What's on August 10

Lost gardens of Sydney

Category: Exhibitions

Sydney’s vast sea of roofs belies its rich legacy of gardens and gardening. In every direction from the city, large estates and gardens have been subdivided and lost to our ever-increasing need for real estate. Lost gardens explores Sydney’s rich and diverse gardening heritage. more


Rockabilly: living the 50s

Category: Exhibitions

Photographer Steven Siewert has spent years documenting Sydney’s rockabillies, a vibrant subculture who live and breathe an era that predates their earliest birthdays. The boys dress for cool with stovepipe jeans and slick quiffs, while the women wear dazzling cocktail frocks by night and colourful vintage dresses by day. more


Talks After Noon

Category: Events, Talks

Free lunch-time talks every Wednesday and Sunday at the Powerhouse. Throughout August Talks After Noon focuses on some of the unique events, exhibitions and people featured in SD08. more


Australian International Design Awards

Category: Exhibitions

The most outstanding examples of the latest Australian design and innovation from the 2008 Australian International Design Awards are now on display. The Powerhouse Museum’s annual selection from the finalists include a personal tracking device for skiers and snowboarders, a communications device for firefighters, an electronic earplug for communication in loud environments, and a selection of models from the Australian Design Awards – Dyson Student Awards. more


Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia

Category: Exhibitions, Featured

Discover how modernism transformed life in Australia across five tumultuous decades from 1917 to 1967. Modern times looks to the city and its skyscrapers, cafes and swimming pools, where modernist ideals of functionalism, internationalism and the healthy body profoundly reshaped Australian culture. more


There’s a hole in my bucket

Category: Exhibitions

There’s a hole in my bucket invites 20 local designers and 80 members of the public to put their bucket where their mouth is and photograph a part of Sydney, or a part of their everyday lives, that they consider to be badly designed; and every image must contain the ubiquitous yellow bucket. more


Outside the square, inside the box

Category: Exhibitions

Curated monthly by A&E Metal Merchants, this showcase in the Powerhouse Museum shop brings to light recent work by contemporary jewellers. For Sydney Design 08, A&E has handed the reigns to jewellery students at Sydney College of the Arts. more


The 2008 Sydney teapot show

Category: Exhibitions

Ceramic artists from Australia and New Zealand are invited to participate in this annual exhibition, competition and homage to a universally-loved vessel. Rarely will you see so many interpretations of a single, utilitarian object. more


How you make it

Category: Exhibitions

This exhibition explores the work of eight contemporary fashion designers, who not only create new garment forms and new ways of wearing clothes, they also develop entirely new design systems. Featuring work by Simon Cooper, Paula Dunlop, Ess. Laboratory (Hoshika Oshimi and Tatsuyoshi Kawabata), FORMALLYKNOWNAS (Toby Whittington), Anthea van Kopplen, MATERIALBYPRODUCT (Susan Dimasi and Chantal McDonald), Project (Kara Baker and Shelley Lasica) and S!X (Denise Sprynskij and Peter Boyd). more


Refashioning the fashion

Category: Exhibitions

An exhibition featuring seven contemporary jewellers whose work is at times experimental, confrontational and non-functional. Alice Lang, Tiffany Parbs, Julia de Ville, Leah Heiss, Chelsea Gough, Gabby O’Conner and Melinda Young rebuild, recreate, restore, renovate, remake, reassemble, refashion and re-enact to create works that transcend convention and the body, and take the notion of jewellery to a new level of understanding. more


AAA walks

Category: Walks

Take a tour of some of Sydney’s most important architectural developments with the Australian Architecture Association (AAA). more


Krispin K – Ornament is crime tour

Category: Talks, Walks

Krispin K, international trend forecaster and fashion guru, returns this year to explore the modern movement in Australia with a fast-paced, fun-filled tour of the new exhibition Modern times. more


Harry Seidler’s towers with Gevork Hartoonian

Category: Walks

One of Australia’s leading architectural scholars leads a tour of Harry Seidler’s towers. The tour begins in the Cove Apartment building with what is considered to be the finest public foyer in Sydney. Hartoonian, who has studied Seidler’s life and work closely, discusses what makes these towers particularly appropriate to Sydney’s conditions, how weight is transferred to elegant columns to reduce the mass of a building and the role of Italian engineer Nervi in the construction of Seidler’s first towers in Sydney. more


Design and technology teacher retreat

Category: Events

Share a unique experience with fellow Design & Technology teachers over a weekend at the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre at Riversdale. Explore the potential of the Bundanon and Riversdale properties for built environment education and collaboratively develop new approaches for teaching secondary students. more