Just in time for the start of a new school year. Do you have more books than you know what to do with? We can never have enough bookshelves in my house but rather than build more, wouldn’t it be great if bookshelves had a dual purpose besides just holding books? Seeing this design for books gave me a lot of inspiration. Now I just have to build more stairs.
This Bookcase Staircase by Levitate can store 2,000 books.
This design makes reading even more fun.
Unlike origami, this kind of paper folding leaves a visible, non-3-D impression, raised but on flat paper. The artwork is architectural and arresting. I can’t figure out how they were created without producing unwanted creases in the paper. Beautiful. They remind me of images captured in the sand….maybe because I’m heading to the beach, finally. Fortunately, these are here to stay. Take a look.
The artwork is by German artist Simon Schubert, via Designtaxi, which continues to be a source of creative inspiration.
I saw this just in time for the London Olympics. Some of these may be conceptual plans but I hope to see these structures while I watch some of the games. I’m more a fan of the winter Olympics than I am of the summer, however.
I think all of the Olympic structures are pretty exceptional. I don’t get the sculpture, however.
Information Pavilion
Aquatics Center
Top of Aquatics Center
Beatbox - CocaCola Olympic Park Pavilion
Acelor Mittal Orgit Sculpture by Anish Kapoor
Here’s the Olympic Park the night of the Opening Ceremony and the official website, if you want to keep your pulse on the game schedules.
Olympic Village at night of Opening Ceremonies
I finally made it to see and hear Song 1 displayed on the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum before it closed on May 20th. In fact that was my mother’s day present. What a great idea to use the outside of buildings as movie screens. This one, however, was not flat and that’s where the technological wizardry came in. Here’s my previous post regarding the optics.
It was a beautiful clear night with a slight breeze. All ages, all kinds of people were out, hand-in-hand, in groups, with families and individually, enjoying the same experience with perhaps different meanings for each. It was one of those moments in time where you felt the community stopping the hectic pace around them and coming together to enjoy the beauty of the moment. Here are some video clips that I have spliced. Of course you had to be there to get the full sense but one takeaway is I can’t seem to get the hauntingly, hip, “I Only Have Eyes for You” song out of my head. You can hear and see the street activity with buses whizzing by and eerie vocals of Tilda Swinton…..I tried but couldn’t not get my videos to reduce in size to be able to post so here’s the best I could find to give you and idea. This is the official one and much better than I could do anyway:
This isn’t only happening in America. Look at this clip on the outside of the Sydney Opera House.
Reminds me a little of Invasion of the Super Humans — I mean Virgens. The description of the Live Festival is pretty hysterical:
When the festival director of Vivid Live, Fergus Linehan, first told people he had to audition 30 Virgens, he got some pretty strange looks. Until he explained they were the all-girl rock choir in the Australian premiere of Stop the Virgens, the ”psycho opera” stage show created by Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O.
”The Virgens must be supplied locally – it’s on their rider, next to four bottles of high-quality vodka,” Linehan jokes.
I’ve been wanting to report on the newest Hirshhorn Museum installation and now that it has started, I finally can. It’s a continuous movie called SONG 1 by Doug Aitken who uses “liquid architecture” to project continuously around the outside of the round structure that is the architecture of Hirshhorn museum.
Here’s what it looks like now that it’s actually rolling, every night from sundown until midnight until May 13th. The movie has about 30 – 40 different covers by Beck, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, among other musicians of the 1934 song, I Only Have eyes for You. It is a series of moving pictures with the collaboration of music — not unlike a music video playing in an outdoor movie ampitheatre. Remember drive-ins? They’re baaaaack! Actually, I like the days of drive-in movies. They remind me of less complicated times. Several years ago, we were looking for ways to project movies for community gatherinsg for our civic group but the idea faded when we couldn’t find the best outdoor place to gather with an available projection screen/surface. One difference with Song 1 is that you have to move to see the entire “movie” so you have to interact and engage to get the full effect.
Song 1 was achieved with 11 different projectors strategically placed around the perimeter so that trees and sculptures would not interfere with the projections. You have to walk around to see the entire movie you you’ll never see the same thing twice in doing so, so it is a different experience each time when it is viewed.
Philip Kennicott’s review is very insightful:
The song thus emphasizes the basic dualities of the whole work, the play of surface and depth, the flow of time or the fixation of looking. But it also suggests a kind of narcissism, being so lost in one’s own desires that one doesn’t notice the rest of the universe….By contrast, “Song 1” feels spectacular but disconnected, abstract, cold and a bit remote. Aitken is a major artist. And by design, his “Song 1” isn’t meant to be seen or digested all at once.
I look forward to taking it all in soon. With spring like weather here, this could be a delightful night concert to see & hear. See more photos here.
Doug Aitken Song1 via Washington Post. Photo by Matt McClain
I was energized to see the post from Archello about “The Strong Use of Color” with all their many examples. I’m always looking for examples of how color can brighten and bring excitement to architecture or any design project. I thought I’d post a few here. Click the first picture link to see the full article.
This example in Santa Marta reminded me of the post I did on Speed Painting and the Let’s Colour the World project.
This sustainable product company in Berlin, Home of Good Deeds, caught my attention. It looks like a contemporary candy store with all that color. It just makes you kinda giddy.
The next ones remind me of those colored plastic pieces that I remember linking together and building structures when I was a child. I wish I could remember the name of them.
I recall the high rise building I saw with colored balcony glass in Panama City. It’s hard to see but look closely. It was much more vibrant in person. Photos often don’t do reality justice.
And a colored building in particular helps to enliven any neighborhood. I thought this pink was pretty and bold.
I just recently returned from a trip to Panama. We’ve been trying to get there for years and it was well worth it. While there, I thought about how nice it would be to live in the tropics. I received this post from Archello, a great site for everything architectural (see sidebar) and low and behold the topic was tropical residences. How timely. I particularly like Casa de La Flora, a new design hotel in Thailand. It is designed like a private residence.
This infinity pool reminded me of the one we saw at the Trump Tower in Panama. It has some of the most unusual architecture in the city.
Trump Ocean View Tower
What a gorgeous place for cocktails and a wonderful view of the city at sunset. It’s his most prize hotel in Latin America. This view from about 16 floors up. It’s pretty cool (literally) to have drinks while dangling your feet in a pool.
Infinity pool and lounge chairs at poolside Trump Tower Rooftop
Middle Lounge area located across from the Middle Bar and separates left & right sides of rooftop
Middle Bar located between two sides of the rooftop pool
Right side of the pool deck with cabanas
On the way down we saw many artistic things, like the clever concept of portraits made of pennies and a mezzanine area that had a sculpture slatted chair that I thought could have been by David Trubridge.
Penny Portraits at the Trump Tower in Panama City
Mezzanine has a variety of art and sculpture
There were two larges scale Botero sculptures – one at the entrance of the hotel and one in the lobby. Never mind he’s a Columbian artist and the Panamanians don’t really like the Columbians.
Botero sculpture in the lobby of the Trump Towner in Panama City
These are condo units as well and downstairs there are wings on either side of the lobby with shops, mini-bars and restaurants. It was the first time I had seen a wine-on-tap bar. What great idea. You can pour a taste, shot or glass from a spigot. What a great design concept.
This was just one day of our trip and not including the jungle adventure that came before. If you’d like to see more, head on over to Slipcovers for Your Walls, casartblog for Casart coverings, where I posted more pictures and an interesting video of worker ants that we stumbled upon while hiking in the jungle.
More to follow…..
I’m always taken by murals that have an illustrative quality and tell a story. I’m even more taken when a village had been built around them and materials have been used in unusual ways.
Toronto’s Village of Islington is built around 15,000 square feet of “historically pictorial” murals. Each mural tells a story and depicts an age-gone-by time period. These are both endearing and well-executed educational stories in paint. They were conceived by the BIA, Business Improvement Area to beautify and promote Islington Village. They’ve done a fabulous job, worth me traveling to see when I’m able to take that trip that I’ve been wanting to to Canada. Just look at the horse coming out from the corner of the two buildings.
The murals are so popular here that they have now been printed in calendar form.
Similar in style to these murals are ones by German-born artist Winold Reiss, who was commissioned to create mosaic murals for the Cincinnati Union Terminal, which now houses the Omnimax Theater. It’s hard to believe that these are all mosaics — until you look closely. Each mural is 105 feet long and depicts industries that were important to Cincinnati at the time, such as Baldwin Piano, Proctor & Gamble and US Playing Cards (who knew).
After seeing these, I started thinking about how mosaics and building materials can be used beyond their regular function to make such majestic artwork. What about this building below – amazing?! It’s the ISMOF – International School Museum of Flamenco in Jerez, Spain. Doesn’t it just look like the folds in a Flamenco Dancer’s Dress as she’s whipping it from side to side while you can just hear the clapping and applause. This design is 58% complete. Go to Archello for more incredible examples of architecture and design.
There’s even more detail on Arch Daily (also on my sidebar). How cool it would be to be able to walk a mountain of architectural folds.
I’m in High Point Market at the time this post runs, so I’m right in the middle of seeing home furnishing design prototypes for next year. It’s exciting to see what new innovation will be next and new ways to use materials. Already these are inspiring.
Post Irene and while writing this I’m not sure where I’ll be. On vacation, finally, or stuck working still?….As I write this with an hour upon the big bands of 85 mile winds approaching that have caused 20,000 people to lose power in Virginia, I’m not sure if power will still be on in the morning. But, at least I can envision signs of rainbow — hoping all will be well.
Here are views that you may be seeing “after the storm” captured in a Morning Drive by watercolorist landscape painter and illustrator, Nick Swift, who I’ve just added to my blogroll. He has an interesting background being partially color blind that brings extra fascination to his work. He also has an instructive painting demo that show the process of his work. I’m intrigued with the artist’s creative process.
I also like his shells, which I hope to be collecting by the time this post is published. I love beachcombing in the early hours before any ones else is awake and the beach gets crowed — and I’m NOT a morning person but this gets me up.
But I hope I’ll be seeing signs of a rainbow by this time too:
1) Rainbow Door to Paradise by Agnieszka Cuprys from Poland (designboom).
2) A Rainbow “house” stairs by Ab Rogers and DA Studio (modern house deco).
3) Plexus no. 8 by Gabriel Dawe is lovely and reminds me of a translucent rainbow (St. Louis Riverfront Times).
4) and even Rainbow Sheep — now that’s really seeing rainbows (moonbattery).
How could I not post She’s a Rainbow by The Rolling Stones. A great song to Kick Start the Weekend.
I remember seeing Lucy Williams’ artwork a while back in my Elle Décor magazine. I was immediately taken by the architectural, three-dimensional nature of her work. Her work is pristine and geometric and yet jumps out of its boundaries.
She uses a combination of materials and assembles them pre-cut with an x-acto knife in collage fashion. They appear to look nearly photo realistic upon first glance until you start realizing the materials that are used — minute pieces of paper, painted canvas, toothpicks and even bubble wrap at times. She tends to have a fascination with swimming pools but her subjects are iconic types of mid-century architecture.
Diving Pool by Lucy Williams via Elle Decor magazine
Artwork by Lucy Williams via Elle Decor Magazine
I really like her work for it’s 2 dimensional dichotomy in also being sculptural, a very modern bas-relief of sorts and at the same time a flattened, 3-D model with paper.
Swimming pool artwork by Lucy Williams via Saatchi Gallery
We’ll do Battersea by Hooverphonic to Kick-Start the Weekend. It’s interesting to see how their recorded version (previous link and below) is so different from their live version. I like the recorded version better. Notice how the artwork above seems similar to Hooverphonic’s album cover.
