working together in isolation

Recently I have been working on a project where there are too many designers with very different ideas, none of whom are willing to come to a compromise and merge the ideas into one working concept. This wouldn't be a problem except the client wants a landscape to cut a red ribbon in front of next september and the contractor is already on site pouring concrete (!!).

The inspiration of this chair - the folded sketch, a child’s game where you draw one part of a character not knowing how the previous or next person will draw theirs - may be the only way forward...

via Notcot

ORDOS 100

Project Statement:

"The scope of the project is to Develop 100 hundred villas in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, for the Client, Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei studio in Beijing, has developed the masterplan for the 100 parcels of land and will curate the project, while Herzog and de Meuron have selected the 100 architects to participate. The collection of 100 Architects hail from 27 countries around the globe. The project has been divided into 2 phases. The first phase is the development of 28 parcels while the second phase will develop the remaining 72. Each architect is responsible for a 1000 square meter Villa."

Sounds like a great project.

Reminds me of another great project that was almost too incredible to be true which I came across in a WWILF moment in Paul's library - Commune by the Great Wall "a private collection of contemporary architecture designed by 12 Asian architects. It was exhibited at the 2002 la Biennale di Venezia and awarded a special prize. Commune by the Great Wall was named “A New Architectural Wonder of China” by Business Week in 2005."

More information at ORDOS100
via inhabitat

WOrld BOttle

interesting use of the statistical correlation between homelessness and alcohol abuse...

For the love of statistics....

... and for my friends who need pictures and diagrams to be able to understand numbers - you know who you are...

Tis the Season...

I pronounce the Silly Season... OPEN ~

Hannes Broecker - Drink Away The ArtExhibition in Dresden, Germany

"Forget about wandering through an art gallery and wondering if you’re the only one who has no idea what anything means. Hannes Broecker has brilliantly invited the cultural elite to grab a glass at an exhibition in Dresden, Germany, and drink away the art. Regardless of what we do or do not understand about art, we can all agree, it stimulates our senses. Broecker has aroused our sense of taste (not to mention eliminated the need of elbowing our way to the bar) by hanging flat, glass containers with a variety of cocktails in the exhibition space. As the night progressed, the levels of the multi-coloured infusions diminished. By the end of the event, the art, itself, ran dry, and empty drinking glasses were returned to where they were originally placed. By Andrew J Wiener."

via Coolhunter

‘under-construction sites’

"Fulton Fence is installed on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway in Manhattan, New York and can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The project is on of the three interventions that make the pilot Re:Construction public art program organized by the Downtown Alliance and the LMCC.

Project Description

Accents of orange and yellow plastic construction meshes, industrial caution lights, safety signage and the chain-link fencing that universally signify construction-in-progress will be collaged into a vibrant op-art mural bounding the water main retrofitting on Fulton Street. These treatments will be affixed in segments following the 10-foot long section frames of chain-link fencing that currently encircle the construction site. At the time of installation the team will establish a primary linear pattern along the line of the fence that combines 30 or more of these modules. As these modules get moved around by the contractors due to on-going construction needs, these new arrangements will create unpredictable patterns conveying the very history of the construction as it progresses.

As part of the piece, the team will continually be building a web-based project, which will become the location of an online intervention that seeks to parallel the construction of the physical site with the construction of a ‘space’ within the Internet. This digital destination takes the form of a continually scrolling web page as both an organizational tool and analog of strolling down the perimeter of the project on Fulton Street. Just as the physical installation weaves elements of vernacular construction materials into the frame of the fence, the website will embed media driven ‘interventions’: process documentation, location information, online widget mash-ups, and mobile downloads among others.

These two explorations – one architectural, the other online – seek to re-define ‘under-construction sites’ as expressive spaces in a city of ongoing transformation."

Fulton Fence . net

Cracks at the Tate

Would have loved to be there for the briefing meeting for the engineer who made this happen... Maybe Gehry should use the "But, your honor, its art!!" defense for the Stata Center case.

Doris Salcedo Shibboleth

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

more here...

that's very nanna of you

The Art of Botanical Illustration

A couple of christmas' ago, the hostess of the Orphan's Christmas Lunch I went to confessed that she was obsessed with sugar tongs and a particular collection of Royal Copenhagen china Given she was 27 and working at one of australia's best private contemporary art galleries, with a personal specialty in neon art, all the guest had a laugh at her very nanna-esque obsession. Well, time to confess, mine is botanical illustration. I find the illustrations much more expressive, beautiful and representative than any photograph. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne have curated an interesting collection here.

The Story of My Life

Two Dilbert's that sum things up...

Dematerializing Samples

A granite paving sample fell on my friend and co-worker Jooyeon's foot yesterday and bruised her. I don't think it she was using it for the purposes that the sample was issued, in fact I think she was using it to stabilize a book that she was photographing because she couldn't be bothered scanning, so maybe its the sample's way protesting its abuse. (I have been reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). But the incident got me wondering if there was a better way to manage the millions of paving samples that we receive constantly - I request new ones for every project because its simply too hard to find the ones I want in the existing sample collection. And voila ~ the interior designers have already come up with a way of doing this...

"In 2002 the Chattanooga-based sustainable-design-services company Tricycle launched an alternative sampling option for the interiors industry; manufacturers outsource the process to the company, which produces and delivers extremely realistic paper samples—called SIMs—to specifiers instead of actual carpet slabs. The idea quickly took off and has become widely implemented (and widely imitated) in the industry. Tricycle estimates that in four years its service has saved about 26,000 gallons of oil and kept more than 155,000 pounds of waste out of landfills.

At this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, Tricycle launched a significant expansion of the program, called Tryk. Previously the company could only cre­ate samples of tufted carpet, but Tryk works with woven carpet as well as wall-coverings and fabrics. It also allows for different scales and larger sizes—and the image quality is improved. “We continue to move toward a more photorealistic image,” says Michael Hendrix, Tricycle’s creative director and chief brand officer. “If you could see an image from three years ago, the tufts looked flatter. We’ve been able to improve the perception of volume in the overall look.”

The company is also launching a new Web platform, which will be fully functional by January. “It’s more robust,” Hendrix says. “It’s giving more features to the user, and it’s actually better integrated with the business practices of manufac­turers.” The end result is an even more efficient, easy-to-use, and realistic tool for designers to sample materials—without wasting them."

Via Metropolis Mag

Pure Geography or perhaps Pure Landscape Architecture

Without Standards and Codes.
Oh to design without consideration for Public Liability.

El sendero by Teresa Moller

"Punta Pite is a 27-acre piece of land that follows the contours of a bay between Zapallar and Papudo, two sea towns located 93 miles north of Santiago, Chile. A residential development planned and built here between 2004 and 2006 takes its name from this place and is laid out in a way that surrenders to the power and beauty of the ocean. It was developed as a series of parts connected by a walking path, one part of which seems to be sculpted out of the existing cliffs, while the other part passes through a restored creed that were meant to create one single spatial experience of the site."

the Pruned article says it all...

All the world's problems...

"Vote for the Drivers of Change that you think will influence your area of work. Vote as many times as you like and add your own if you feel that a driver is missing." ...vote here

I love that the current one has STUPIDITY as a problem... its funny coz its true...

Pneumatic Anatomica

In the artist, Jason Freeny's words -
"After months of observations, dissections and a 25 minute intro to clown school, I have finally successfully mapped the inter workings of the domestic balloon dog."

via Boing Boing

StarSight : Useful Street Lighting

Not that normal street lights AREN'T useful, but this one is even more so as its a solar-powered street light and WiFi in one.

A StreetLight System consists of a kit that contains several components.

This kit is intended to be mounted on "one" pylon. Typically 11 "Lights" network with one central control.

The kit contains :

• Lamp - StarSight Lamp Model 1021 is the "Light" of the Street Light.
• Battery Subsystem - StarSight Battery Subsystem provides power when the sun has not been available for an extended period of time.
• Solar Array Subsystem - This is the main power source.
• StarSight Controller - This unit integrates charge controller, radio, cpu, and anti-theft into one unit.

Things not included:

• pylon due to its weight is supplied in country. The system supports a varity of pylon designs.

Developed by Kolam Partnership, Ltd and currently used in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon and the Congo.

via PingMag

ESCHEW EXCESS VERBIAGE

An old housemate of mine had the theory that people who really knew what they were talking about could explain anything very simply in a very short amount of time. A postgrad I know once summed this up as "the cocktail line" i.e. what you told people that you met at cocktail parties when they asked you what your phd was about and you only had 30seconds of their interest.

For us of the generation that want to know everything but have the patience of a newt.... 60 Second Lectures -

"Every spring and fall, the School of Art and Science faculty at the University of Pennsylvania take a minute out on Locust Walk to share their perspectives on topics ranging from human history and the knowable universe, to fractions and fly-fishing. While not every speaker makes it under the one-minute mark, they all deal with their chosen subjects with intellectual agility and wit." ... lectures from here

Bureau of Workplace Interruptions

"We harness interruptive technology to expose the secret possibilities of the workday. As a time-stealing agency, the Bureau of Workplace Interruptions works directly with employees to invisibly insert intimate exchange into the flow of the workday. Our promise is to create interruptions that challenge the needs of our users and the social and economic conditions of the modern workplace.

You know how receiving flowers at work can put a buzz on the rest of the day? So do we. That's why we create surprise, the kind that slices through the banal and opens up new places for your mind to wander. The ruptures we create are temporary spaces for open dialogue, invisible resistance, and general amusement. In short, we hope to invigorate some of the time you spend at work in order to create new experiences and possibilities outside the flow of capital."

Because, like, why not?

via Guerrilla Innovation

10 Mile Spiral

"A Gateway to Las Vegas"

I love this project. Its a great example of what I like to think of as Design "Science Fiction" noun a form of fiction that draws imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation in its plot, setting, theme, etc.

Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch propose, among other things, a "10 mile spiral" that will "serve two civic purposes for Las Vegas": First, it acts as a massive traffic decongestion device... by adding significant mileage to the highway in the form of a spiral. The second purpose is less infrastructural and more cultural: along the spiral you can play slots, roulette, get married, see a show, have your car washed, and ride through a tunnel of love, all without ever leaving your car. It is a compact Vegas, enjoyed at 55 miles per hour and topped off by a towering observation ramp offering views of the entire valley floor below.

Although, I think this project may be more suitable for Dubai, where Traffic Engineers reign supreme and drivers would rather keep driving round and round than slow down.

via BLDG BLOG

Internet messiness : Everything is Miscellaneous

Recently I refiled the office's "web images downloaded" folder into some sort of respectable order, like getting rid of folders called "michael" (created by michael) and attempting to set in place a system that educates the staff by osmosis - for example, project images are filed designer_project rather than 366621521_534ed7f150.jpg (i love flickr but it really becomes quite problematic when clients ask "where is that project?" and the response is "...????... your guess is as good as mine...????... europe somewhere?.. no wait, japan... but i think the designers were dutch...")

Then yesterday, while I was out of the office my boss was trying to find an image which he described as "you know, THAT image" followed by some tantie throwing when the image wasn't found and I started to think maybe I should reinstate the "michael" folder for the benefit of all the staff in the office who haven't yet learnt how to read michael's mind. Or perhaps design a way to tag all our images idiosyncratically to our hearts content so we don't have this problem anymore - I wish my technological talents were as advanced as my technological "If only's".

Anyway, I think I will buy this David Weinberger's book "Everything is Miscellaneous" for the office library.

Infrastructure as ART

Not that long ago I told an architect that I was working with we were never going to be able to "integrate" the 2ML water tank the engineers were proposing into the landscape and that perhaps we can convince the client to let the The Graffiti Project people turn in into an artwork instead. Today... while flickering for interesting water features, I came across the Valence Water Towers in France designed by Philolaos Tloupas in 1969 and I was ashamed as a designer that I have failed to see the possibility in the form of water towers and tanks. Australian designers can be so quick to label the French conservative and yet we are so far behind them...

FAKE trees

Indeed. why leave it up to nature to decide what trees should look like...

P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S design the Fake Plastic Trees in Hollywood

"Following the lineage of the Schindler house as an experiment in modern living in close relation to nature, our proposal "Fake Plastic Trees" is an attempt to investigate the formal, spatial and atmospheric potential of a vertically sustainable garden in synch with the most advanced technology for plant growth. The garden is composed of a branching circuitry network made of plastic PVC tubes. These tubes circulate and distribute water with a nutrient solution that nurtures aerial vegetation of different kinds. The section of the tubes diminishes as the trajectories they describe move up and away from the ground. The flow of water is induced by water pumps from several reservoirs located in the ground. Water is distributed directly to the plants base by pumping up from the reservoirs or indirectly down by dripping from the upper branches and then moistening down. Depending on the section of tubes, their capacity to carry more or less water, different scale of plants can grow from and within them. The artificiality of plants growing directly on water, the modulation and scaling of them as they detach from the ground, the dynamism of the branching and choreographed vegetation and its likely wind induced oscillation, and the occasional forms of animal life negotiating temporary shelter within the garden, amounts to an advanced living ecosystem that both challenges and amplifies the assumed relations between the architecture of The Schindler House and its surrounding “natural” environment."

via World Architecture News