SHAPE
The Age
Friday April 1, 2011
MARTENS MATTERSKAREL Martens compares his varied cover designs for the architectural magazine Oase to inviting a guest to dinner: "I cannot prepare the same meal again. It is more respectful to the public to always prepare something unique. They look forward to the next issue." A retrospective feast of the influential Dutch designer's predominantly type-based covers for Oase (pictured) opens at Monash University next week. As its artist-in-residence, Martens will host student workshops and give a public lecture on April 12. Bookings essential (price includes a limited edition 25 Years of OASE poster). The exhibition will also stock Martens's monograph Printed Matter, which in 1998 was awarded a gold medal at the Leipzig Book Fair as the best-designed book in the world. Art & Design Building, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East; for bookings:thenarrows.org/store/Public-ProgramSOVIET STYLEDURING Stalin's rule, Soviet architecture took a dramatic U-turn from constructivist experimentation to state-sponsored neo-classicism. Over the next three decades, Soviet architects synthesised Western influences with their earlier avant-garde tradition. The bold results in public buildings will be discussed by architecture critic Vladimir Belogolovsky in his international lecture tour, The Empire's Last Style: Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985, which arrives in Melbourne tonight. The lecture features images of selected buildings of the period. Guest Public Lecture School of Architecture and Design, RMIT Building 8, 360 Swanston Street, Level 11, Lecture Theatre, Friday, 6.30pm.MARCH ON PARIS BUNKERSENDING style to the French sounds like sending coals to Newcastle albeit with cleaner lines. Yet Aesop's Paris store has imported the design sensibility of Melbourne-based March Studio. The strength of the studio has been proven in Aesop's stores in Melbourne and Adelaide where their bottles and cardboard boxes have been employed. March's Aesop work was recently awarded at a German congress for architecture and interior design, Contract-World, where it scooped the shops/showroom category. "The Aesop stores are exemplary in the way they embody and convey the corporate identity of the company, and simultaneously in the way they adapt to the specific context," the European jury declared. For the Parisian outlet, in Rue Saint Honore, March Studio plays on ubiquitous French parquetry as its signature motif. marchstudio.com.au RAY EDGARDRIP DRAPEJERSEY silks and technically advanced fabrics that are soft on skin and drip-drape like water down the body in thin, warming layers are key in winter casual wear. Denim or no denim. Designer Alex Trimmer is enamoured of the complexities of this aesthetic, practising with a certain perfectionism including an ecologically sound framework. No silkworms are harmed in production of silk for his brand, Sosume. "A small, concise wearable collection meticulously constructed," is how Trimmer describes Sosume, a more complex and beautiful collection than can be described here. The average price of a piece in the basic range is $150. sosumeclothing.comCHIC ON WHEELSIF MELBOURNE designer Anna Thomas were a bicycle, she'd be a Velorbis, an elegant but sturdy classic hand-made in Germany. Thomas, who designs luxury fashion with an evocative lilt and what she calls "a synergy" with Velorbis, has twinned bits of her winter collection in campaign shots and shop windows to achieve a kind of aesthetic symphony. Her camel wool pea coat, for example (pictured), $975, is ostensibly the precisely perfect piece to be seen when riding the Velorbix "Victoria Classic" $1995 (by appoint ment, morgansbicycles.com.au), which is, in turn, fashioned "to give a majestic vantage point from which to monitor the traffic and surroundings". Anna Thomas, 9429 2200, annathomas.com JANICE BREEN BURNS
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