Designed in collaboration between artist, architect and musician Lawrence Lek and designer Onur Ozkaya, the installation titled “Twins” explores issues of spatial intimacy and light-generated forms. It is one of several installations for an exhibition under Henri Matisse quote “The future of art is light”.

Artist Statement

I was invited to participate in Illumination, the inaugural show at Coldharbour Gallery in South London. I wanted to create a sculpture that you could inhabit, one that you could enter an illuminated world in which light and shadow were as important as structure. I also wanted to combine two contrasting natural forms – the playfulness of wings in flight, and the intimacy of a womb-like enclosure.

The project would combine earlier interests in biological skins and exoskeletons with a simple route or passage through an interior zone. This notion of creating an inhabitable sculpture would operate between our animal instinct to be immersed in nature, and our intellectual desire to create and control our environment.

I wanted the surfaces to behave like pieces of cloth, falling naturally into their final form. To achieve this, I worked together with industrial designer Onur Ozkaya to create a modular material system that could express the concept of the work. Read the rest of this entry »

Symbolizing the unity of German people, in reference to The peaceful revolution of 1989 which began in Leipzig, this competition proposal illustrates the idea of ​​freedom as an open, retractable field. The monument will encourage visitors to identify and commemorate the events and will convey meanings and images associated with a variety of historical and experiential impressions. Designed in collaboration between RNA Architektur and Archiglobe, the building establishes itself as a continuously transforming open form. There is no inside nor outside, but a field without a specific shape.

The monument consists of three main elements: the foundation vaults, the historical platform and a flowing field of false, distorted and illuminated aluminum bodies-abstract forms that symbolize the momentum of a crowd. The existing vault is opened in the former national monument and can be accessed via a staircase. An information center is situated near the entrance, educating visitors of the 1989 events and reunification of Germany. Read the rest of this entry »

Solar Shift is a proposal for an exterior art piece for the new Evansville Arena. Design by PROJECTiONE LLC, the structure looks at the large public outdoor space in combination with concepts of sustainable interactive lighting.  The project will dynamically change in response to individuals and groups in the space through the use of motion sensors, photovoltaics, and LED lighting.

Solar Shift is created as a fully self contained system that acts as a solar collector, using photovoltaic panels to charge during the day, and in turn power the reactive lighting in the evening. As the sun sets each day, the project shifts and slowly comes to life, recognizing the individuals inhabiting it and lighting up to follow their movement in space. Each component in the system will power itself and react independently, eliminating any electrical connections between panels or tapping into an existing power grid. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects at 10 Design have designed a prototype house able to tackle extreme weather. Equipped with high-tech mechanisms for tornado evasion and flood resistance, the building is able to change positions in order to avoid damage. The house has a set of hydraulic levers that are activated by high-velocity winds that can pull the house into the ground to safety. Once the house is underground, the roof locks to make it water and wind proof. With the optimal environmental conditions re-established, the building emerges, exposing its inhabitants to open air and natural light. Ted Givens, a design partner at 10 Design, apparently has a vision of communities wired up with sensors and can process weather data to tuck away the homes in case of an emergency. Read the rest of this entry »

OFL Architecture is an interdisciplinary practice established by Francesco Lipari in 2008, currently based in Rome. Aiming to combine Art, Sculpture, Biology and Cinema, they engage in various international competitions and tackle a wide range of architectural typologies. Receiving several prizes: the honorable mention at the Hong Kong Noise Barrier Competition with the Riccio project, as well as the first prize for the Silk Road Map International Competition, their work is considered provocative, as it ranges from referencing historical architecture to issues of future housing. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is a temporary building, part of the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show. It is designed by Schmidhuber + Partner and will remain in place until October 20, 2011, to house the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Audi Ring is 100 meters long, 70 meters wide and 12 meters high. The exhibition in the Grand Hall leads visitors through the vehicle presentation, followed by a technology park with various interactive exhibits. .The 400 meter-long  test track extends across both levels of the interior, visible from the exterior via cutaways along the structure’s sides and top, and permitting the travel of up to nine vehicles at once. The course is open for visitors to experience by riding as passengers alongside professional drivers in a range of current and future Audi vehicles. As co-drivers, visitors are immersed in the driving experience, provided by the combination of technology and architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

Nympha Cultural Center in Bucharest is a concept proposal designed by Brasov-based upgrade.studio, an architectural practice oriented towards computational design and cutting-edge concepts. Their Urban BY-PASS project received a Special Mention at eVolo’s Scyscraper Competition in 2008.

The proposal is conceived as a programmatic addition to the studio’s Digital University project. It comprises Art galleries, Cultural Center, Performing Arts Center and the University library.The two morphologies seem to be deliberately conflicted, expressing opposite approaches. Read the rest of this entry »

The natural acrylic stone material HI-MACS® was chosen by eminent French artist Ora-ïto for his entry into the recent Wallpaper/Reebok exhibition in London. Fabricated by Candido Hermida in Spain, HI-MACS® was selected for its outstanding properties, visual and tactile effects and the ability to offer the artist thermoforming capabilities that placed zero restriction on his vision and ability to create a stunning three-dimensional creation.

Five of the world’s leading creative artists were invited to participate and Ora-Ito’s contribution was an interpretation of the Reebok RealFlex shoe in the form of a wall-mounted installation made entirely from HI-MACS®.

The detail of Ora-Ito’s work was what he described as the “iconic sneaker soles”. In creating this by using HI-MACS® the designer was able to exercise various sculptural experiments taking inspiration from the RealFlex sole’s “hidden art” aspects, resulting in a topographic landscape made to touch and explore its own poetic qualities. Read the rest of this entry »

To honour London’s imminent hosting of the 2012 Olympic games, James Law Cybertecture has presented an Olympic Pavilion X design to offer a statement of passion and excellence whilst providing a thrilling platform for memorable celebrations by the city and its citizens.

Inspired by the fluid shape of a raindrop splash, Olympic Pavilion X becomes a modern iconic landmark to inject both fun and flair to the monumental Trafalgar Square. With an electrifying exterior façade stretching 375 square meters, Olympic Pavilion X offers functional features of information center, souvenir shop and administration office at the tip of its three separate corners. Read the rest of this entry »

This proposal by Emergent is based on creating a complex visual oscillation between two and three dimensional realms. Somewhere between the disciplines of sculpture and painting, the piece registers as a mass but also as a graphic. Loopy, spotted patterns flow over manifold surfaces, simultaneously dissolving the mass and re-establishing it. Transparent zones allow people to view deep inside the object, their gaze pulled into involutions in interior surfaces. They can see the inside of the mass-painting.

The human brain, recent neuroscience suggests, is not engaged in “seeing” space, but in actively “modeling” space1. Residing on multiple ontological levels, this project is an attempt to force the brain to hedge and guess in its “modeling” of physical reality.

The colorful pattern language, while fanciful at first glance, is not simply a visual phenomenon. It is the result of intersecting a map of structural stresses with a painterly sensibility. The loopy mass is analyzed as a composite shell structure, revealing areas of low and high stress. The resultant color-gradient map is manipulated to produce certain visual effects but also broken down into layers of variable thickness and material strength. Color and pattern therefore only partially index material forces; the piece exceeds simple material expression towards something which correlates nature and culture. Read the rest of this entry »