Blueprint For Living - Separate stories

Nam Le, award winning author of The Boat, takes us to the two places that shaped him as a writer: under the vast sky and  amidst the dramatic weather of Iowa City and a barn in Provincetown, against the howling wind of the North Atlantic, where he committed to a life in writing.

Internationally renowned designer Bethan Laura Wood is building a library like no other; she gives us a tour of Kaleidoscope-o-rama, her artwork informed by the interiors, furniture and objects that were the backdrop for conversation and knowledge exchange among women of the aristocracy in England during the Regency period of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century.

In the second instalment of her study of Elizabeth David’s masterpiece, French Provincial Cooking, award-winning chef Annie Smithers talks hors d’oeuvres and makes use of some late summer zucchini.Find more of Annie's past Kitchen Rudimentals here.

Explore how class and culture influence our food preferences, from divisive dishes like oysters and rotten Icelandic shark to the controversial Vegemite. Learn about the evolutionary significance of disgust in food choices and cultural perceptions of delicious and repulsive foods.

The climate crisis has cast a long shadow over our visions of the future, but what if we imagined something more positive?

From coastal grandma to cluttercore, another day, another hashtagged fashion or design trend comes and goes. Trend forecasters are tracking ever more niche and short-lived styles.

Legend of Australian gastronomy, Florentino’s Guy Grossi makes a simple braised calamari pasta and reflects on the legacy of his parents, the weight of expectation and the importance of tradition.

Journalist and author Nathan Thrall takes us to the city he calls the most divided in the world – his home city of Jerusalem; a place of segregated neighbourhoods, 26-foot tall concrete walls, of borders and checkpoints.

Besha Rodell, Chief Restaurant Critic, The Age/Good Food, casts her gaze back on the food scene that was in 2023 and makes her predictions for 2024.

For a long time, the so called Australian dream of home ownership, produced a uniformity in the kinds of homes that were built and reinforced limits on architectural possibility; Professor of architecture and host of Grand Designs: Transformations, Anthony Burke, discusses the legacy of this and the role of architecture in resisting the homogenising effects of economic insecurity.