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Pilot Projects: 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes & Jets

07 Apr

[ By Steve in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

artistic airplanes
Airlines large and small are artistically painting their aircraft in flying colors to ensure the view from outside is as nice as the one from your window seat.

Shakes On A Plane

easyJet Shakespeare airplane (image via: Joshua_Risker)

It’s a bard, it’s a plane! To help celebrate the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, British budget airline easyJet has rolled out a distinctly decorated Airbus A319-111 emblazoned with the legendary English playwright’s visage. The brilliant orange and white jet is the centerpiece of easyJet’s promotional campaign supporting the establishment of an annual national William Shakespeare Day on the literary icon’s birthday, April 23rd. A curtain call for Flickr user Joshua_Risker for the eloquently Elizabethan image of Sir Will above.

easyJet Shakespeare airplane (images via: Veooz.com, EAPForum and Canoe.ca)

One curious feature of the promotion was the enlisting of the UK’s oldest living “William Shakespeare”, aged 91. Those interested in riding the Shakespeare plane will be pleased to note easyJet will be running special “on-bard entertainment” (their pun, not mine) flights from Gatwick Airport across the carrier’s network in the UK and Europe this summer. We’re guessing the Twelfth Night is fully booked.

Raising The Bar

Southwest Airlines Bar Refaeli Sports Illustrated 2009 airplane (images via: Brisbane Times, Flightgear/N-Scot and Airliners.net/Michael Carter)

In 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model Bar Refaeli practiced a little double coverage when her bikini-clad likeness was plastered across both sides of a Southwest Airlines 737. While the Israeli beauty herself approved of the SIxSW promotional gimmick, the airline reaped a whirlwind of controversy when some passengers felt the imagery was, shall we say, less than family-friendly.

Painted On Porpoise

Amakusa Airlines dolphin airplane (image via: Rocketnews24)

When Japan’s Amakusa Airlines decided to paint their entire fleet to resemble the company’s dolphin mascot, the firm’s accountants kept their composure… the “airline” only has one plane! Amakusa managed to make the most of their resources, however, as their workhorse twin-engine Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop was arted up to resemble a mother dolphin and her two babies – one on each side. Everybody now: “Awww!”

Amakusa Airlines dolphin airplane (images via: Rocketnews24, Naver Matome and 1TOPI)

Amakusa Airlines may be small but when it comes to social media they punch far above their weight. The company’s Facebook page gleefully promotes the plane’s extreme makeover with a marketing focus on Japan’s so-called airplane geeks. Riding the dolphin was never more fun… well, almost never.

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Pilot Projects 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes Jets

[ By Steve in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

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Hybrid Desk & Storage Rise Up to Meet Suspended Staircase

06 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

steel wood staircase design

Playing tricks on the eye, this split-style stairway merges a desk and storage below with a framework of steps hanging down from above, all with a daunting-looking gap left in the middle.

steel busy staircase use

steel steps top view

steel wood hanging steps

Dutch designer Mieke Meijer hand-crafted this hybrid interior system for the home of Just Haasnoot in The Hague, inspired in part by the black and white photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

steel wood open desk

steel wood skylight chair

The frame-based structure was made to save space and maintain a sense of openness. The unfolding angular geometries add elements of visual interest to a toned-down space while accommodating various storage surfaces, nooks and crannies.

steel wood steps risers

steel wood alternating design

The use of alternating steps allows for a steep incline to be safely traversed, though some might still question the absence of a hand rail (which would be mandated by building code in most locations).

steel wood back view

steel window sill sitting

steel stairs design framework

This approach seems particularly well-suited to places with less-used upstairs spaces – as the photographs show, it would be easy to let certain steps simply become shelves most of the time, then be cleared off when guests come to stay in the spare attic bedroom.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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The Rotten Apple Project: Quick and Dirty Urban Hacks

05 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 1

Sometimes, a reclaimed piece of junk is all it takes to make a bus stop, bike rack, subway station or virtually any other urban setting more comfortable and fun. The Rotten Apple project consists of incredibly fast and cheap urban interventions that anyone can replicate in their own cities, from a simple hinged wooden board that turns a bike rack into a folding seat to improvised tools that transform scaffolding into a musical instrument.

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 2

A piece of scrap wood and some chess pieces, fitted onto the top of a fire hydrant, becomes a public game board. An old, unused newspaper dispenser is a cold weather clothing bank with the addition of a sticker.

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 3 Commuters waiting on the bus have a place to hang their bags thanks to an old IKEA clothes hook added to a street sign. Other signs were modified into sidewalk tetherballs or double-height bike racks.

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 4

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 5

Magnetic boards on the subway platform aren’t just a fun way to pass the time, they can also brighten up someone’s day with a cheerful message. A window of an abandoned building, bricked up long ago, is a public bookshelf, and a sticker applied to an electric main notifies passersby that there’s an outlet hidden inside so they can charge their phones.

Rotten Apple Urban Hacks 6

The people who run Rotten Apple have chosen to remain anonymous, leaving only this quote from Victor Pananek as a clue to their motivations: “Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical in the truest sense. It must dedicate itself to… maximum diversity with minimum inventory… or doing the most with the least.”

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Spinning Zen: Real-Time Patterns Painted on a Potter’s Wheel

04 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

spinning circle works of art

Like a hypnotist’s pendulum, this fifteen minute visual experience will charm you with its rich variety of mesmerizing patterns, all drawn by hand before your eyes.

An amazingly meditative trip, this work by Mikhail Sadovnikov is entirely dynamic and temporary. Each addition necessarily involves subtraction as new shapes continuously erase and overwrite what you see.

spinning hypnotic circle fingerpainting

Using the clay residue left on the wheel between throwing pots, the artist moves between a series of sequences set to music of various styles and speeds.

spinning potters wheel art

Sometimes symmetrical, other times abstract but always contained in a simple circle, the pacing and control are amazing – but you really have to watch the video to see for yourself and witness where sand mandala making meets fluid finger painting.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Sneak Peak: Inside the Homes of 8 World-Famous Architects

03 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

inside famous architects homes

Where Architects Live, a special exhibit scheduled for Milan Design Week 2014, features a rare glimpse into the residences of leading designers including Shigeru Ban, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Mario Bellini, David chipperfield, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, Marcio Kogan, and Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai.

famous frank gehry home

Seeing what architects do to their own domiciles can provide a unique window into their work as well – for some designers, their own spaces become places of experimentation and discovery. These homes are where they have full artistic liberty – the only time they are their own clients. In some cases, like Frank Gehry’s wild residential remodel in Santa Monica (shown above), these projects can even be professionally pivotal – turning points for entire careers.

shigeru ban home japan

shigeru ban house interior

Famous for his light-touch, site-specific architecture of paper and cardboard, there is a contextual delicacy to Ban’s forest home in Japan. It is bright and open, and was designed specifically to avoid the need to cut down trees already on the property.

hadid house drawings models

hadid house abstract art

The abstract art and physical curves found in the home of Hadid should come as no surprise to those familiar with her work, which is also prominently on display in drawings and models around the house.

libeskind art materials closeup

liebeskind living room space

The home of Libeskind features an eclectic mix of furniture and objects, from conventional modern chairs art materials – nothing so aggressively angular as his typical architectural projects, but perhaps suggestive hints to be found in the relationship of chaos and order.

bellini bookcase scaffolding scene

bellini house interior piano

Bellini loves books, and it shows in the incredible multi-story scaffolding he has built in order to be able to climb up and interact with his huge personal library.

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Sneak Peak Inside The Homes Of 8 World Famous Architects

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Camera-Shaped Cafe Offers Picture-Perfect Cups of Coffee

03 Apr

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Camera Shaped Cafe 1

A giant two-story camera rises from the grass beside an ordinary suburban home in the hills of South Korea. The Dreamy Camera Cafe is housed in a re-creation of a vintage Rolleiflex, featuring two lens-like oversized windows offering panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.

Camera Shaped Cafe 3

Camera Shaped Cafe 4

The cafe was built by a former army helicopter pilot with a passion for photography and vintage cameras, who lives in the house next door with his family. A range of miniature and toy cameras are displayed on the first floor, with a collection of photographs tacked on the walls upstairs. The cafe even has paper towel holders shaped like film canisters.

Camera Shaped Cafe

Camera Shaped Cafe 2

It may be unusual, but the Dreamy Camera Cafe is hardly the first building shaped like a giant object – there’s a 40-foot-tall milk bottle building among others modeled after food items, and even a house shaped like a toilet.

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Flintstones Furniture: 15 Designs Made of Stone and Lava

03 Apr

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Flintstones Furniture Main

Evoking the primitive furniture of mankind’s cave-dwelling days, these tables, chairs, stools and desks feel massive and monolithic, yet many are surprisingly lightweight. Some are hewn from heavy boulders, some carved from soft volcanic rock, and others made of materials like wool, wood and concrete.

ONYX Sofa with Volcanic Lava and Carbon Fiber

Stone Furniture ONYX

This hybrid sofa is part raw volcanic lava, part ultra-sleek carbon fiber. The ONYX sofa by Peugeot Design Lab in collaboration with designer Pierre Gimbergues features lava sourced form ‘the Auvergne,’ a landmark dating back almost 11,000 y ears. The aesthetics echo the bodywork of the Peugeot ONYX supercar, while the material choice is meant to invoke the ‘robustness’ of the car brand’s history.

Living Stones Wool Furniture by Stephanie Marin

Stone Furniture Living Stones 1

They may look like enormous river rocks, but these ‘Living Stones‘ are actually soft and comfortable poufs made of wool. The oversized pebbles come in various shapes and sizes suitable as floor pillows, loungers and footstools.

Natural Stone Table

Stone Furniture Table 1

A ragged, rocky edge lends a sense of gravity to this natural stone table by Lex Pott. The variation from the raw natural finish to the smoothed-out table legs on the other side tells the story of the Belgian bluestone table’s creation, from the rock quarry to the final polishing of the finished product.

Mt. Etna Lava Transformed into Experimental Furniture

Stone Furniture Etna
An unusual series of sculptural tables consists of volcanic volumes held together by brass pegs and straps, visually and symbolically invoking Mt. Etna and the cultural history of its surroundings. ‘De Natura Fossilium‘ aims to “bring both the landscape and the forces of nature together as facilities for production,” actively using the lava from the volcano in various manipulated forms.

Rock Pendant Lamp

Stone Furniture Pendant Lamp

Handmade from natural stone, this pendant lamp seems to defy gravity, dangling from the ceiling with just two thin wires. In fact, the Aso San lamp by German designer Daniel Stoller is made of basalt lava and much lighter in weight than it looks.

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Flintstones Furniture 15 Designs Made Of Stone And Lava

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Vanishing Vernacular: NYC Storefront Gentrification in Action

02 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

store front five boroughs

Overtly a straight-shot photographic compilation, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York shows the rich vernacular diversity of mom-and-pop shops across all five boroughs. Since publishing the book, however, its creators have revisited their subjects and documented the amazing rate of change as “luxury condos and artisanal cupcake boutiques uproot local delis and dive bars.”

store front bar office

These before-and-after pictures were taken all over the city and reflect the influence of many immigrant cultures, including “Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Eastern Europeans and later Hispanics and Chinese”, but also a more recent trend toward uniformity.

store front deli bank

The images themselves are unpretentious, allowing the streets and stores to speak for themselves. Supplemental maps, histories and interviews, however, help flesh the book out without detracting from the power of the photos throughout.

store front nyc photos

store front photo shoot

The visual story told by the book and followup photographs is hard to put into words, but captures the spirit of neighborhoods around New York. “The variety is immense, from Manhattan’s Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery and Katz’s Delicatessen to the Jackson Heights Florist in Queens, Court Street Pastry in Brooklyn, D. D’Auria and Sons Pork Store in the Bronx and the De Luca General Store on Staten Island … the face of New York is etched in their facades.”

store front then now

storefront street view image

About the photographers and authors, James and Karla Murray, and their work: “Their critically acclaimed books New York Nights and Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York as well as their graffiti publication Broken Windowshave set the standard for urban documentation. New York Nights was the winner of the prestigious New York Society Library’s 2012 New York City Book Award. “

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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IKEA 2014 Small-Space Set: 51 Designs from Cool to Kitsch

02 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

ikea ps collection on move

The sales pitch for this new 2014 series is compelling: 51 inexpensive designer objects made for young city dwellers, people who may be on the move more often or whose domiciles simply lack square footage.

ikea small space living

The research driving IKEA’s 2014 PS collection, On the Move, is spot on: more people are living in cities than ever before, and young persons are particularly like to have smaller residences. The design results, though, are a bit of a mixed bag, with some truly useful modular and multi-functional pieces alongside less-obvious options.

ikea designer wall shelf

And indeed the collection features a some handy items, like a small-footprint, unattached wall shelf (that fits corners as well) by Japanese designer Keiji Ashizawa, easy to set up and shift as needed.

ikea standing dresser roller

Similarly practical: a tall and lightweight mesh wardrobe by French designer Matali Crasset that can be tilted and rolled around within or between apartments.

ikea balancing bench design

Other choices are a bit more debatable – it is hard to see how often a balancing bench (by Swedish designer Henrik Preutz) will come in handy, particularly in narrow halls for which it is intended (its angled feet could trip you up in a skinny space).

ikea integrated lamp side table

Though it has a smaller footprint at least, it is also hard to say why a combined magazine rack, side table and standing lamp (by Polish designer Tomek Rygalik) is better when integrated rather than separated, especially when it comes to transporting it between places.

ikea portable carry greenhouse

And then there is this awkwardly cute greenhouse plant holder (by Swiss designer Nicolas Cortolezzis) that seems just slightly redundant, unless you like to take your flora for walks in the park.

slightly kitsch modular ikea

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, some of the pieces are a weird mix of retro, modern, farm and industrial, but one could argue that is all part of a refreshing trend toward a new time-spanning eclecticism.

ikea portable box shelf

ikea folding table design

ikea modular mobile furniture

Regardless, enough of these designs are on the right tack that they are worth a closer look, including bookshelves that are just a bit easier to transport thanks to wire-frame edges and folding, rolling and flip-down tables that have at least a little more character than their regular retail cousins. And the direction is right: urban dwellings are small, and portability a plus.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Dissected Buildings: Sliced Facades are All Appearances

01 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Ghostly Building Facades 1

Ghostly building facades seem to have been sliced right off the buildings that should be attached to them, their skinny silhouettes rising from street level against the laws of physics. These structures are an architectural interpretation of the term ‘all style, no substance,’ presenting buildings as they look at first glance without the parts that you would see if you were to walk around the sides and back.

Ghostly Building Facades 2

Ghostly Building Facades 4

The ‘Façades’ series by French photographer Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy wondered what a city would look like if architecture was only scenery, with no actual places for people to carry out their daily lives. The building facades were isolated in Photoshop, the backgrounds filled in with other shots taken nearby.

Ghostly Building Facades 3

The resulting images are all the more eerie for the hints of life they still contain, like satellite dishes, bicycles and laundry draped on balcony railings.

Ghostly Building Facades 5

“This series offers a vision of an unknown world that would only be a picture, without intimate space, with looks as the only refuge,” says Gaurdillot-Roy.

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Pilot Projects: 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes & Jets

Shakes On A Plane

Raising The Bar

Painted On Porpoise

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Pilot Projects 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes Jets

Hybrid Desk & Storage Rise Up to Meet Suspended Staircase

The Rotten Apple Project: Quick and Dirty Urban Hacks

Spinning Zen: Real-Time Patterns Painted on a Potter’s Wheel

Sneak Peak: Inside the Homes of 8 World-Famous Architects

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Sneak Peak Inside The Homes Of 8 World Famous Architects

Camera-Shaped Cafe Offers Picture-Perfect Cups of Coffee

Flintstones Furniture: 15 Designs Made of Stone and Lava

ONYX Sofa with Volcanic Lava and Carbon Fiber

Living Stones Wool Furniture by Stephanie Marin

Natural Stone Table

Mt. Etna Lava Transformed into Experimental Furniture

Rock Pendant Lamp

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Flintstones Furniture 15 Designs Made Of Stone And Lava

Vanishing Vernacular: NYC Storefront Gentrification in Action

IKEA 2014 Small-Space Set: 51 Designs from Cool to Kitsch

Dissected Buildings: Sliced Facades are All Appearances

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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Shakes On A Plane

Raising The Bar

Painted On Porpoise

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Pilot Projects 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes Jets

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ONYX Sofa with Volcanic Lava and Carbon Fiber

Living Stones Wool Furniture by Stephanie Marin

Natural Stone Table

Mt. Etna Lava Transformed into Experimental Furniture

Rock Pendant Lamp

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Flintstones Furniture 15 Designs Made Of Stone And Lava

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Buildings That Don’t Exist: Fake Facades Hide Infrastructure

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Pilot Projects 8 Artistically Painted Airplanes Jets

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Sneak Peak Inside The Homes Of 8 World Famous Architects

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Flintstones Furniture 15 Designs Made Of Stone And Lava