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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Go Big or Go Home: Athletes are Larger Than Life in Rio Art Installation

04 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Athletes have arrived in Rio for the Olympics on a massive scale in the form of two monumental photographic installations supported by construction scaffolding, one looking like he’s about to back flip over an entire building. French artist JR brings his signature black-and-white style to the streets for a dramatic addition to his ‘Inside Out Project,’ a global series bringing real people and their personal stories to public spaces through art.

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The athletes depicted aren’t household names – in fact, they’re not even Olympic athletes who will be physically present in Rio for the Games. The first, installed on the roof of a large residential complex, represents Mohamed Younes Idress of Sudan. “He lives and trains in Cologne, Germany,” says JR. “He missed out on the qualifications for the 2016 Rio Olympics but he is there some how.”

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The second figure appears to be that of a diver about to leap into the adjacent ocean. This installation rises from a rocky jetty overlooking the water in the Barra neighborhood. JR says he’s been working on this new technique, with the images supported by metal beams, for almost a year.

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We previously featured JR’s large-scale work of urban camouflage outside the Louvre in Paris, where a black-and-white photographic installation made the museum’s iconic 11,000-square-foot pyramid by I.M. Pei seem to disappear. Other ‘Inside Out Project’ installations have included massive paste-ups inside Paris’ Pantheon building as well as covering a mass area of the ground in New York City’s Times Square.

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Private Urban Paradise: 13 Dreamy Residential Rooftop Pools & Gardens

04 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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If you don’t have access to your own private rooftop paradise, you can at least dream about it during the hottest months of the year with the help of this collection of dreamy swimming pools and lush gardens. Rooftop bathtubs, infinity pools overlooking some of the world’s most glamorous cities and elevated lawns offer respite from the heat and access to fresh air, even in densely populated urban areas.

Beach House Extension in Peru

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This stepped home on a hillside overlooking the bay of Ancón in Lima, Peru features a rooftop infinity pool that seems to extend right out into the sea. Architect Adriá Noboa added to and renovated the existing home, built in 1958 by Swiss architect Theodor Cron, whose work in Peru is considered historically valuable.

Tel Aviv Townhouse Pool, Israel

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Another apartment terrace swimming pool in an urban area sits atop a six-level townhouse in Tel Aviv. Architect Pitsou Kedem placed the lap pool at the edge of the rooftop terrace alongside a lounge area. The pool feels open to the city when you’re enjoying it, yet remains private from ground level.

Rooftop Bathtub and Shower, Portugal

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Enjoying a relaxing bath while staring up at the sky from your own private rooftop in Lisbon definitely isn’t too shabby. José Adrião Architects added this unusual feature to the all-white rooftop terrace of a home with a view of the historical city.

The Wall House, Singapore

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There’s no house in the world quite like this one, designed for a client in Singapore who wanted two distinct yet connected homes for various generations of his family while maintaining lots of privacy and outdoor recreation space. FARM architects created a multi-level plan with a lower-level courtyard connecting both residences while the lushly planted rooftop levels are private, each with their own swimming pool.

Apartment Pool Overlooking Madrid, Spain

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A terrace sticks out of the side of this top floor apartment in the heart of Madrid, its kidney-shaped swimming pool nearly at roof level on one of the city’s tallest buildings. I! Arquitectura wanted to bring the ‘countryside’ to a city setting, with all the perks of living in the suburbs. That deck could only be better if the pool went right up to the edge, allowing you to take in the views while swimming.

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Residential Rooftop Dreams 13 Top Level Terraces Pools

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Broken Ground: Poignant Earthquake Memorial at Epicenter in China

03 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

disaster landscape

A visceral memorial to the nearly 100,000 victims of China’s 2008 earthquake, this weathered-steal monument and museum conjures images of cracked Earth left in the wake of a quake.

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The Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial Museum was conceived of as an architectural landscape and situated in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the earthquake in the Sichuan Province.

green roof quake path

angled rusted steel walls

Green roofs look unassuming in the landscape while rusted steal provides a ground-hued contrast in the cracks winding their way through the ruptured site. The effect is powerful, giving visitors the sense that they are walking in the actual voids left by the disaster.

weathered steel green

cracked earth aerial view

The quake was responsible for an estimated 70,000 deaths and left tens of thousands missing. The museum complex was created by the faculty of Tonji University at the request of the Chinese government.

ruptured benches contemplation

The sheer magnitude of such an event is impossible to capture in physical form, but this design aims to at least give a sense of the devastation and places for remembrance and quiet contemplation.

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Real Life LEGO Man: Fleshy Mini-Figure Cosplay Will Freak You Out

02 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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You’ll never hear the phrase ‘all thumbs’ the same way again after looking at this real life Lego man complete with eyebrows, wrinkles and the biggest, weirdest thumb nails you’ve ever seen. Dubbed ‘Creepyfig,’ this disturbingly fleshy cosplay project brings Lego mini figures into human scale and parades him around San Diego Comic-Con, where there are so many crazy things to look at, he barely gets a second glance from most adults before reaching the official Lego exhibit.

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Artist Frank Ippolito created the mask and hands and donned the costume himself, getting a spirited reaction from kids who poked his head curiously and placed Lego bricks in his clumsily large hands. The head – complete with its characteristic peg – is made of 14 pounds of silicone and includes realistic details like dark eye circles and frown lines. In the video, Ippolito remarks that the eyes are difficult to see out of, but he completed the project in just a week, leaving no time for refinement. By the end of the day, sweat is literally pouring out of the silicone costume components.

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Created in collaboration with Adam Savage’s Tested, the Creepyfig set started out as a giant lump of hand-sculpted clay. Ippolito specializes in makeup for film and television, giving him the skills to nail those details (no pun intended.) See the whole process from start to finish in a second video, courtesy of Tested.

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Now, if only someone would make appropriately sized Lego bricks and accessories so we can see this project take a sharp left turn deeper into Uncanny Valley.

 

 

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Warped Worlds: 30 Surreal Digitally Manipulated Landscapes

02 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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The plot of the movie ‘Inception’ is almost an afterthought compared to the impact that its distorted, dreamlike manipulations of architecture and landscapes has had on a generation of artists and designers. Inspired by the concept of warping a scene in ways that completely defy the laws of physics yet still remain photo-realistic, the following artists have created new worlds that are strange and yet also familiar.

Erik Johansson

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Nothing is quite as it seems in the images produced by Swedish-born, Berlin-based photo artist Erik Johansson. Grassy land cascades over the edge of the world like a waterfall, the surface of the earth is unzipped, cars appear to hover upside-down on the road. It’s difficult to tell reality from illusion, and that’s the point; the scenes he creates are as playful as they are impossible. Setting up and taking the photos takes about as long as manipulating them in Photoshop, and a single image can consist of over 100 layers.

Cubic Landscape by Petey Ulatan

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Flattened views of landscapes are flipped and folded to create cubes, their edges bent at 90 degree angles, eliminating the very gradual and subtle curves that make up the surface of the Earth. Artist Petey Ulatan takes inspiration from the films ‘Inception’ and ‘Interstellar’ to reshape the world, almost as if a giant hand were making it into origami.

Turkey Turned Upside-Down by Aydin Büyüktas

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Many of the same manipulations are happening in the work of Aydin Büyüktas, except focused on the Turkish city of Istanbul, with all of its landmarks and neighborhoods warped in ways that defy the laws of physics. The artist uses drone photography and 3D software to create these composite images. “We live in places that most of the times don’t draw our attention, places that transform our memories, places that the artist gives another dimension; where the perceptions that generally crosses our minds will be demolished and new ones will arise. These works aims to leave the viewer alone with a surprising visuality ironic as well, multidimensional romantic point of view.”

‘Inception Park’ in Buenos Aires by Black Sheep Films

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What if you could ride a trackless rollercoaster around the city, almost as if you’re on the back of some kind of mystical flying creature? Black Sheep Films gives us an idea of what this would feel like with ‘Inception Park,’ a strange little video set in Buenos Aires. It’s fun to watch the snake of rollercoaster cars meander through the space, interacting with architecture.

Twisted Architecture by Nicholas Kennedy Sitton

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“These photos are a result of how intriguing the concept of distortion translates to architecture,” says artist Nicholas Kennedy Sitton of his ‘Twisted Architecture’ series. “It creates a sense of falling into itself, like capturing a moment of demolition. I can destroy titanous steel structures with the click of a mouse and create new twisted versions of reality. I was also inspired by San Francisco. I had just moved there and being in a new city was disorienting and exciting and I wanted to capture how my whole world had changed.”

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Warped Worlds 30 Surreal Digitally Manipulated Landscapes

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Japan-ized Cities: Surrealistic “Worldwide Tokyo-lization Project”

01 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

tokyolization

A team of designers has taken iconic images of major global cities and added a “rich graphic language and vibrant visual effects” to blend each one with elements of Japanese infrastructure and visual culture.

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Presenting their work at the Venice Architecture Biennale, this strange art series from Daigo Ishii + Future-Scape Architects aims to question our ideas of locality and our sense of civic imagery and identity.

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What happens, they ask, when a familiar underlying environment gets an overlay, sending mixed signals to observers? Is it the underlying shape and form of a place that make it what it is, or those other visual cues that lend familiarity?

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The firm set their cities on cities including New York, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen and La Paz, each time pulling in distinctively Japanese elements, from neon signage to cherry trees.

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In each case, the result is a surreal hybrid, playing off cues in source photographs shot in the United States, Argentina, Denmark, France, Bolivia and Italy, becoming something that is neither here nor there, original or artificial.

“The project seeks to present an amalgamation between traditional architectural studies and surprising artistic elements.” The display in Venice consists of “a video work shown on a large-scale monitor, with six surrounding boards displaying the final scenery of each city after ‘Tokyo-lization’ has taken place.”

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Stripped: 12 Sleazy Abandoned Adult Movie Theaters

01 Aug

[ By Steve in Drawing & Digital. ]

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These 12 abandoned adult movie theaters hark back to the days before the advent of the internet let porn aficionados get their kicks without leaving home.

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The bedraggled Franklin Theater was once a posh picture-show palace that seated 350 privileged patrons per sitting. Opening in the late 1920s – arguably Detroit’s golden age – the Franklin gradually deteriorated along with the rest of the Michigan metropolis. The name was changed to “Guild” in 1962 and the fare fell from first-run flicks to foreign art films to, finally, xxx-rated offerings. Kudos to Detroiturbex.com for snapping these gritty images.

Private "entertainment" booths.

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Like many movie houses forced by changing economic conditions to cater to society’s baser desires, the Franklin/Guild installed private “entertainment” booths in 1992. This audience-friendly feature allowed the theater to hang on another decade or so until it met the sad fate common to far too many Detroit establishments: abandonment, neglect and vandalism.

Flickering Out

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The Kinsei Theater in Yokosuka, Japan managed to hold out well into the 21st century though more recent photos appear to show a more expected outcome. As grungy as it looks, the Kinsei Theater hasn’t decayed much from its heyday… perhaps inherent grungy-ness comes standard when one opens an adult theater.

Roll Credits

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This unnamed abandoned adult theater doesn’t look too grotty in the light… provided said light isn’t of the UV variety. Credit the nice folks at Bugaga.me for the images above; hopefully they washed up REAL good after they left.

Ex-Salax

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Flickr user Emanuele (zak mc) captured the rich tableau above on September 5th of 2012. A casual crowd of all ages traverses the Seville, Spain street completely oblivious to the decrepit SALA X adult movie theater moldering away on the sidelines. Note the curious upside-down sign just to the right of the theater. Contrast Emanuele’s take of the SALA X with the monochrome shot by Alejandro Pacheco taken – presumably at night – two years earlier.

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Stripped 12 Sleazy Abandoned Adult Movie Theaters

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World’s First Floating Underwater Tunnels to Span Fjords in Norway

30 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

subsurface bridge

Norway is working to create the world’s first “submerged floating bridges,” suspended from surface pontoons and engineered to span its vast network of wide and deep fjords. A system of truss-framed tubes hung 100 feet below the surface will be wide enough for two traffic lanes. They will also be easier, faster and cheaper to construct than underground tunnels or over-water bridges, at least in the complex sites for which they are being planned.

underwater bridge norway

Norway already has over a 1,000 traffic tunnels (including a few dozen subsurface ones), but anchoring these to the ground in deep fjords is impractical. Also, long spans mean more complex engineering (and higher costs) for surface bridges. The nation currently relies heavily on a system of less-efficient ferry routes that can be unpredictable and impacted by weather.

floating bridge seattle

Floating bridges on the surfaces of water bodies are common in places like Seattle, where a combination of length and depth makes traditional bridges more difficult and less cost-effective. Essentially, underwater tunnel bridges would work the same way, except the pontoon supports will reside above rather than below the roadways.

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Underwater bridges also have advantages for nautical traffic, allowing ships to pass over them and between surface buoys. Normal bridges (unless they can be raised and lowered) create long-term height caps for the kinds of sea vessels that can pass below them.

So far, the country has committed $ 25 billion to pursuing this project, stating with an analysis of wind and waves to determine how best to stabilize this new type of subsurface bridge. Initial plans call for a first tunnel to span the 4,300-feet deep, 3,300-feet wide Sognefjord.

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Unfold Your Getaway: Canoe for City Dwellers Packs Down to a Suitcase

30 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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You can’t exactly fit a canoe through a narrow staircase in an apartment building, let alone take it on the metro, so for many sporty city dwellers, owning one may seem out of reach. Many canoes are so bulky, you can barely find enough space for them in a suburban garage. Playing with an origami canoe made of paper one day, Ghent-based designer Otto Van De Steene wondered whether a similar folding method translated to a sturdy, seaworthy material could help him get out onto the water more often. The result is ‘ONAK,’ a portable canoe that folds down to the size of a suitcase.

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Working at an outdoor recreation store, Van De Steene had seen plenty of other portable canoe designs that he found lacking. “You have the canoes that have really good performance on the water – they’re fast, but they’re quite heavy and take an hour to assemble. Nothing to do in an evening after work.”

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The Oru folding kayak had recently debuted, offering an intriguing possible solution, but Van De Steene thought its corrugated plastic construction could use an upgrade, and chose a custom-made polypropylene for his own design, explaining that it’s lighter and stiffer, improving the boat’s performance. About ten times as strong as standard polypropylene, the honeycomb-core composite material is also highly durable and fully recyclable.

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“By making hundreds of paper models and fifteen real prototypes, we also refined the design of our patent pending hull. This was a huge challenge due to the limitations of origami. We opted for a narrow and fast canoe design that keeps its momentum very well, while still being delightfully easy and stable to maneuver for beginners.”

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The Onak may not fold down quite as small as Oru, but putting it on wheels makes it easier to haul around. From its compact 47”x15.7”x10” roller case, it expands to 183” long by 33.5” wide, and can carry about 440 pounds. There’s enough room inside for two adults, a child and gear. The process of assembling or packing up the portable canoe takes about ten minutes.

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With just a couple days left on its Kickstarter campaign, the Onak has met its goal, but you can still snag one for significantly less than retail cost if you back the project in time. It’ll sell for about $ 1450 with two paddles once it hits the market.

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Literal Streetwear: ‘Pirate Printer’ Lifts Patterns from Urban Objects

29 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

street wear clothes

A Berlin art collective has taken to the streets, inking urban infrastructure and laying down shirts and tote bags to create a line of unique prints … their patterns directly lifted from city streets.

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pirate pressed tshirts

Raubdruckerin (AKA Pirate Printer) press apparel to painted manhole covers, utility grates, etched signage, vents and other objects that have depth differences (and thus themselves to the relief-printing process, like woodcuts or letterpress).

painted manhole cover

pirate clothing urban collection

painted city grate

The group rolls out different colors of ink, much as one would with any kind of etched or raised printing process, then lays cloth down and applies pressure. Depending on the size and type of the object in question, the prints are partial or complete pictures of a given urban artifact.

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manhole cover bag

bike path sign

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The crew has traveled to Amsterdam, Lisbon, Paris and other iconic cities to capture some of their least-noticed but still-beautiful urban artifacts, transferring overlooked parts of these places to a new style of streetwear. Naturally, each one is a little different – even when the same street fixture is used, the re-inking process results in variegation from one print to he next (via Colossal).

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