Anthony Burke's By Design

Australians love a good cuppa, but do you know the twists and turns this little leaf has taken over the years? From being brewed in medicinal bowls to being “jiggled” in a tea bag - the distilling of tea has its own fascinating history.

In episode five of our special series The Home Front, around the globe, architects and designers are reimagining housing with bold, inventive solutions - from sprawling multi use compounds in Indonesia to compact cooperative models in Europe.  These global experiments offer fresh perspectives on affordability, sustainability and community. But could they work in Australia? In this episode, we expl...

Locks have existed as long as we’ve had something to keep safe. From ancient Sumeria to the lock on your front door - the design evolution of locks is a series of twists and turns. So how well do locks today stand up against their predecessors? And what is the future of safety in a world of AI?

In episode four of our special series The Home Front, we all know that house prices have gone through the roof - but what’s driving them, and what can actually be done? In this episode we dig into the money behind the housing crisis; from tax policy and global market shifts to government targets and the growing role of intergenerational wealth. We explore how renters and homeowners alike are feeli...

They weren’t dolls—they were a revolution. Once, dolls were seen as toys for girls—until clever companies reimagined them as “action figures” and made them irresistible to boys. With that simple rebrand came explosive success: from G.I. Joe, the original “action figure,” to the galaxy-spanning rise of Star Wars, the muscle-bound power of He‑Man, and the shape-shifting dominance of The Transformers...

In episode three of our special series The Home Front, Australia’s homes are doing more than sheltering families - they’re accommodating multigenerational households, solo dwellers, single parents, and shared living arrangements. But is our housing stock too rigid to reflect this diversity? Is it failing behind the way we actually live? In this episode, we meet the architects and designers reimagi...

Laundry once took a full day of hard labour—before the washing machine changed everything. Water had to be carried, clothes scrubbed by hand, wrung out, and then hung to dry. In the mid-1800s, the first washing machines began to appear in the homes of the wealthy, marking the start of a quiet domestic revolution. What once consumed a full day of exhausting work can now be done in under an hour. Th...

In episode two of our special series The Home Front we look at how Australians have lived together in the past—and what those lessons might offer us today. From the tightly packed worker’s cottages of the early 1900s, where strong community bonds helped people get by, to the bold experiments in communal and cooperative living during the 1970s, Australians have long found creative ways to share spa...

Do you remember your first ride? For kids, it’s a first taste of freedom. For others, it’s transport, fitness—or both. But here’s the twist: for all their variations, the bike’s core design hasn’t changed since the 1800s. So why are those designs still so successful? We go back to where it began—and to the ideas that still carry us today.

Why do so many Australians see owning a home as the cornerstone of the Great Australian Dream? In this opening episode of our special series The Home Front, we unpack the historical, cultural, and political forces that shaped Australia’s deep-rooted obsession with home ownership. From post-war prosperity to the rise of suburban ideals, we trace how the dream took hold- and why that dream no longer...

It’s a single strip of cloth that has shaped centuries of style and identity. Worn for thousands of years across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, the sari is one of the world’s most enduring—and adaptable—garments. From sacred ceremonies to high fashion runways, it has continually reinvented itself while carrying deep cultural meaning. But how has one garment continued to feel fresh, relevan...

What do designers notice the moment they walk through your front door? Interior designer Adelaide Bragg and photographer and author Robyn Lea reveal how they read a room—translating light, objects and atmosphere into deeply personal stories. We explore their collaboration on City, Coast and Country and what it takes to style and capture uniquely Australian homes with meaning, not just bea

It sits quietly on the table, beside the knife and spoon, rarely asking for attention. But the fork hasn’t always looked — or behaved — the way it does today. From scandalous novelty to everyday necessity, this small object has played a powerful role in shaping how we eat, how we gather, and how manners became habit.

‘The sewer is the conscience of the city’, or so the French writer Victor Hugo once claimed. It’s a confronting idea, but a revealing one: the way a society deals with waste can tell us a lot about its values, priorities and politics. And yet our toilet habits are something we’re usually taught to ignore, avoid or feel embarrassed about. We look at one everyday object that sits right at the inters...

Today, the dressing gown is as likely to appear over pyjamas during a dash to the bins as it is at a lazy breakfast table — but it wasn’t always this casual. Once, this was a garment that signalled leisure, status and a certain velvet‑chair‑owning elegance. In this episode, we wrap ourselves up and trace the surprisingly stylish design history of the dressing gown, from indulgent luxury to everyda...

When we think about design in Australia today, it’s impossible not to trace its evolution back to pioneers like Mary Featherston, AM. A leading force in shaping a more human‑centred approach, Mary has spent decades reimagining design as something embedded in our everyday environments — not just objects, but experiences. From transforming the way we think about learning spaces to helping define a d...

From cricket sidelines to camping trips, the esky is an essential tool of getting out and about, making sure cold drinks are always within reach. It’s so familiar it feels stitched into Australian life. But where did the esky actually come from? And is it really an Australian design, or something we simply made our own?

What does the federal budget really do for Australia’s housing crisis? Peter Martin from The Economy, Stupid joins Anthony Burke from By Design to examine whether changes to tax settings will make it any easier to buy a home. And what impact it will have on rents.

Once a punchline, now a powerhouse. For decades, Eurovision lived on the fringes of Australian culture — loved by some, dismissed by many. But when Australia entered the competition in 2015, perception began to shift. What was once mocked for its camp excess and theatrical scale moved steadily into the mainstream. After 70 years of spectacle, ambition and visual escalation, how has Eurovision gone...

The umbrella has seen more than rain. For centuries, its silhouette has barely changed — but its story is anything but ordinary. From ancient status symbol and sun shield to political prop and covert weapon, the umbrella has quietly intersected with power, fashion and invention. In this episode, we trace the dramatic design evolution of an everyday object we only notice when it rains.

It sounds like a dystopian story - a city sinking lower every year, streets flooded by tidal waters.. But this is the lived reality of many cities across the globe, particularly in Jakarta, where the city is sinking at a rate of 200 mm per year, the fastest in the world. So far there have been plans to relocate the political community to a new city, and walls to keep out the rising sea. But will a...

If you stop and think about today’s item, it’s one of fashion’s strangest inventions. We loop it around our necks, pull it into a neat little noose, and call it an accessory. Yet the humble men’s tie - this decorative strip of fabric - has survived centuries of reinvention. And somehow, it has come to symbolise masculinity more strongly than almost anything else you can wear.

Flickering lights, windowless offices, overwhelming noise — bad building design affects everyone, but for neurodiverse people it can be exhausting. We explore how everyday design irritations are amplified for neurodivergent minds — and how the built environment can quietly work against the brain. We ask what neuro‑inclusive design really looks like, and why changes made for some could end up makin...

Australians love a cup of tea. From the boil of a billy by the campfire to “everybody jiggling” a Lipton tea bag, a good cuppa has long been woven into our cultural identity. So it feels only natural that when it comes to delivering this liquid gold, Australians would be at the forefront of engineering the best way to boil water - and it's come a long way since the days of the billy can.

One of the greatest tragedies of war is the loss of innocent life, and it’s rightly at the forefront of how we measure the cost of conflict. Against that reality, the protection of buildings and monuments can seem frivolous — even misplaced. But organisations like Blue Shield, a non‑profit dedicated to safeguarding cultural heritage, argue otherwise. They believe the built environment carries deep...