Visited the California Design exhibition at GOMA on the weekend. Fantastic exhibition showcasing the period between 1930 – 1965 when Californian designers explored innovative new approaches to graphic, fashion, furniture, architectural and landscape design.  What is striking about the exhibition is just how contemporary some of the designs, especially landscape and architectural, still appear by today’s standards.

I was there with my brother-in-law who is a building designer and we both emerged with the same question namely ‘Why don’t we see anything approaching this level of design exploration today?’ One only has to drive through any new housing estate in this country to see the homogenous  architectural and landscape style and conformity we seem destined to repeat. Granted there is the ‘Starchitects’ such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid but their work seems only to cater to the iconic market rather than the mainstream. I think one problem is that we’re saturated with the same imagery from the mainstream media where anything that doesn’t conform to expectations is ignored. In addition I also think we’re still caught up on post GFC conservatism. Got no solutions just a little lament.