Expand your mind and your reading list with Australian Design Review’s late summer roundup of new books, podcasts and films about architecture and design.

Analogue Images

What is the role of contemporary photography in the built environment? Just where do the dialogues, tensions and reciprocities between photography and architecture lie? Focusing on the practice of Australian photographer Rory Gardiner and Belgian photographer Maxime Delvaux, Analogue Images explores the output of these leading practitioners and poses key questions around the broader milieu in which they work. 

Analogue Images was originally an exhibition at the Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney, where the work of Gardiner and Delvaux was presented side by side for the first time. In this book, the initial selection of 22 images has been doubled to display a more comprehensive array of work, while texts from photographers, collaborators and critics situate the images further.

Buy from Perimeter Books.

The Brutalist

Directed by Brady Corbet and starring Adrien Brody, this period drama has people in the architecture world talking – and those outside of it talking about architecture.

The monumental three-and-a-half-hour film is a fictional exploration of the brutalism of life and art, including the post-war architectural movement. Its protagonist László Tóth – a Hungarian, Bauhaus-trained architect and Holocaust survivor – is based on brutalist pioneers like Marcel Breuer, the architect for the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.

While the title suggests it’s an epic made for architects, The Brutalist has garnered controversy among those in the industry for its anachronisms and stereotypical depictions of architects as uncompromising male geniuses.

Watch it and see for yourself. At best you can witness some breathtaking buildings on the wide screen and, at worst, join in on the cultural conversation with your design community.

Maurice and I

For more on-screen architecture history, this time a little closer to home, a new documentary called Maurice and I chronicles the story of the founders of Warren and Mahoney (WAM), a New Zealand-based architecture practice that expanded into Australia 15 years ago.

Having lost almost their entire life’s work in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney fought to save their finest building from demolition. Maurice and I is a powerful exploration of that fight, as well as partnership, loss and the enduring importance of architecture in shaping our lives.

Stream on DocPlay. 

Designing Futures

Designing Futures is a podcast that traverses the many paths to becoming a good leader and impacting change in architecture, interior design and product design.

Brought to you by Australian Design Review’s 30UNDER30 program, each episode features candid conversations between 30UNDER30 alumni and industry leaders about everything from creating a legacy to supporting women in design.

The intergenerational exchanges offer nuggets of wisdom to designers and architects at all stages, from new graduates finding their place in big firms to others striking out on their own who are eager to build the business and ‘soft’ skills not covered in their design education. 

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Retain Repair Reinvest: Ascot Vale

Retain Repair Reinvest: Ascot Vale is the first in a series of three books about the proposed demolition of public housing, the people who live in these estates, and the environmental, social and economic case for retaining these sites.

This publication celebrates Ascot Vale Estate in Melbourne which was previously slated for demolition under the Victorian government’s Public Housing Renewal Program. 

The book features interviews with an Ascot Vale resident, photos of the estate by Ben Hosking, and essays and interviews with academics, architects and economists about the value of public housing. It is based on the Retain, Repair, Reinvest feasibility and design proposal for the estate by non-for-profit Melbourne-based architecture, design and research firm OFFICE.

Buy from OFFICE.

Lead image features double-page spread from Analogue Images, published by Perimeter Books. All photography supplied.

Read about Alison Page and Paul Memmott’s 2024 release, which teaches kids about designing on Country.