Rumbles in the Down Under jungle.

They are officially the best of friends still, but you wonder why Glenn Murcutt and the godfather of Oz architecture, Harry Seidler, plus 80 or so like-minded Sydney architects decided to set up the Australian Architecture Association alongside the established Royal Australian Institute of Architecture (RAIA). The new website address is www.architecture.org.au. This will have the UK RIBA panjandrums spitting with fury--since they paid a reported [pounds sterling]120K for their www.architecture.com.url--and forgot to buy all the other www.architecture dot whatsits. Such as the RAIA's www.architecture.com.au. RAIA claims not to be at all fazed by the new institution, well, club. But it all looks very like two fingers to the established body. You imagine that if it were doing a dynamic job, the new organization might not have been formed. People will probably draw parallels with the UK's Architectural Association which, if memory serves, was formed a century and a half ago by student architects anxious to give themselves a wider perspective than that of the early RIBA. The difference is that the protagonists of the AAA all seem mostly to be in the near-retiree bracket--hardly a bunch of deranged revolutionaries. Still, the site looks simple, it's easy to navigate and the promised events interesting.

Sutherland Lyall rakes enthusiastically through the cyber undergrowth to unearth nuggets of hidden treasure.