Show Notes
Few materials are as loathed, or as unavoidable. Concrete built the Pantheon and the Opera House, then spent the back half of the twentieth century being blamed for everything ugly in the city — a reputation brutalism earned it, fairly or not. But raw concrete has also produced buildings people travel across the world to stand inside. So why is this environmentally disastrous material still so much a part of our building toolkit, and how has it evolved along the way?
More from Anthony Burke's By Design
The most powerful technology on your face isn’t a smartphone. From the earliest magnifying lenses to pince-nez and today’s designer frames, spectacles have transformed the lives of billions. Once reserved for monks, scholars and the wealthy, glasses gradually became one of the world’s most accessible and empowering technologies. We trace the fascinating design evolution of eyewear and discover how a tool for correcting vision became a global fashion statement.
Can we build homes on toxic land? There are an estimated 200,000 contaminated sites across Australia, most of them within city limits. As the housing crisis deepens, could cleaning up former industrial land unlock space for new homes? And how do you even do it?
There is evidence that chopsticks existed in the Neolithic period. That's around 10,000 years of evolution in design. From a cooking tool to a symbol of status, identity and social customs, the chopstick has remained a tried-and-tested utensil, but what do its various evolutions say about the people who used it and the times they lived in?
Robots are moving beyond the factory and into the home. From vacuum cleaners to companion robots, how might domestic robots reshape housing design, and are our homes ready for what's next?
Protecting our skin from the sun is a design challenge that spans centuries. From glacier cream to Slip! Slop! Slap!, how has sunscreen evolved to meet changing lifestyles, technologies and health concerns?