What in the world is Pecha Kucha?

What in the world is Pecha Kucha?

Back in the early noughties, there was a new style of talks sweeping the world called Pecha Kucha. It was created in Tokyo by a couple of expat UK architects, Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein. The term 'pecha kucha' means 'chit chat' in Japanese.

The format was simple and more image-based than verbal content (we architects are a visual lot!). The format goes something like 20 slides in 400 seconds (just under seven minutes).

It’s fast paced and designed for the attention-deficit world we live in now. At 20 seconds per slide, the image has to speak louder than words. It’s fun to watch but somewhat daunting to prepare a presentation for. Image selection is everything.

Why do, you ask, I rattle on about pecha kucha?

Well, our little studio on Raymond Road, Thirroul has recently rebranded. We are now called CAST Studio and have a collective of design experts working together in our little niche (if you have a design problem, come stop by our shop we’ll find you a solution!).

One of those in our midst is ocean pools ambassador Nicole Larkin. You can see some of her ocean baths work here. As you do in a collaborative environment, ideas start to ferment and Nicole thought it would be great to host pecha kucha talks out front of our shop window.

We held the first of these in early May and, due to its resounding success, we’ll be hosting more! 

As it was a bit of a test run to see if there was any interest out there, we started off with three of us punters from CAST Studio. We also modified the format a bit so that it was 5ish slides in 5ish minutes. I went first and recounted five of my most memorable archi-articles with accompanying images.

From the Solar Haves & Have-nots to On the Merits of Quaintness. I’ve been writing these monthly articles for over five years now and it was fun to bring some of the topics back to life and in a more spoken word format.

After me, fellow CAST member Adam Russell, from Saltbush Projects, gave a presentation on his design of the Great Hall for the University of Technology, Sydney. A fascinating tale of a young architecture firm undertaking their first big design commission. Sometimes winging it (they put a photo of the vice chancellor on a design scheme they really wanted to get across the line and it worked!) and other times bringing cutting-edge ideas to the project that a larger “play it safe” firm likely wouldn’t. Did you know there were over 1200 unique triangular panels with over 1.2 million perforations that were incorporated into the custom ceiling dubbed “the mantle”? How do you document that!

Nicole wrapped up the evening with her incredible research project on New South Wales ocean baths. Along our coastline sit over 120 ocean baths that extend from as North as Yamba all the way down to Eden. The highest concentration of this typology in the whole world!

Nicole visited every single one of these, mapped them with drone technology and laid out her research findings in a book you can now purchase from Collins titled The Wild Edge, A Survey of Ocean Pools in NSW. Asked if she also swam in every single pool, the answer was an emphatic “No” – for the good reason that she was generally there before dawn in the middle of winter so that she could get swimmer-free access to map the pools properly. Fair enough!

Our next Pecha Kucha night will be held on 3rd July so bring your puffer jacket! We project onto the drop-down blind in our shop window, which creates a lovely frame. If it gets too cold, you can always tuck into Franks for a quick tipple!

To follow us, hear about our next speakers and more, go to our insta handle @cast.thirroul.