Gang-gang. Daring to dream of bright lights

We look at the rainbowy improvement of the looks of a hitherto dull old building in nondescript Philip. We look too at the way in which, just a few nights ago, Aurora Australis lit up a little of the local heavens and especially the "sweet spot" of the heavens over Goulburn.

To sweet Goulburn first and to the pictures solar weather aficionado and chaser David Finlay took while standing, awe-struck, all night long, in a paddock at Goulburn. His films of what he saw are doing a great deal of enchanting on social media. His story of how he came to be in the right place at the right time (in his obsessiveness, he tells us, going without sleep "for 42 hours straight") is, too beguiling.

He reports that when, just a few days before the 17th, the sun was detected sending out a very big solar flare, solar weather folk became very alert. He was in Goulburn for work (he lives in Wollongong) but went out in the twilight on the 17th daring to dream of seeing amazing things. He saw things beyond his wildest dreams. One of the joys of his online films is that they come with his spontaneous gasps of amazement and delight.

Talking to us he still sounds astounded at his good luck. He found himself, from subsequent reports, in almost the only cloudless place in New South Wales, what he calls "a sweet spot". Not that there was any good luck about knowing that something was going to happen. He tells us that for serious solar weather watchers there is now a panoply of apps that enable you, even through your mobile phone, to get the up-to-date solar weather wisdom available from satellites.

But he was lucky with the pellucid Goulburn skies and with the sheer splendour of this display in such a northern place.

He explains that our Aurora Australis and the north's Aurora borealis (the Northern Lights) are both best seen towards the poles. Here in the south Tassie it gets some good sightings and so does the south of New Zealand, but something as grand as far north as Goulburn is rare indeed.

For David Finlay's films and pictures, with his endearing exclamations, begin online at David Finlay's Aurora Australis Chase Video from Goulburn. At one point he looks across to Canberra (at about 2.30am, for he says the splendour continued all night long) and wonders "I wonder if anyone over there knows what's going on right now?" And of course we didn't (not even at Mt Stromlo it seems) because our skies were cloud-infested.*

But back to boring old earth. The 2015 ACT Architecture Awards are being decided even as you read this column. Pictures and details of the 48 entrants are on display all this week at the Gallery of Australian Design.

On Monday and Tuesday there has been/will be at GAD public judging of the entries. We sallied forth to Monday's morning session because, as frequenters of Philip (a drab, Fyshwicky place of car yards, fast food emporiums, GP superclinics, op shops, superbarns of all kinds and aromatherapy parlours) we were beguiled by the Altree Court Sun Shade project. It is by Adhami Pender Architecture. On Monday the young and personable Nabil Adhami fronted, without outward signs of fear, a panel of four judges.

Lots of you, for Philip is a shopping magnet for a swathe of Canberrans, will have seen and been a little bit lifted by the building at Botany Street. Its sun shades brighten up the neighbourhood (just like the damsel Pretty Flamingo, in the song of that name).

The sun shades are in the Small Projects division of the awards and Adhami explained that this small project emerged over a cup of coffee with someone worrying about the sun's penetration of the building. The sun had been doing it since the building went up in 1971, but now it seemed time to defy the sun a little, and in new ways.

So we looked for some "different ways" Adhami told us all on Monday, and thought of it as "an opportunity to do something more interesting" than just blocking out the sun. One good reason for doing something more interesting was that the building is in a prominent place. Perhaps it could be helped, with the right sorts of shades, to strut a little.

And after some clever ruminating it was decided that instead of just buying some off-the-shelf louvres they'd collaborate in the design of some unique ones.

That is what's come to pass. So for example, the colours echo the colours of a big, bright mural then decorates the building's south west. Then. the louvres are punched with a design that says "K71" in honour and memory of the builders and continuing owners of the building (their surname begins with K) and of the year, 1971, when the building arose. The louvres do an array of clever things and their design and placement was arrived at using "modelling in 3D" that takes into account when (times of year as well as times of day) and at what angles the sun bombards the bailiwick and needs to be fended off, in this case with great Clever Capital style.

* Our thanks to the Goulburn Post for its assistance with this item.