Public Art Installations from Numen / For Use Design Collective
The Croatian/Austrian Design Collaborative Numen/For Use blends architecture and public installation art. The sculpture-like pieces are large in scale and take over whole public spaces while also reinventing them, changing the way in which they can be occupied and changing the experience of the interactions between participants. Numen/For Use has shared with us three of their recent works. Tape, which was actualized in Florence, Italy and Melbourne, Australia; Tuft Pula, a more permanent version of Tape installed in the middle of the former church in Pula; and Net, built in Z33 high spaces. Tape and NET take a material that is ephemeral and non architectural and turn it into one that has architectural capacity. Join us after the break to read more about these projects!
Janet Echelman Reshaping Urban Airspace World-Wide
Inspired by the local materials and culture of Mahabalipuram, an Indian fishing village famous for sculpture, American Artist Janet Echelman stumbled upon a material that would change her art, and life, forever. One evening, while observing the fishermen’s nightly routine of bundling their nets, Echelman imagined a new type of sculpture – a volumetric form that could be the scale of a large building but remain light enough to ripple in the wind, constantly reshaping the net and creating ever-changing patterns.
With a sophisticated mixture of ancient craft and modern technology, Echelman collaborates with a range of professionals including aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, lighting designers, landscape architects, and fabricators to transform urban environments world-wide with her net sculptures.
Continue after the break to view some of Echelman’s most famous projects.
Phantom Oil Pumps and a Soaring Marble Column Arrive in Times Square
The Times Square Alliance has announced the arrival of two new public art installations, Manhattan Oil Project by German-born Josephine Meckseper and Soñando New York (Dreaming New York) by Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Atchugarry. Continue after the break to learn more about these installations.
A Thousand Traps to Escape / Olivier Bourgeois and EAUL atelier 5D
“A Thousand Traps to Escape” is a temporary installation designed by 13 students from Laval University under Olivier Bourgeois in the Magdalen Islands in Quebec, Canada. The project builds on the collaboration of themes of architecture, art, landscape and installation in the creation of space based on simple materials, the landscape and “the basic rules of construction”. The “local material” chosen for this construction is the ubiquitous lobster trap made of wood and fishnet. Its formal simplicity allowed for an basic stacking technique that produced relatively complex visual results of transparencies and opacities.
Read on for more information on the development of this project. (more…)
Update: The Battle continues for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “Over the River” Project
The battle carries on as world-famous artist Christo fights for approval to construct a temporary work of art that will suspend 5.9 miles of silvery, luminous fabric panels high above the Arkansas River, along a 42-mile stretch between Salida and Cañon City in south-central Colorado. Over the River has been on the drawing boards for 20 years now, with over $7 million of Christo’s money invested into it with environmental studies, mock-ups, surveys from the air and wind tests.
In November, Christo received approval from the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns 98 percent of the riverfront. This was a huge step forward in the project and now only a few more local permit approvals are standing in the way.
Continue reading for more. (more…)
“Reflect” / Ivan Toth Depeña
Ivan Toth Depeña’s light-based installation “Reflect” was permanently installed in the Stephen Clark Government Center Lobby in Miami in November, 2011. Commissioned by the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places initiative, the work illuminates the dynamism of the lobby space and encourages a sense of discovery in the visitors.
The Imbued Potential of Vacant Land
Vacant land is a looming problem for many cities, especially when it remains undeveloped for years or is transformed into garbage dumps and parking lots. But when designers begin to notice these voids within the activity of a city they are able to unlock the inherent potential in the land. That is precisely what “Not a Vacant Lot”, as part of DesignPhiladephia, did this October. Philadelphia’s 40,000 vacant lots are both a challenge and an opportunity for young designers, artists and architects to tranform these under-utilized spaces into experiences within the fabric of the urban environment. The focal point of the design intervention was at the University of the Arts lot on 313 S. Broad Street, just a few blocks from Philadelphia’s center. It featured a reinterpreted map of Philadelphia by PennDesign students and Marianne Bernstein’s Play House, an 8′x8′ aluminum cube which, in its simplicity, could unlock the potential of this particular lot. But this engagement of vacant land was just one such intervention in a series artist installations throughout Philadelphia. Another such intervention, GroundPaper, was designed by two collaborating artists, Mike Ski and KT Butterfield. The site of their choosing was along the banks of the Delaware River in Fishtown, a neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Read on to see what artists can accomplish with no budget, a vacant lot and an inspired idea.
Ring Installation / Arnaud Lapierre
The Ring installation by Arnaud Lapierre in Place Vendôme in Paris, France plays with the context of this urban space through reflections, light and the interaction of passers-by. The piece was created for the FIAC 2011 Conference and sponsored by Audi. It is an aggregation of offset mirrored blocks stacked to form a cylinder.
For more images follow us after the break.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude “Over the River” Project – Approved to Stretch Across Arkansas River
Controversial artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude – known for making large-scale architectural interventions in urban and rural environments – have finally gotten approval from the Bureau of Land Management to construct their most recent project “Over the River”, which will stretch along 5.9 miles along the Arkansas River in Southern Colorado.
Read on for details of the project and more images! (more…)
Sir Peter Cook’s 75th Birthday Art Auction and Exhibition
Sir Peter Cook is 75 and to celebrate the iconic British architect and Archigram co-founder’s birthday, 75 established and emerging international artists have produced a portrait of Sir Peter to auction for charity Architecture for Humanity aiding post disaster relief in Haiti and Japan. Both the auction and exhibition started on October 26th and runs until November 9th. The online art auction can be found at The Adam and Eve Projects while the exhibition is up at Space, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Australia. More images are included here after the break. (more…)
‘The Last Lath’ Architectural Cartoons
Cartoonist Alan Dunn (1900 – 1974) may still hold the record as the New Yorker’s most prolific illustrator, responsible for 1906 cartoons and 9 covers during his tenure from 1926 – 1973. Capitalizing on his background in design, Dunn also contributed many cartoons to Architectural Record, beginning in 1936.
A collection of those cartoons, ‘The Last Lath’ was first published in 1947 and was nicely written about in a blog where we found a lot of his work. In addition to lampooning the modern design trends and technologies of the 1930s and ’40s, much of the humor centers around the terminology used by contractors and architects of the day, as well as realities like WWII-era material shortages and the post-war housing boom. A gallery of Dunn’s cartoons can be found after the break. (more…)
Green Square / Urban Interventions + Vallo Sadovský Architects
The “Urban Interventions” civic association, in collaboration with the Vallo Sadovský Architects studio, have prepared an instant urban intervention under a bridge. The situation in regard to quality of the environment at the bus terminal under the New Bridge in Bratislava has been bad for a long time. People have to wait for their bus connections in a totally unsuitable area, and we consider it a disgrace that the city of Bratislava leaves its citizens and tax-payers to function in such an inadequate environment. More images and architects’ description after the break. (more…)
Investigating Architecture Through Sculpture
Architecture often attempts to play with several spatial and formal concepts but the extent of this experimentation is often limited by budgetary and engineering constraints. Sculpture is a medium with which formal and spatial tests can be performed to an aesthetic extent without architectural limitation. There are several modern sculptors whose products can be seen as architecture. Here we will look at the works of Robert Smithson, Richard Serra and Anish Kapoor.
Rabbit: The Light Gallery Exhibition / dEEP Architects
This exhibition space design by dEEP Architects is for an art exhibition titled ‘Heaven’ that is being held in Shanghai’s trend setting shopping destination Xin Tian Di Shopping Mall. The form of a rabbit was chosen because in the Chinese culture this year is the Year of the Rabbit. More images and architects’ description after the break. (more…)
The Waving Wall of Chalkwell / holdUP & BLOO NATION
Designed by holdUP & BLOO NATION, the Waving Wall of Chalkwell is an art installation commissioned by Metal comprising of over 1200, 19L water cooler bottles, demonstrating the vast journey water takes as well as the amount of water used in the production of certain products; a few of which have been depicted in small cabinets, along with information regarding their water consumption. More images and a brief description after the break. (more…)
The Lace / Centrala
Garden of Nations in Ramallah, one of the first modern public spaces in booming Palestinian capital was meant to become a representation space, where art pieces donated by different countries would coexist. The relatively small scale of the park leads to the inevitable effect of visual overcrowding and competition of free-standing sculptures donated by different national representatives. To minimize the danger of entering into the same logic The Lace is a shadow-maker “glued” to the wall encompassing the park. It allows people to hide from the sun being a sort of tridimensional pocket. The Lace is a steel structure made out of 220 circular modules referring to a decorative Polish folk art motive used for Christmas tree decorations made out straw.
Architect: Centrala
Location: Ramallah, Palestine
Designer: Jakub Szczęsny
Collaborator: Tomasz Gancarczyk
Project Coordination: Barbara Urban, Office of the Representative of the Republic of Poland
client: Office of the Representative of the Republic of Poland to the Palestinian National Authority
Photographs: Barbara Urban and Centrala
‘Clear Cut’ Land Art Installation / Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture
In the summer of 2011, Joakim Kaminsky and Maria Poll, of Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture, went into the deep forests of Medelpad in northern Sweden. With them they brought 15 meters of mirror coated fabric aiming to create an installation that would interpret the life cycle of this pine forest. More images and architects’ description after the break. (more…)
André Chénier Opera on the Lake / David Fielding
André Chénier, the most famous work by the Italian composer Umberto Giordano, is brought to life for the ‘Opera on the Lake’ floating stage of the 2011 Bregenz Opera Festival in Bregenz, Austria by stage designer David Fielding under the artistic direction of David Pountney. The brilliantly vivid historical drama and human tragedy of shattering intensity is presented on the waterproofed set built directly into lake constance. It is then mounted upon a concrete core anchored into the base of the lake, while wooden poles support accessory structures of the stage. More images and project description after the break. (more…)
Luminous Passage / Predock Frane Architects
Hadrian Predock + John Frane’s project for the 2010 GLOW festival in Santa Monica titled “Luminous Passage” links the City to the Ocean as a porous and luminous land bridge. Connecting the existing Bay Street boardwalk to the ocean’s edge, the passage makes visible the connection across the sand to the edge of the Pacific. This is a physical tensile structure that supports light and connects the urban landscape of Santa Monica to the edge of the water, but also forms a conceptual leap that transitions from the “logics” that define the city to the those of the ocean. Taking the vertical nature of the city and merging it with the horizontal impulses of the pacific, a visceral and intense space twists and emerges. Composed of luminous lines of color (Electroluminescent wire – EL wire), the ambitious scale of the project is a relatively simple construction with only six fixed paper struts as primary support.
Architect: Predock Frane Architects
Location: Santa Monica, California, USA
Project Year: Fall 2010
Photographs: Ian Thomas
Land Art Generator Initiative – SOLARIS / Predock_Frane Architects
Critically engaging the emerging Abu Dhabi context of Masdar City, Zayed University and other tabula rasa territories, Predock_Frane Architects’ project proposes an antidote and refuge to the frenetic future-scape internationalism of the rapidly developing Arabian coast. In proposing a new abstract art space that allows for escape and contemplation Predock_Frane Architects’ project positions itself as a hybrid landscape/environmental machine that can both deliver power and engage the radical phenomenon of the desert. Along a path connecting Masdar City to Zayed University, a low-slung, energy producing sensitive field beckons public engagement.
Gateway Galaxy / Balmond Studio
Balmond Studio has been exploring educational ideas through art installations as part of a series of research studies. The interactive art proposal, which will be installed in Casper College, a school in Wyoming, USA, transforms the forgotten spaces of hallways, corridors and lobbies into thriving community and learning zones, celebrating the students’ daily experience. The designs are based on advanced geometric thinking developed by Cecil Balmond, founder of Balmond Studio.
