The double video installation Topologies by artist Quayola is an experimental abstract of the Baroque period art works Las Meninas by Velazquez and L’ Immacolata Concezione by Tiepolo. The figurative paintings are systematically reduced to color planes and set in motion as a fluid kinetic skin. The fluttering undulations become almost entirely independent of their origins, responding to an underlying, ever changing formulation of three dimensional space. The abstractions have architectural geometric underpinnings of fixed points connected by simple geometric plains which create the three dimensional space. The organic movement of the topography is underscored by accompanying sounds corresponding to the intensity and scale of the movement. Read the rest of this entry »
Topologies Video Installation / Quayola
Carpal Skin / Neri Oxman
Carpal Skin is a prototype designed by Neri Oxman for a protective glove to protect against Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a medical condition in which the median nerve is compressed at the wrist, leading to numbness, muscle atrophy, and weakness in the hand. Night-time wrist splinting is the recommended treatment for most patients before going into carpal tunnel release surgery. Carpal Skin is a process by which to map the pain-profile of a particular patient—its intensity and duration—and to distribute hard and soft materials to fit the patient’s anatomical and physiological requirements, limiting movement in a customized fashion. The form-generation process is inspired by animal coating patterns in the control of stiffness variation. Read the rest of this entry »
Flying Lightness and Digital Ceramics
This project was designed by Greta Lillienau at the Architectural Association in London. Imagine bubbles flying by and attaching to a wall, this is a pattern that shall give you the feeling of flying lightness. Three different tiles have been designed to reinterpretation this. Three different tiles with different intensity in size and the amount of bubbles. These tiles are designed and made with a feminine and poetic touch. They are drawn digital but manufactured by hand and all three variations tile to each other like a puzzle. This gives a great deal of variations of different patterns to the owner. The tiles can be used as a facade ornament or as a interior detail. What is left to you is your imagination when tiling them. Read the rest of this entry »
ICON- Parametric Cardboard Sculpture / Toby Horricks
Melbourne based Architect Toby Horricks recently had an installation tilted “Icon” installed in the Gallery of Australian Design in Canberra. Four cardboard freestanding sculptures each represent a magazine from the publisher Architecture Media, with copies of the corresponding building design publications available at each installation. Each work stands on a simple cardboard pad of 1.8 x 1.8 meters.
Horricks experiments in cardboard lead to dynamic forms that share a common grid but unique forms, exploring the dynamics of a lightweight material forming complex structure. The parametric abstracts reflect the aesthetic dynamics and tension between solid and negative space, as well as that of the fixed grid and free form.
Developed to be flat packed for simple transportation and display as freestanding objects the use of cardboard has a low initial environmental impact and is entirely recyclable. Cardboard as building material, explored by architects such as Shigeru Ban, shows promise as a way to focus on pushing the limits of low impact design within building science and aesthetic. Horricks has focused much of his work in the development of cardboard furniture to examine environmental materials, design and space issues. Read the rest of this entry »
Greg Lynn’s Fountain for the Hammer Museum
Greg Lynn’s Fountain is the first architecture and design project guest-curated by architectural historian Sylvia Lavin. As part of Hammer Projects, Lavin will organize a new project approximately once a year over the next three years that will present new works by architects and designers. These projects will be sited in different locations around the Museum.
“I was influenced by an ex-assistant of mine who stayed on in my position at the ETHZ named Matthias Kohler who is using robotic arms to place standard masonry units like bricks and blocks as well as Office DA who must have inspired him by building something similar in China with intricate brick patterns using manual labor and curved templates. I was interested in an intricate approach to masonry but instead of geometries of how to place bricks I decided to start with a new kind of brick itself. A hollow plastic lightweight brick that would be cut intricately in order to achieve complexity of surface as well as rustication (a quality I admire in the baroque architecture and sculpture); all without use of mortar for tolerance. My wife, Slvia Lavin suggested that the best scale for these new hollow plastic bricks (Blobwall and Toy Furniture) was a Fountain. Once the typology that was her idea was in place I started looking at Bernini’s fountains around Rome in particular. I realized that as sculpture they were too busy (they were assembled out of many many parts including turtles, elephants, fish, dolphins, shells, human figures, serpents, etc…) whereas as architecture they were figural and made out of relatively few pieces. I was inspired by this typology of the fountains that had more discrete pieces than sculpture but fewer more figurative parts than a building.” – Greg Lynn Read the rest of this entry »
Three Pavilions Commemorate 150 Years of Unified Italy
David Scialò from the Politectnico de Torino unveiled his project to commemorate 150 years of a unified Italy. The project consists of an urban intervention in Turin through the creation of three pavilions to be located in the city’s main streets. Each pavilion is dedicated to one color of the Italian flag. The white pavilion represents the diversity of Italy’s cultural background; the green pavilion commemorates its landscape, and the red one signifies the events that led to a unified country -the three structures would extend and merge at Piazza Castello. Read the rest of this entry »
Wirl Sculpture in Hong Kong / Zaha Hadid
Wirl was conceived by Zaha Hadid to reflect the intensity of a hyper-acceleratory force within an elastic tactile form. The sculpture is located in Hong Kong, China. Moments of graceful suspension are tensioned between muscular sweeps in multiple directions. As the curvature of the surface dynamically and seamlessly twists and turns, dynamic form and functional furnishings are seamlessly integrated. Swells provide areas for seating while stretches in the form furnish opportunities to recline. A generous upward sweep provides shade as well as integrating a series of evolving framed views of the surrounding environment and buildings. Differentially sized voids allow for a variety of experiential possibilities in regards to entering into and interacting with the sculpture for visitors of all sizes, all the while, surrounded by a cloud of swirling forces lifting off the ground. Rhythmic and asymmetrical, seamless and articulated – its curvaceous form is an intricately linked spatial and inhabitable improvisation suspended in time. Read the rest of this entry »
Reflecting Funnel Installation for the NODE Festival in Frankfurt / SOFTlab
Award-winning architecture studio SOFTlab unveiled their new installation in Frankfurt, Germany as part of the ‘abstrakt Abstrakt – The Systemized World’ exhibition organized by the NODE festival. The piece is a three stories high funnel composed of hundreds of neuron-like pieces of reflecting plastic. SOFTlab was one of the 13 artists invited by Eno Henze and Marius Watz, curators of the exhibit, to analyze the nature and effect of abstraction systems.
“Abstraction systems reproduce the ‘world’ in a new medium (e.g. the financial system) and have great effect on our lives through complex regulatory circuits. The extensive and powerful autonomy of such systems becomes obvious in moments of their dysfunction, like during the interruption of air traffic due to a scientific simulation of a vulcano cloud, or by the drop of the stock market due to automated computer trade. Under a regime of rationality scientists and engineers become performing agents of this development, and bring ever new abstraction systems (and even abstractions of abstraction systems) into action, empowered by computerization and softwareization. The NODE festival emerged from the ‘scene’ of users and developers of the programming language vvvv, which is widely used for the realization of art and design projects. Coming of age, it is not solely committed to these roots, yet two dispositions still characterize its pursuit: on the one hand there is a great familiarity with the ‘workbench of abstraction’ (programming / conditioning of machines), and on the other hand we share an artistic perspective, which is interested in the social and philosophcal implications of this work.” Read the rest of this entry »
Move: Choreographing You / Amanda Levete Architects
Move: Choreographing You is an exhibition of visual and performance art curated and hosted by the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank. The theme of the exhibition focuses on sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer through interaction with performers, visitors, and the pieces themselves.
Amanda Levete Architects was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery to do the interior spatial design and planning of the exhibition, as well as develop a multi-media archive in collaboration with interactive designers Unit 9. The exhibition design was driven by the relationships between choreography and geometry, movement and form. Inspired by the photographic motion studies of the human body of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, we have created a collection of spatial dividers which are defined by a serial transformation of a single material: a sequence of folded oscillations of Dupont Tyvek. The resulting translucent paper-like fabric ribbons, a counterpoint to the brutality of the building, rise and fall with undulating folds which simultaneously define themselves as way finding devices, partitions, suspended ceilings, and portals. These fluid spatial and formal transformations choreograph the movement of the visitor through areas of sculpture, film, archive and performance.
The spatial configurations defined by our dividers are intended to embody two types of performative experience: public and private. In the public experience, the ribbons frame views, carve space, and lead visitors to a fluid and communal experience of the interactive objects and installations of Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Franz West, Franz E. Walther, William Forsythe, Christian Jankowski, and others. Read the rest of this entry »
Stratford Town Centre, The Shoal and Public Realm, London, UK
The London Borough of Newham and Stratford Renaissance Partnership appointed Studio Egret West as lead consultant to design and deliver £13.5 million of high quality public realm that offers a unique visitor experience at the heart of Stratford Town Centre in time for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Without any imminent change to the traffic system, we needed to accept the Town Centre as an island. However, an ‘island’ can be a very special place with many positive connotations – a destination, a getaway, a place apart… The key is to facilitate movement across the Town Centre, and create a sense of excitement and drama that invites people in.
The project proposes new public realm designs for a series of key spaces: Meridian Square as the gateway to Stratford for visitors arriving via public transport; Theatre Square at the heart of the Cultural Quarter; the Broadway with its historic character; and the Railway Tree crossing that connects with Stratford High Street. In addition, a vertical kinetic sculpture made of naturally coloured titanium – the Shoal – produces a linear edge that consolidates the fractured northern edge of the Stratford Island. The sculpture helps define the island and acts as decoy to the taller parking structures and buildings upon the island. Overall, the re-invigorated public realm together with the Shoal aim to change perceptions and establish Stratford Town Centre as a destination in its own right – a benchmark for the quality of future designs that will not be compromised by change ahead. Read the rest of this entry »