The first word

What pushes us to create? Is it our natural inclination to design, craft and construct? Perhaps a desire to exist for a moment in the realms of our imagination – a desire championed by infancy and youth yet cast aside as time passes and responsibility rolls in. Or maybe it’s the utter thrill of solving a user-driven puzzle in which design often results. Maybe a combination of all three.

This issue, the Design Conscious issue, we chose to look at how architects and designers reconcile the desire and ability to create – and the ideas that snowball in the process – with the need to promote function and avoid the superfluous.

The apartment of Singapore-based Timo Wong and Priscilla Lui of Studio Juju is on the cosy end of the spectrum, so there’s no room for excess. Instead, it’s filled with design pieces that matter and make a difference.

Stephen Todd looks at the ever-escalating scale and popularity of the temporary architecture pavilion: what can an impermanent structure offer to the design community? Or is it folly and simply another outlet promoting starchitecture?

We see the malleability of a site in rural Victoria that once was a holiday destination and now, at the hands of Lovell Burton Architecture, a primary residence that can expand and contract efficiently according to need. While Formwerkz has completed a single-storey residence in Malaysia dotted with internal glass courtyards that offer intriguing sightlines from countless positions throughout the house.

As you thumb through the pages that follow, we hope your imagination is fuelled by the endless array of what is possible in solution-driven design.