Co-founded by Ben Reynolds and Valle Medina, Palace is an architectural design and research collaborative that speculates and reacts to issues existing in levels of culture, space and economy. We have a specific concern with the relationship between architectural and social forms.
There is a peculiar habit of “Austericans” (members of a society whose New culture takes over its indigenous civilisation) Robin Boyd was ever the serial neologiser (Featurism, Austerican, Bushmanist, etc.) whereby they find privacy in their own car. Marshall McLuhan called this a “hidden ground” behind the use of the car. Australians paradoxically go outside to be alone and go home to be social, which explains the average oversized Australian car. ...
Boyd insists, that Featurist things are ‘non-intellectual, non-emotional and entirely optical’ and that ugliness is class relative: ‘Georgian for high income, numb conservatism for the low, and for the great central majority coloured plastics, paint, and flat black steel welded into hard geometrical shapes.’ Furthermore, he notes that non-English visitors regard ‘the difference between an English and an Australian accent [as] a class distinction...
Melbourne University’s Paolo Tombesi’s fine-tooth comb through the rise and fall of Caudill Rowlett Scott (CRS) in Capital Gains and Architectural Losses: The Transformative Journey of Caudill Rowlett Scott (1948–1994) provides a relevant starting point when looking at the make-up of today’s profit-driven architectural office. It pieces together the beginnings of CRS and their initial attraction to school architecture, their diversification into wider discipline...
