Blueprint For Living - Full Program Podcast

Hotel designer Bill Bensley lives by the motto, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. The California-born designer has studios in Bangkok and Bali, and his latest book More Escapism: Hotels, Resorts and Gardens features some of the region’s most extravagant resorts. His inspiration comes from treasures around the globe, including a 1930s Vietnamese bamboo hat that provided the design spark for the Hotel de la Coupole in Vietnam. In this week's Garden Rudimental, award-winning landscape designer Paul Bangay takes Jonathan for a stroll through Stonefields, one of Victoria's most beautiful country gardens where exotics and native plants merge to create a definitive style of Australian garden. Cookbooks aren't just a bunch of recipes. They often contain insights into the political and cultural contexts of their time. Never was there a better example of this than Australia's oldest continuous community cookbook, The Barossa Cookery Book. Initially released in 1917 as a war fundraiser it's now in its 33rd ed

Once regarded as a fringe movement, more designers and architects are looking to nature-based systems to build our lives while reducing carbon emissions. Claire Beale, Executive Manager at LCI Melbourne and a former Design Institute of Australia President, takes us through the Three Bs of organic design; biomorphic, biomimetic and biophilic. The National Archives of Australia records and stores key events and decisions that have shaped Australian history and after one heck of a move has opened the doors of its new facility. With enough shelving to stretch from Canberra to Cooma the purpose-built facility is environmentally controlled, environmentally friendly and energy-efficient. Jonathan Green takes a stroll through its corridors with Sean Debenham, Assistant Director Storage and Lending to check out what’s in there. You sick of potatoes yet? We’re not.  Annie Smithers continues Kitchen Rudimental this week by tempting us to have a crack at making potato cakes (that’s a potato scallop for any Queensland

Via their Instagram page Design.Emergency Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli have brought designers together to tackle some of the worlds intractable problems. Journalist Amy Odell discusses her biography of the fashion industry's most powerful influencer Anna Wintour. New Zealanders have kicked off a citizen historian fad thanks to a new book from Dr Christine Whybrew of Heritage NZ called How to Research Your House. It helps you discover the genealogy of your home and uncover secrets of its past. Toilet, loo, powder room, the toot; no matter what you call it you use it everyday. In this week's Iconic Designs Colin Bisset casts his eye over the design evolution of the public toilet.

All the world's great cities have some things in common and fantastic food is one of them. But what happens if a city doesn't have a chief restaurant critic? Besha Rodell, the recently appointed Chief Restaurant Critic for The Age and Good Weekend discusses the role of a great food writer and why she prefers to remain anonymous. Then it's time to visit Sydney's newest herbarium at the Australian Botanic Garden in Mount Annan. Denise Ora, Chief Executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, and Brett Summerell, Director Research and Chief Botanist, join Tim Entwisle for an amble through the new facility and discuss why they're critical to conserving plants and fighting climate change. Annie and Jonathan just can't get enough of the humble spud. In the latest edition of Kitchen Rudimental, Annie Smithers teaches Jonathan how to master a Potato Terrine with Gruyère. And finally, Colin Bisset explores the Tower House in London's Holland Park. It's the work of William Burges, an architect whose sm

We see Indigenous art and motifs used extensively in Australia's marketing campaigns. But do Indigenous communities and businesses benefit from this branding? Professor Anne Poelina — a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Mardoowarra River in Western Australia's Kimberley region — is making sure they do. Then we turn to the grand old piles that dot the British Isles. Today, these buildings are more likely to host film and tv crews or tour groups. This is a marked turnaround given many were left in ruins, sold off, or simply demolished as aristocratic families fought over the scraps of empire by the end of the Second World War. Adrian Tinniswood has compiled this history in a new book, Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House. Afterward, meet the team behind Growing Farmers — a new community organisation pairing trainee urban farmers with residents who want their empty yards to become flourishing, small-scale market gardens. Jonathan took a trip to meet farm host Sapphire McMulla-Fisher in

Film and television shows have conjured up images of ancient cities many times, thanks largely to historical texts and archaeological finds. Now archaeologists are trying to recreate the odours of old civilisations. Barbara Huber from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is on a mission to advance the science of olfactory archaeology to understand how ancient people experienced and interpreted their worlds through smell. It's time to dig, mulch and prune with Australia's award-winning landscape designer Paul Bangay. In this edition, Paul throws formality to the wind as he takes Jonathan through The Woodland, where geometry and grids give way to the freedom of wilding. For those of us with smaller green spaces Paul and Jonathan muse on whether you can rewild an urban courtyard. Jams, pickles, and chutneys, oh my! Preserving is an art and Kylee Newton is a master at it. She's also the author of Modern Preserves and calls herself a saint of produce, giving fruit and vegetables anothe

Rima Truchanas learned to swim in Tasmania's Lake Pedder and watched on with her family when 50 years ago it drowned to make way for the Hydro-Electric Scheme . Her early life was shaped by her parent’s involvement in the campaign to save it. Now, there are plans to restore the Lake to its former glory.  Frances Green has produced a documentary for RN's History Listen about the campaign which spearheaded the Greens political movement in Australia. For Victoria's Kulin nation Autumn is wombat season. For Jonathan, the Fall is the perfect time take a stroll through Melbourne's Botanic Gardens with Tim Entwisle.  Together they ponder the philosophy of flowers, and Jonathan discovers a new pocket of the garden: the compost yard.  Whether it's mashed, fried, baked, or boiled the humble potato is an endless source of tasty treats. Chef Annie Smithers takes Jonathan into the kitchen for a meditation on spuds in this edition of Kitchen Rudimental. Is the potato the perfect vegetable? Colin Bisset's Iconic Design

Jonathan makes the trip to Mallacoota in far-eastern Victoria, land of the Gunai Kurnai people, to visit writer, historian, and Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe. During a wander around the farm, they discuss native crops and grasses, food sustainability and farming and ducks. Then you'll meet humanitarian architect Esther Charlesworth. The co-founder of Architects Without Frontiers joins Jonathan to understand what role design can play in response to disaster. From the floods in NSW and Queensland to the war and destruction in Ukraine, there's a lot for the built environment profession to do now… and well into the future. And finally, resident design expert Colin Bisset gives you the lowdown on the origins of the white picket fence. The plain wooden fence has been around for a very long time, but he asks: who decided to make something prettier?

Is there a certain dish, a certain food that triggers your sense memory and takes you right back to a time in your childhood? For British-Japanese writer Katherine Tamiko Arguile, both these things connect her to her heritage, her sense of family and the world around her. The arts journalist and author has released a new book — part memoir, part recipe collection — called MESHI: A personal history of Japanese food. And for the next edition of Garden Rudimental, award-winning Australian landscape designer Paul Bangay reveals his adoration for Vita Sackville-West. While she's best known for her writing, her Bloomsbury Group membership, and her enduring partnership with Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West was also a passionate green thumb. Afterward, it's time to hear from freelance journalist Evan Rail. He recently detailed the breadth of destruction of Ukraine's built environment and cultural heritage — and the efforts to protect it — in an article for the New York Times. Then let Blueprint's resident design e

The fact of the matter is we live in co-existence with our environment: our cities, our neighbourhood, animals, trees and plants… as well as our ex-lovers, however many billion corpses and the world's garbage and excrement. In the age of the Anthropocene, ecological collapse — and a pandemic — what does it mean to be 'all in this together', especially when there's no getting out of it? Timothy Morton, a Texan-based philosopher and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, joins Blueprint For Living to help us with these questions and introduce us to the idea of the 'hyper-object'. With ecology in mind, we'll turn to ecologist Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, whose work traces the impact of pesticides on our environment and the world's insect populations. Then it's time to think about type. Letters have no gender, but that hasn't stopped our species ascribing them masculine and feminine qualities. It's a phenomenon type designer and scholar Marie Boulanger examines in her debut book, XX XY: Sex, lette

UX, or user experience, design has given us an era of near-frictionless design, where incredibly complex pieces of technology — like the smartphone — rarely require an instruction manual. Cliff Kuang is someone who's spent a lot of time thinking about the history and ethics of this field. He's the author of User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play, and he tells Blueprint about why we should all be a lot more critical about what makes design 'friendly'. Then it's time to meet Eyal Weizman, founder of research agency Forensic Architecture. He helms a research collective using architectural analysis, open-source investigations, digital modelling — alongside traditional investigative methods — to investigate and expose state violence, human rights violations, and urban conflicts. Afterward, delve into an investigation of a different kind. Journalist and illustrator Emma Do and Kim Lam spent several months documenting the lives of Australia's Vietnamese garment

It's time to turn a new leaf, because Tim Entwisle, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria, is taking you on a tour of the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show after it returned from a two-year pandemic pause. This includes a stroll through a garden co-designed by tennis champion and current Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott. Then Blueprint's resident chef Annie Smithers takes Jonathan through the battle of the hot cross buns: Hot or cold? Crunchy or mushy? Chocolate or fruity? Time to rid yourself of this cross to bear. Afterward, Shannon Mattern — a social anthropologist from New York's New School for Social Research — tells us why the metaphor of the city-as-computer doesn't quite fit, and instead, we should embrace a messy city. Plus, Colin Bisset delves into the austere design language of Cesar Pelli, an architect whose skyscrapers have been likened to "the sober aesthetic of a German luxury car or a well cut suit".

Plus Colin Bisset gives the lowdown on manhole covers in Japan.

Plus, Colin Bisset on the duo who created a better alternative for those serving ice-cream.

Plus, Colin Bisset introduces the woman responsible for the Georgian period's stone of choice… and it was completely artificial.

What does the term 'plant-based' do that ‘vegetarian’ and ‘vegan’ cannot?

As late summer plays out, you might be contending with an abundance of tomatoes. Chef Annie Smithers has answers for you.

Stringy bark, coral gum, Silver top ash, lemon-scented gum… with over 900 specifies, it's hard to pick a favourite.

If you're a regular listener, you'll have heard conversations with Indigenous experts on the intersection of Country and archaeology, heritage, artefacts and architecture. Now it's time to understand how it's parcelled up, packaged and sold.

Plus a salon concert featuring a replica of Marie Antoinette's harpsichord.