More Australian place from desire to inspire, the half-Canadian/half-Australian design blog. (See previous Australia post here.) Above, from the Gore St. Fitzroy neighbourhood of Melbourne. Yes, there’s been a large application of money to these places, but they seem to exceed just money. I’m not even going to try to explain why I like Australian design; it just seems to have a lot of oxygen in it. Below, by designer Sharyn Cairns.

Above, warehouse conversion in Melbourne.

Beach shack on Australia’s south coast.

Not a rhetorical question. This is a hodgepodge sample, for sure, and spans decades, but all of it seems to partake of some form or other of adventurousness. It’s possible I’m projecting, and that my view of Australia is entirely filtered through my childhood fixation on that girl in National Geographic who crossed the outback on camels. But I doubt it. Above are from the National Archives of Australia appearing in the Heide Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit Modern Times: the untold story of modernism in Australia. Top: ‘A modernist vision of Australia: Grant and Mary Featherston’s wing sound chairs were a feature of the Australian Pavilion, designed by architect James Maccormick with exhibits selected by Robin Boyd, at Expo 67 in Montreal, 1967′ and ‘View of the elevated restaurant, Centenary Pool, Brisbane’ by James Birrell. Most images below are from desire to inspire, the half-Australian blog. House directly below is the Wheatsheaf House. House in woods below by Drew Heath; room with screen, photo by Lucas Allen; geometric bedroom by Greg Natale; provenance of last 3 photos is lost, please advise; last photo is room by Marion Hall Best, considered the mother of modern Australian interior design.

Malcolm is an Australian film released in 1986. I’ve been thinking about it for years. Maybe it automatically rates because it is full of homemade Rube Goldberg machines and nerd contraptions, because I grew up around those, but there’s also the enjoyable fact that they’re all produced by a naive and strangely appealing mechanical savant played by Colin Friels. Sadly, scenes of the contraption which brings in his mail and boils his egg can’t be found on YouTube but you can get the movie here. Malcolm won the 1986 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film.

This is the ur-seating platform. Think how many people would gather here at a party, and even Le Chat prefers it. This is from a house in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Why is Australian design so cool now? If you’ve ever seen Vogue Living Australia you know what I mean. From desire to inspire.

Here are three converted churches which seem much more successful than most of the examples in the last post. Above is a 19th century chapel in the Flemish village of Bazel which has been converted into 2 loft-type houses. Thanks to the amazing Office for Word and Image OWI for permission to reprint this photo here – Verne is the photographer. When a church is divided into separate storeys, the space seems to become automatically easier to live in. This seems obvious now but when I set out it seemed a shame to alter the building so radically. As it turns out, though, a 30-40′ cathedral ceiling is not exactly cosy. 

Above, a converted church in Kensal Green, London, via casa sugar and lightlocations. 

A conversion in Brisbane, from desire to inspire. Very, very shiny! The solution to the problem of churchiness here has been to make everything a uniform white, and I can sympathize with that solution. My experience with hanging art in a church space is that it can look a little odd when it flanks arched windows, and that’s why in my little church, the art is still on the floor, stacked against the walls. The more photos of church conversions I look at, the more challenging the whole project seems. If anyone has a favourite church conversion can you send it on?