Blog — Page 185 of 275

Smash Brothers

Kogarah, Australia

“Break room” in a nine-to-five existence might be limited to the confines where lunch and coffee is had and the latest office gossip is spread.

Smash Brothers took it more literally: A room where one breaks things to release stress, let off steam and unleash the beast in a controlled environment without running danger of being apprehended for your actions or having to clean up the mess you leave behind all while being serenaded by your favourite tunes.

After entering Smash Brothers’ etablissement in the backyard of an industrial area of southern Sydney, the attentive and helpful staff equips you with a boiler suit, helmet, vise guard and a metal baseball bat to ward off any loose shrapnel before you are sent on your way to vent your frustrations.

Sounds basic, appealing to your lower instinct and not exactly constructive?

Well, that is the point – anger and stress management taken to the most primal level, resulting in the same outcome, i.e. deflecting and channeling physical arousal that anger can cause.

While hitting up Smash Brothers is of course not going to cure the roots of stress and anger and while for most of you wreaking havoc and putting the steel capped front of your Doc Martens to use is not unknown and was probably a rite of passage during your formative years as a young delinquent, it certainly is a fun activity to unleash your inner beast in a controlled environment with sessions typically lasting between 15-30 minutes. Depending on how much effort you put into it, the session can also serve as a bit of a physical workout.

All items, e.g. glassware, TV’s, toasters, bottles, cups, plates, blenders, etc., are usually sourced from restaurants, scrapyards or eBay and the remnants are being recycled after each day of mayhemic performances.

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Photo by @k.a.vv

Brew A Batch

Christopher Sidwa

Murdoch Books

Unless you are a teetotaller, who does not like a good brew, be it a regional Lager, Pale Ale or a Craft Beer with more exotic ingredients?

Right –so how about taking it one step further, i.e. brewing it at home and bottling your own idiosyncratic batch of liquid goodness?

Don’t know how?

Beer luminary extraordinaire Christopher Sidwa to the rescue!

Christopher Sidwa has the ideal credentials to give advice on how to get things started and going. Being one of the spearheads and founders of the local, wildly Batch Brewing Co., an entity that we had the pleasure of recently visiting for a feature as part of our on-going Thus Let Us Drink Beer series, Christopher takes you by the hand and gives detailed tested and tried information on how he started his own empire and how yours cold stake its first baby steps.

Sidwa also provides nuanced input on the nitty gritty of brewing with elaborations on assuring that your batch is on track via hints on approaches to tasting. Drawing on his vast experience and not shy to point out mistakes beginners are prone to make, because he has made them as well, you can avoid them by referring to the resource he has created.

Batch A Brew is accessible for novices and what makes it an engaging read is that Sidwa manages to even infuse the drier theoretical and scientific parts of the genesis of beer brewing with enough liveliness to give an impulse to do more research.

A guidebook from a craft beer manufacturer that, having originally started as a home brewer, has accomplished the creation of his own brewery that apart from its core range is very much focused on both experimentation and explorations of exotic flavours., and hereby bestows the gift of his passion for everything beer related on you.

The Architecture Concept Book

An Inspirational Guide to Creative Ideas, Strategies and Practices

James Tait

Thames & Hudson

Ah Architecture – visual art at best and the ultimate yearning for timelessness.

Architecture can give one a real sense of the place you are in as we might shape our buildings but our buildings shape us. The Architecture Concept Book is an integral resource book for students ingrained in the subject matter as well as those tangentially interested in what creates the foundation of our day-to-day.

The approach of the book is focused on established and underlying theories but has its focus firmly set on how to tackle the challenges the 21st century presents – a globalised, homogenous world that is getting more complex by the minute with new technologies emerging constantly.

A merit of the book is that it is not meant to provide a mere guideline but a source of inspiration and stimulation. An impulse to think outside the box, break outside the confines of conservatism and to be open for everything that is going on around you.

The Concept Book is organized in a thematic manner covering wide-ranging topics and 35 topics that are certainly not part of your run-of-the-mill architectural studies.

What the author James Trait accomplished with the help of 350 illustrations is not only adhering to themes intrinsically linked to architecture, but to explore concepts like acquaintanceship, dominance and powers of recall through elaborations about purely architectural components, social phenomena and what the potential architecture intrinsically has.

Richly illustrated with plans and photographs, spatial ideas are unpacked and presented in an enjoyable and easy to comprehend manner.

The Essential Goethe

Princeton University Press

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

German writer, statesman and one of the most virtuous pioneers of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, whose influence not just on the literary landscape cannot be done justice enough. Apart from what he is mainly known for, i.e. his lyric and epic poetry, is oeuvre encompasses a myriad of forms, metres, styles, literary criticism, treatises on anatomy and nature.

A true renaissance man who created timeless works that have never not been relevant.

The Essential Goethe is meant to be exactly what the telling title suggests, i.e. to be your go-to one-stop volume collection of the most significant of Goethe's writings ever published in English.

While it would demand quite a bit of work to strip works like Faust or Iphigenia in Tauris from its immense richness and while it pains me a bit to see how some of the original meaning conveyed in their Germanic original form falls prey to the English translation, the Goethe scholars have done a commendable job to distil the main works from Princeton’s authorative twelve-volume and accomplished the feat to enable English readers easy and comprehensive access to the body of work of one of the greats – a playwright, novelist, autobiographer.

Do not be deterred by the heft of the tome – what I have always liked about Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s work is that the reader’s interaction and interpretation of the works plays a role in the alchemical equation that cannot be overstated and all-around renaissance man.

The Essential Goethe is a rich anthology that is comprised of a curated selection of poems, dramas (Faust Part I, Egmont, Iphigenia in Tauris, Torquato Tasso), the complete novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, a highly readable selection from the travelogue Italian Journey and selected essays on art, philosophy, science and literature that show Goethe from a range of different angles in different contexts.

All of the aforementioned rests on a sound introduction to Goethe’s life and works along with a chronology of Goethe’s life and times and a note on the texts and translations.

A cornerstone without which any halfway serious library would be incomplete.

Eames – Beautiful Details

Ammo Books

One might question that need for frivolous ornamentation and luxury furniture, that is until you have planted yourself in an original Eames lounge chair, which was originally created in 1956 – a pleasure I’ve recently had in Helsinki.

With its initial molded plywood and fibreglass designs, Eames has established itself as a premium brand that is comfortable, reduced to the necessities to provide ultimate ergonomic comfort and the fact that their emissions are eye candy is the cherry on top.

Eames – Beautiful Details is an ode in book form to the brand that does not stop with merely depicting the furniture but digs deeper by illustrating graphical concepts, images and essays that shed light on the underpinning ideas and inspirations that inform the production of what you will eventually sit on and the ethos of the brand that the Eames family has created.

An ethos that seems refreshingly devoid of pathos and pretence, which is further substantiated by the family documents and photos that are part of this book.

The creator themselves are involved and contribute essays that give an idea not only of the inner workings but also the poetry that informs their approach. What makes the book a must-have for aficionados as well as those only marginally interested in the brand is that it beautifully outlines all the other realms outside the confines of furniture design Eames is active in, e.g. toy design, architecture, exhibitions, films, graphical design, et cetera.

What pervades every facet of Eames’ work is that the husband-wife duo that started what has become an influential empire, created a trademark fluidity and seamlessness that is omnipresent in whatever form their output takes, with innovation always on the forefront of their minds.

Given the status of Eames and the attention to “beautiful details” they are known for, it is not further wondrous that the tome is housed in an opulent slipcover with a beautifully designed graphic pattern – a patterns derived from their lesser known “toy” designs aimed at children, which gives the affair an additional layer of playfulness and humour and signifies family Eames’ joyful spirit that makes this book a fulminant feast for their eyes.

An in-depth, multi-disciplinary essential source of inspiration for anyone remotely interested in the discipline of design and a manifest to the fact that problem-solving and practicality does not have to go at the expense of experimentation and creativity.

Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo

Ammo Books

Let’s start off with one of Hunter S. Thompson’s rhetorical questions:

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"

If you are interested in a bit more than what is readily available via mainstream channels about Hunter S. Thompson and apart from Johnny Depp’s caricature portrayal of him, this is your accessible resource resource. Immensely readable, filled with funny anecdotes provided by his many admirers and Weggefaehrten that have worked and travelled with him detailing the times, trials and shenanigans of this self-confessed and proud drug addict, that has carved his own lane and propagated what has become known as the phenomenon of “gonzo journalism”.

While not exactly zero-ing in on every detail of his life and not pretending to be a full-blown biography, this bright, graphical journey which at times invokes the impression that it is deliberately kept in the vein of a loosely arranged scrapbook, cements the impression that most would have had of the man – a maverick that lead a wild life, which is illustrated via the gallery of personal photos that shed light on his prowess away from the public persona in the spotlight.

The addition of related unedited excerpts from the man himself from his service days in the Air Forces via stints in the Caribbean and Vegas (including Rum Diary and Big Sur chapters) to the 1972 campaign trail and anthologised letters paint a comprehensive of Hunter’s world, along with photos in mesmerizing quality all printed on high-quality uncoated paper and excellent graphic design with vibrating colour schemes.

Needless to say that the at times gossipy tone adds to the entertainment, especially the melange and equal measures of admiration and fear of the man, which can be extracted in between the lines.

An authentic,  sweeping portrait of a showman, self-promoter, con and show man, father, friend, boss, neighbour, son, husband, and all around entertaining  nuisance that shows the reader a bit more of his personality than the crazy, drug-addled gun-loving side of him and evokes a smile here and then – it manages to create a bit of intimacy.

Gonzo offers more than a glimpse of Hunter’s personal truths and is an homage to a man that was ahead of his times. 

The book gives insight on an exemplary life with the most prominent voices coming from his friends and family not shying away from the ugly aspects, not just for die-hard Gonzo enthusiasts.