through thermal insulation, Frasers Property managing director, Dr Stanley Quek, said. “Not only are Patrick’s vertical garden installations captivating, but also by putting these sustainable pieces in cities we are able to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and have them act as a natural air purification system,” Quek said.

The Trio development, which was designed by Fender Katsalidis, gives every apartment a balcony edged with louvered screens that acts as passive sustainable design and gives the building a “dynamic”, ever changing aesthetic, Karl Fender said."