Olafur Eliasson: The Latest Architecture and News

Munich – Bavaria’s capital since 1506 – is a city with layers and layers of history. Its many years as a rising architectural epicenter have left an interesting and unique mix of buildings. From Middle Age churches and cathedrals to contemporary synagogues. From skyscrapers to small pavilions. Brutalism to Art Nouveau. Munich’s architecture is truly extensive and marvelous.

Though not acknowledging Munich’s beer wonders would be wrong, the only mention of this substance would be in the stunning buildings (like the new Paulaner HQ by Hierl Architekten) that contain them. Yes, other aspects of the city are grandiose, but let’s focus on Munich’s top attraction: its architecture.

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The internationally recognized artist Olafur Eliasson has inaugurated his most recent public art installation in Doha, Qatar. The installation, titled “Shadows Travelling on the Sea of the Day”, can be reached by diving through the rugged desert landscape northwards from Doha, past Fort Zubarah, and the village of Ain Mohammed. The artwork is visible from afar, but it is best experienced when approached on foot. Its hospitable shadows reward the journey.

Studio Other Spaces, founded by artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann, has unveiled its wine tasting pavilion for California wine producer The Donum Estate. The design weaves together various elements of the site in what the designers describe as a vertical panorama, and essentializes a vertical cut through the landscape and the conditions that make for a thriving vineyard, proposing a holistic experience addressing all senses. The roof’s colored glass tiles represent an abstract calendar depicting the yearly averages of parameters such as wind intensity, temperature and humidity.

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A new exhibition at the Japan House in London explores the large-scale art and architecture project driving the transformation of the Japanese island of Inujima for the past 13 years. Titled Symbiosis: Living Island, the show co-curated by the project's artistic director Yūko Hasegawa and architect Kazuyo Sejima showcases how the innovative scheme of accessible art, pavilions and creative projects brought together artists and locals in the effort to revitalize and secure a future for this island in the Seto Inland Sea confronted with diminishing population. Running from 21 May to 4 September 2022, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey around the island that illustrates the transformative impact of the Inujima' Art House Project' through architectural models, photography, videos and testimonies of the residents.

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Last September, the EU launched the New European Bauhaus, an initiative designed to transform the built environment into a more sustainable one with higher social value. The project, shaped through an unprecedented co-design process, is now calling for architects, students, specialists, and citizens to share ideas, examples and challenges to help define the movement's concrete steps.

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Carlo Ratti Associati's spin-off company Scribit has partnered with leading artist Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun non-profit to draw a crowdsourced illustration of the sun's path in thousands of people's homes. Write&erase robot Scribit works as a smart vertical plotter to create illustrations inspired by sun path charts. The two teams hope to bring the climate crisis center stage and instigate change for the future of the planet.

Can you even call yourself an architect if you don’t have an old box of LEGO that you can’t bare to throw out stored away in an attic somewhere?

LEGO has become a part of architecture’s collective conscience – an inspiration, a modeling tool, a nostalgic driver, a raison d'être for architects who grew up piecing worlds together and imagining alternative realities. With the completion of BIG’s LEGO House in Billund, LEGO is once again in the spotlight. But, as this short documentary explains, it never really left.

Last month the Norman Foster Foundation, created to promote "interdisciplinary thinking and research to help up-and-coming architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future," coincided the opening of its new Madrid-based headquarters with an international conference. Future is Now pulled together a broad collection of professionals—including Sir Jonathan Ive, Marc Newson, Olafur Eliasson, Maya Lin, Alejandro Aravena, and Luis Fernández-Galian—who addressed an audience of 1,800 (including 1,100 students) in the Spanish capital's Royal Theater.

Watch the conference in its entirety, or read a summary, after the break.

As part of their series of "Panorama" exhibits being presented this year, Friends Of The High Line have announced that they will host Olafur Eliasson's installation, "The Collectivity Project" from May 29th until September 30th this year on the High Line at West 30th Street. The installation, which has previously traveled to Tirana, Oslo, and Copenhagen, features an interactive imaginary cityscape made of over two tons of white LEGO bricks, with visitors invited to design, build and rebuild new structures as they see fit.

In a twist to the installation's usual presentation, High Line Art has invited high-profile architects who are working in the vicinity of the High Line to contribute one "visionary" LEGO design for the installation's opening, with BIG, David M. Schwarz Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, James Corner Field Operations, OMA New York, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, Selldorf Architects, SHoP, and Steven Holl Architects all contributing one building which the public will then be able to adapt, extend or work around.

"Be very sensitive to where you are, in what times and in what parts of the world, and how that constitutes the artistic practice," says Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson in this recent video from Louisiana Channel. In Advice to the Young, Eliasson deliberates on creative practice, urging young artists to take risks and produce meaningful work. "Just because you think about a work of art," says Eliasson, "it is not necessarily a work of art." Most recently, Eliasson has made headlines for his immersive exhibition Riverbed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art which explores the intersection between nature and the built environment. Revered as one of the world's leading sculptural and installation artists, Eliasson is adamant that the practice of working with art remains to be "very fierce, very strong and very robust."

“Elements of Architecture,” the Rem Koolhaas-curated exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale, delved into several remarkable structural as well as technical components of architecture, including floors, walls, doors, stairs and toilets. But why was light missing? 

My manifesto for the inclusion of light as a fundamental element of architecture — after the break.