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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Pop Arch: Improbable Design Illustrations Made with Autocad

14 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

impossible architecture

Used by architects and engineers, Autocad and other computer-aided design (CAD) programs have a long history as boring and blunt instruments of drafting, but this architectural illustrator has breathed new life into these drawing and rendering tools.

house on fire

Fabiola Morcillo Núñez is a young Chilean architect who builds imaginary landscapes inspired by exotic architecture and pop art, a sort of modern-day Escher intent on blurring the improbable with impossible.

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Many of her scenes play on elements believable at first look, like a deconstructed isometric or axonometric drawing of a house … but on fire, or flooded or featuring an impossible room or staircase.

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“Architecture as a discursive tool has helped me a lot in constructing my own form of representation,” she says of her work. She is interested in deconstruction, spatial limitations, layers and multiplicity.

view from above

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MADERA

Her pieces borrow from various sources of inspiration in the media and world around her: “I like to take several references, be alert to life itself, be very observant and have a broad sense of understanding of beauty and the tools of creation that are presented throughout the day, for example; the internet, books, movies, the street, travel, personal stories, aesthetic preferences, dreams, philosophy etc.”

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Beyond her artistic explorations, Fabiola’s work is an implicit statement about how the tools we use, even the ones with less-rich histories of creative expression, can be turned to new and inspiring purposes.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Tiny Apartment’s Rooftop Terrace Features Flat-Folding Deck Chairs

14 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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A cramped, stale and long-neglected 400-square-foot studio apartment in Hong Kong feels downright luxurious with the addition of a rooftop terrace and some pretty cool space-saving features. Design firm Liquid Interiors maximized the space, which is essentially one big room with a combination bedroom/living room, by hiding many features behind sliding doors to keep clutter to a minimum. But their smartest innovation is upstairs, where a pair of wooden deck chairs fold flat into the floor when not in use.

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The terrace serves ash an outdoor exercise and meditation space, complete with a full-sized canony bed on a wooden platform, a minimalist stone table and a projector screen for watching movies outdoors when the weather is cooperative. The deck chairs pop up when the residents want to lounge in the sun, and blend into the wooden decking when more floor space is desired. A green wall adds a splash of color and helps capture some of the heat. Two iron safes used as bedside tables match the iron door that leads back into the apartment.

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The architects wanted to “create a sanctuary right in the middle of Central” for the owner, who’s a pilot and and often sleeps at odd hours. With the need to block out daylight in mind, they integrated double-glazed, sound-insulating windows, 100% blackout blinds and a smart circadian lighting system for minimal disruption to the biological sleep cycle.

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In the kitchen, the skin, refrigerator and all tableware and implements are hidden behind stainless steel cabinet doors, while the table in the center packs in multiple functions including cooktop, dining table and workstation. A television and beanbag seats can be pulled out from similar cabinets in the bedroom when the residents just want to hang out.

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Walk on Water: 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

14 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

infinite bridge main

Vital yet dangerous, shifting its shape and obscuring what lies beneath, water is an ideal conduit for illusion, and artists take advantage of these qualities to produce works that confuse our senses and seem to give us superpowers. These aquatic art installations allow people to walk on water and breathe beneath its surface, and ask us to confront its mysteries, navigating flooded spaces in pitch blackness or edging dangerous whirlpools.

Floating Piers on Italy’s Lake Iseo by Christo and Jeanne Claude

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A modular floating dock system comprised of 220,000 polyethylene cubes will allow visitors to walk all the way to an island from the shore of Italy’s Lake Iseo. The first work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Italy in over 40 years, ‘The Floating Piers’ are still under construction and will ultimately be covered in a shimmering yellow fabric that will continue for a mile on land through the pedestrian streets. In the works for decades, it’s Christo’s first piece to be completed since the death of his partner Jeanne-Claude in 2005. The exhibition will be in place for 16 days and then all components will be industrially recycled. “Like all of our projects, ‘The Floating Piers’ is absolutely free and accessible 24 hours a day, weather permitting,” says Christo. “There are no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers are an extension of the street and belong to everyone.”

Intentionally Unstable Floating Pavilion

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Just barely peeking above the surface of the sea in a few strategic places, this sunken pavilion lets you walk right out onto the water, with dry paths appearing and disappearing according to the movement of the waves. ‘Thematic Pavilion’ gently rocks back and forth as visitors move from the top level to the nautical exhibition space below the surface. Hydraulics of the same sort used for submarines keep the structure from sinking to the bottom, and raise it all the way up after the exhibition so it can be used like an ordinary boat.

Glass Topped Swimming Pool by Leandro Erlich

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Glimpsed through the surface of a swimming pool, groups of people standing on the bottom seem irrationally calm – not to mention dry. That’s because a thin sheet of glass actually separates them from the extremely shallow water, creating the illusion that they’re submerged. Artist Leandro Erlich uses perspective, mirrors and glass to create optical illusions that shake our sense of what’s up and what’s down.

Boat Tour Through a Flooded Art Museum

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Visitors to the Palais de Tokyo have to navigate dark waters inside the museum itself, as if in a post-apocalyptic scenario, for this installation by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot. ACQUAALTA takes its name from the annual flooding event in Venice, imagining what would happen if this same flooding were to affect Paris. Standing or sitting in their boats, visitors row through the nearly pitch-black space before disembarking onto jagged foam landscapes.

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Walk On Water 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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IKEA Indoor Gardens Produce Food Year-Round for Homes & Restaurants

13 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

ikea home garden

IKEA recently launched a hydroponic gardening system to allow people to grow fresh produce at home (without soil or sunlight) and has just unveiled a similar system under development that is aimed at helping restaurants raise ingredients in-house.

ikea home grown

The KRYDDA/VÄXER hydroponic garden lets sprout seeds without soil using absorbent foam plugs that keep plants moist (without over-watering, thanks to a built-in sensor). Germinated seeds can then be transferred to pots fitted into a growing tray featuring a solar lamp. The system is designed to be easy to use for even inexpert gardeners.

ikea seeds

Meanwhile, in another bit to expand their sustainability model beyond furniture, furnishings and fixtures, IKEA has teamed up with Space10 to create The Farm, an aquaponic garden system for restaurants. A prototype is live and working the basement of Space10’s office in Copenhagen, and the two companies are planning to develop the system further for mass production and commercial deployment.

the farm ikea

Few customers realize that IKEA is actually already one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, selling over a billion Euros of food annually. It is well-positioned to push for changes in the food supply chain (photos by Kristine Lofgren for Inhabitat).

the farm meal

The Farm prototype can even create a complete burger (of sorts) on site, specifically: a “bugburger” made of mealworm, beetroot and gluten and top with freshly-grown herbs and lettuce. Aside from this particular (and peculiar) delicacy, however, the design is aimed at bringing as much of the food production process in-house, similar to a recent system developed in Germany allowing grocers to raise and sell their own fresh produce.

the farm fresh

ikea fresh food

On multiple fronts, IKEA is changing the face of the farm-to-table movement, operating in parallel to larger urban vertical farming systems to generate products that are cheap and accessible, making gardening something that any city dweller or restaurant owner can dig into.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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White Water Roofing: Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

12 Jun

[ By Steve in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Out to impress the neighbors in Punjab, India? Try topping your humble abode with a cool water tank rendered as a jet, blossom, or bodybuilder.

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Keeping up with the Joneses (or their Punjabi equivalent) just got a lot tougher thanks to Santokh Singh Uppal, a successful entrepreneur who, in 1959 and at the age of 17, left his native village of Uppal Bhupa to make his fortune in the United Kingdom. “To me,” explained Santokh, “this Air India plane symbolizes the hopes and dreams of all those enterprising Punjab residents for whom going abroad is like the first step towards shaping their destiny.” Ajay Verma snapped the above shots of Santokh’s house-topper, completed in 2004 after five years of construction.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

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More than a few Punjabis share Santokh’s sentiments and show it by mounting similarly artistic water tanks on the roofs of their homes. Most of these home-owners are NRIs – Non-Resident Indians – who have achieved success abroad yet still maintain their home base in their homeland. Mounting a decorative water tank symbolic of their personal odyssey, main interest or both serves to signal their family’s prosperity while spurring their village neighbors to top – no pun intended – their folk art braggadocio.

Tanks For The Memories

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When, where and how did this weird water tank oneupmanship get started? “In Nawanshahr,” states photographer Rajesh Vora, “the proud owner of a restaurant in New Zealand celebrated his success as a chef with a pressure cooker-shaped water tank back home. Soon, villagers in neighboring villages started to copy it.” Not everyone is a successful restaurant owner, however, nor is constructing a rooftop water tank an endeavor anyone can engage in. True to their entrepreneurial spirit, enterprising Punjabis have opened off-the-rack water tank shops and will perform custom on-site installations upon request.

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White Water Roofing Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

[ By Steve in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Light Touch: Sensual Installation Lets Visitors Feel Luminescence

12 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

light art shimmering walls

In a new light art installation dubbed Sense of Field, Tokyo artist Hitomi Sato lets visitors simultaneously see, touch and shape shimmers of light all on sides.

The immersive experience is facilitated by thousands of transparent tendrils extending from two walls opposite one another. Each visitor walking between them,touches bristles on both sides, creating waves of motion that can be both seen and felt.

light art hallway installation walls

Perspective matters: observers outside the installation see it all from another angle, experiencing the setup differently primarily as a function of gleaming luminosity. Once engaged through physical contact, sensations multiply as clothing and skin brush beads of heat and illumination.

light art installation tokyo

Of her work, the artist says that “when [she] sees the shimmer of light, images of various natural light comes to her mind. For example, ripples on the water’s surface, sunlight through the leaves of trees, rays from a break in the clouds, and the reflections on window’s glass.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Please Touch the Art: Tactile 3D Portraits Let the Blind See Themselves

11 Jun

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

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“My nose isn’t that big!” protests portrait subject George Wurtzel as he runs his hands over his own image, rendered in paint on thousands of screws raised from a wooden board in a relief pattern. He might not be able to see the colors, or the play of light and shadow that gives the portrait much of its nuance and realism, but he can still experience it in a way that wouldn’t be possible if it were merely painted onto a canvas. For artist Andrew Myers, who specializes in these unusual sculptural paintings, this moment marks a concept that has come full circle since he first watched another blind man eagerly explore his art with his fingertips, six years ago.

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Myers doesn’t just allow people viewing his artwork to touch it, he actively encourages it, noting that it’s an important part of the experience of taking it in. Realizing that this could potentially allow a blind person to see their own portrait, he set out to create a custom work with artisan and teacher George Wurtzel as his subject. George teaches at a 300-acre summer camp for the visually impaired in California’s Redwood Forest, and has also been tasked with renovating a barn into a new Tactile Art Center full of accessible art, where blind artisans can both sell their own work and feel the 3D works of others.

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“We snuck into George’s future gallery and hung the portrait for him to discover,” says Andrew. “As he experienced this for the first time (and between bursts of laughter) he kept repeating the phrase, ‘mind boggling.’ Not every piece of art needs to or should be touched… but perhaps it’s time we took a look at how pervasive and mandatory our ‘no touching’ rules really are – it might help everyone see artwork a little differently.”

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While Andrew’s portrait of George is comprised of about 4,000 screws, other works require upwards of 20,000. One portrait, ‘Fading Thoughts,’ takes his work a step further by infusing a scene with a sense of motion, with screws seemingly being blown off the canvas.

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

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Design Copyright Debate: Cheap Replica Eames Chairs Sold for 90% Less

09 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

discount famous chair design

Seated at the center of a new design-related copyright conversation, a series of Eiffel chairs sold by discount superstore Aldi has designers arguing on both sides.

The chairs in question look significantly like the DSW Eames Plastic Chair (designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1950), currently made by copyright holders Vitra in Switzerland.

eiffel eames chair copy

Critics point out that Aldi has been caught doing this before, selling things like Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair on countries where it can avoid copyright entanglements, either because the copyrights have expired or replicas are permitted by law.

Defenders of the discount retailer argue that the entire point of these plastic chairs was to create something cheap, comfortable and easy to mass produce. In other words: the fact that replicas sell for 40 GBP and licensed remakes sell for ten times that goes against the intent of the designers.

Either way, Aldi seems to way to stay out of the fray, perhaps planning to hide behind slight design differences when it comes to the structure, materials and details of the seats.

eamges moled chair original

In some places, like the United Kingdom, changes to laws have been proposed or are in the works, which may provide additional protections for rights holders now and into the future.

There is a larger question at work here though too: how close do designs have to be for them to risk creating intellectual property controversies? There are, after all, only so many ways to plan, design and construct a chair for a human occupant. These days, so many 3D models of seats have been uploaded to programs like SketchUp and it is easier than ever to simply cut, paste and print a copy of one’s own on a 3D printer.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Versailles Transformed: Palace Artificially Obscured by Fog and Mist

09 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Screen Shot 2016-06-08 at 2.03.18 PM

Approaching the Grand Canal of Versailles from the palace, something seems off about the landscape: a tower of water pours from a seemingly invisible support, as if a hole has opened up in the sky. It’s only when you step to either side that you notice the steel structure that sends the waterfall crashing onto the glassy surface of the canal. This intervention is just one of nine that artist Olafur Eliasson has installed in the gardens and inside the Palace of Versailles, shifting visitors’ perception of their environment and themselves. ‘Olafur Versailles’ will be in place through October.

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Continuing an eight-year tradition of inviting artists to transform the Palace and its grounds with their work, the new installation seems to shift this French landmark slightly off the axis of reality, adding a dreamy sense of strangeness that changes the atmosphere of the entire château. In the gardens, three installations represent various states of water; the second is a circular arrangement of steel pipes pumping fog onto the lawn while the third fills the Bosquet de la Colonnade with ‘glacial rock flour.’

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Step inside to face illusions of light and reflection, using mirrors to make it unclear whether you are looking at your real surroundings or a mere facsimile of them at any given time. Perspectives of the interiors suddenly lose their sense of balance, and visitors catch glimpses of their own reflections in unexpected places, as if witnessing their own identical twins moving through the space.

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“The Versailles that I have been dreaming up is a place that empowers everyone. It invites visitors to take control of the authorship of their experience instead of simply consuming and being dazzled by the grandeur. It asks them to exercise their senses, to embrace the unexpected, to drift through the gardens, and to feel the landscape take shape through their movement.”

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Not Just a Facade: 15 Dynamic Modern Exterior Treatments

09 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

facades fish 3

The word ‘facade’ implies illusion, and that can be true even when it’s used to refer to the faces of buildings, as secondary structures wrap around them like veils, obscuring their true form and creating dazzling displays of light and shadow like a distracting sleight of hand. Some facades disguise the original building in a form of low-impact renovation, while others are kinetic, opening and closing or rippling in the wind.

Geometric Planter Facade

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The exterior of the Firma Casa store in São Paulo, Brazil, which promotes young Brazilian furniture designers, gets an appropriately hip and modern look with the addition of a screen of geometric vases. 3,500 individual planters hold 9,000 seedlings and project slightly out from the exterior walls, keeping soil and water away from them for a relatively low-impact and low-budget green wall solution.

Roll-Up Facade Forms Canopy

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Incredibly simple, yet unusual enough to stop you in your tracks on the street, this facade uses ordinary materials with an unexpected twist. Tokyo-based studio Ninkipen! made this contemporary white home stand out from its neighbors with a peeling facade that rolls up slightly from the ground level to create an awning for the garage.

Undulating Facade of Fins Looks Like Swimming Fish

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The angled steel fins enveloping the Industrial Technology Research Institute at the Central Taiwan Innovation & Research Park is intended to recall the look of a school of fish swimming in synchronicity. Noiz Architects customized the opacity of the screen according to the function going on inside each particular area of the building, since some research areas, exhibition spaces, greenhouses, cafes and other programs require different degrees of sunlight. This veil-like screen is separate from the building itself, making for easy repairs and additions and occasionally stretching out to create indoor/outdoor spaces.

Kinetic Parking Garage Facade

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118,000 suspended aluminum panels gently flap in the wind, creating textures reminiscent of flowing textiles and rippling water. Designed by artist Ned Kahn and fixed to the exterior of the Brisbane Airport parking garage in Australia, the kinetic facade reacts to its natural environment, constantly changing as it provides shade and ventilation for the interior.

Perforated Shutters on a Concrete Home

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All street-facing and neighbor-visible windows on the ‘May Grove’ residence in Melbourne by Jackson Clements Burrows can be covered with perforated shutters integrated right into the facade, or opened when the inhabitants want a clear view. Not only do they control ventilation and privacy for this low-cost modern home, they create a play of light and shadow throughout the interior during the day.

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Pop Arch: Improbable Design Illustrations Made with Autocad

Tiny Apartment’s Rooftop Terrace Features Flat-Folding Deck Chairs

Walk on Water: 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

Floating Piers on Italy’s Lake Iseo by Christo and Jeanne Claude

Intentionally Unstable Floating Pavilion

Glass Topped Swimming Pool by Leandro Erlich

Boat Tour Through a Flooded Art Museum

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Walk On Water 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

IKEA Indoor Gardens Produce Food Year-Round for Homes & Restaurants

White Water Roofing: Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Tanks For The Memories

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
White Water Roofing Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

Light Touch: Sensual Installation Lets Visitors Feel Luminescence

Please Touch the Art: Tactile 3D Portraits Let the Blind See Themselves

Design Copyright Debate: Cheap Replica Eames Chairs Sold for 90% Less

Versailles Transformed: Palace Artificially Obscured by Fog and Mist

Not Just a Facade: 15 Dynamic Modern Exterior Treatments

Geometric Planter Facade

Roll-Up Facade Forms Canopy

Undulating Facade of Fins Looks Like Swimming Fish

Kinetic Parking Garage Facade

Perforated Shutters on a Concrete Home

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Not Just A Facade 15 Dynamic Modern Exterior Treatments

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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Floating Piers on Italy’s Lake Iseo by Christo and Jeanne Claude

Intentionally Unstable Floating Pavilion

Glass Topped Swimming Pool by Leandro Erlich

Boat Tour Through a Flooded Art Museum

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Walk On Water 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Tanks For The Memories

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: White Water Roofing Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

Geometric Planter Facade

Roll-Up Facade Forms Canopy

Undulating Facade of Fins Looks Like Swimming Fish

Kinetic Parking Garage Facade

Perforated Shutters on a Concrete Home

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Not Just A Facade 15 Dynamic Modern Exterior Treatments

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Walk On Water 13 Interactive Aquatic Art Installations

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
White Water Roofing Wild Water Tanks Top Cool Punjabi Homes

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Not Just A Facade 15 Dynamic Modern Exterior Treatments