Thursday January 8, 2009
Choking to death in the suburbs
'Fog!" the kids shout excitedly as we round the bend above Bronte. "Look at the fog!" "That's not fog," the adult voice lobs from the front seat like the wrath of God. "See the dirty brown of it? That's pollution", writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday January 1, 2009
Is there bravery enough to slay the gnashing beast of profit?
Man is born free but everywhere is in chainstores. It's an old rewrite, but one that Rousseau himself may have preferred had he witnessed, as we have, the glorious pre-dawn obscenity of Boxing Day 2008, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Saturday December 27, 2008
Room at the inn for Katya, smell and all
My paper lady just died. Christmas always reminds me, anyway, why those peeling inner-city boarding houses generally reviled as slums are actually essential to city life. But my paper lady's death brings it strangely home, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday December 18, 2008
Quayside concrete boxes are hollow shells for art
"I'm sending a Christmas card to Obama," confided the old duck in the toddlers' pool. She was pre-aquarobics and perhaps that prospect made her add, with a glee befitting the ancient Ottoman torture, "I reckon Howard and Bush should be tied together in a sack and chucked in the harbour." I'm not a strappado type but I confess the thought did give a moment of shared pleasure, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday December 11, 2008
Save the shonks: a car rescue deal you can trust
My first Sydney car was lubricated out of its Parramatta Road car yard with the heartfelt handshake, sincere goodwill and honest-to-God promises of a yellow-haired, pink-skinned Scot named Charlie. Bankruptcy couldn't happen to a nicer lot, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday December 4, 2008
Let's not make the same mistake twice
All day Monday the Harbour Bridge flags sagged to half mast and well they might. Joern Utzon's death reminds us not only of the Opera House and our part in its downfall, but that it could happen again, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday November 27, 2008
Doing the right thing is worth money in the bank
Did you hear the one about the artist, the engineer and the editor? "I don't want to be judgmental," insists the young artist, flogging his McMansion-based project, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday November 20, 2008
Going for gold: a nation groaning with philistines
Next Monday is Davis Hughes's birthday. You remember Davis Hughes, Sir Davis Hughes, our favourite philistine - sacked Utzon, ruined the Opera House (but not before it became postcardworthy), claimed a science degree he didn't have, sported a world-first perfectly symmetrical comb-over and appeared in Sydney's only ever architectural protest march as "Mephistopheles in a business suit", writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday November 13, 2008
Stark stance of sacrifice contrasts with our moral pygmies
So, bookies didn't want to pay out on Barack Obama before he was fully stamped into place. You can see why. Politicians who stay on principle get it in the neck; Marat, Lincoln, Kennedy, Luther King, Sadat, even Jesus, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday November 6, 2008
Bullying and toxic favours provoke mood of disgust
Kevin Bacon did not cure cancer. Didn't, in fact, give cancer a moment's thought. But possibly, just possibly, Obama will bring us trains, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday October 29, 2008
Still feelin' groovy? Your nursing home awaits
I once had a flatmate - a hippie of sorts and, a decade older than me, a genuine baby boomer - who would wash all his clothes at once. Knickers, the lot. You'd come home after lectures to find him sprawled on the paintless back veranda, strumming guitar, mumble-singing to his dog through lips clamped around a joint, naked as a newborn, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday October 22, 2008
Currawong, yet another black mark against Labor
National parks were Bob Carr's big thing, his magic shield against charges of flushing the decade down the toilet. So precious are these parks that with the harbour islands - Rodd, Clark and Shark - you can't so much as paddle up for a picnic without a paid-in-advance booking, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Thursday October 16, 2008
What's it to be: a flair mile or plunder down under?
For me, and possibly for you, the price of a coffee makes a useful cost-comparison between here and Paris, here and Helsinki, here and Wodonga high street, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday October 8, 2008
Utes, shoots and leaves: wouldn't be dead for quids
It's a purler, you might say, of an evening. The air is like champagne but, perversely, I'm breathing smoke. Wood smoke. River redgum to be precise, and fragrant as frankincense. I know, I know, the carbon!
Wednesday October 1, 2008
Tale of two crises born of one disease: greed
The Wall-E parable isn't just the usual sappy greenwash. That's the story's surface, littered with its skyscrapers of compacted trash. Beneath this rusty crust, though, is a subtler, layered allegory about the flubbery human mind (the Captain) locked in mortal combat with its business-as-usual auto-pilot, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday September 24, 2008
London takes aim at the post-Games hangover
Last week's scenes of jobless bankers (that's bankers with a B, not a W) hugging on Canary Wharf's suddenly snap-frozen wastes tugged - nay, tore - at the heartstrings. One ex-senior vice-president, European equities, noted wistfully that his last deal was for four jaffa cakes in Lehman Brothers' canteen, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday September 17, 2008
Aussie architects need to quit playing cute
Australia's Biennale engagement has been patchy at best. We do the art biennale, every odd year, but for the evens - for architecture - there's no Arts Council money, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday September 10, 2008
Roll up, roll up for the Lord Mayor's starring role
Never mind Keating! with its suitably simpering ALP femmes. Heavens Mister Evans/My heart's in peril, Cheryl, all that. Here in real world (roll up! last days!) Clover versus Meredith is the biggest show in town, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday September 3, 2008
Loud, likeable, kitsch and cheeky, but is it real?
Nineteen years ago, as tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, I was driven by despair (for design, not democracy) to ask two of my Chinese students why they were bothering to study architecture since they showed no aptitude and less interest, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday August 27, 2008
Home truths explain the monstrosities around us
'New houses are universally horrible," ran a recent Germaine Greer headline, "and eco-houses are the most horrible of the lot." It's not quite up there, limelight-wise, with black rage. But it should be. And here's why, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday August 20, 2008
Paying the price for an athlete's love for sale
One thing the Beijing Olympics clarifies beyond doubt is the need to recall from exile the old idea of the amateur.
Wednesday August 13, 2008
Local plot thickens and leaves planners for dust
Chippendale is revolting. With luck, it'll spread. "It's important that you don't think I'm good at this," says Michael Mobbs, and he doesn't mean revolt, which is rather his forte, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday August 6, 2008
Forget about flavour and paint the town beige
One of architecture's problems, it seems to me, is beigeness of language. Other professions are far more linguistically endowed, their lexicons lush with Latinisms and fruited with felicitous phraseology, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday July 30, 2008
Racism helps to ease the whitewash of Redfern
I'm walking the dog. It's evening rush hour, near Redfern station. A young couple wobbles by like escapees from a three-legged race, giggling because she has new, less-than-sensible shoes and at day's end can barely walk, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Wednesday July 23, 2008
Cutest little nipper under the Southern Cross
My God aren't you fed up with critics, whingers and naysayers?, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
