Yokohama Apartments by ON design partners

Yokohama apartment is a residential complex consisting of semi public courtyard canopied by four one-room units for young artists. The semi public courtyard is a place for exhibition and work. 

photos © Koichi Torimura

more at archdaily

Antony Gormley: 'Model' at White Cube

28 November 2012 – 10 February 2013

White Cube Bermondsey144 – 152 Bermondsey Street
London SE1 3TQ


White Cube Bermondsey is pleased to present ‘Model’, an exhibition of major new works by Antony Gormley. Challenging the physical possibilities of the gallery space, this ambitious exhibition investigates our experience of architecture through the body and of the body through architecture.

Interior Urbanism Florence 2013 Poster

more information on this summer's workshop can be found here.

Alex Cox's references

A critic on the panel of the recent Level 5 Final Crit, Alex Cox, sent along some references that he thought would be helpful.

For those with pendant-like instalations relating to the hanging easels (at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, current site for the Level 5 project),

London Stock Exchange installation:

For those interested in the 'behind the scenes' areas of theatres,

The Marx Brothers A Night At The Opera (Final Scene):

For those interested in vertical movement/habitation,

Maison Bordeaux lift:

For those interested in preservation of the existing and subtle interventions,

Neues Museum, Berlin:

For those interested in dramatic natural lighting,

Stanley Kubricks Barry Lyndon:

For those interested in the drama of the old theatre:  an image that captures the feeling of a theater opening night in a rainy Rotterdam, 

Bolles & Wilson, New Luxor Theatre (Image by them):

Thanks, Alex!

School of American Ballet by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

At first blush, it seems that the architect and the dancer have little in common. Deal­ing with structures and edifices, architects strive for permanence of form; dancers work with gestures and movements, resulting in fleeting moments of beauty. But when architect Elizabeth Diller began redesigning the School of American Ballet (SAB), in collaboration with its artistic director, Peter Martins, she was struck by the affinities between the two disciplines. “We kind of do the same thing,” she says. “We’re interested in bodies and space, and we’re interested in overcoming laws of gravity.”


A couple of years ago, Martins decided he wanted to halve one of SAB’s more spacious studios. Hav­ing another one running would mean more classes, more students, and more flexibility for his pupils, most of whom study dance part-time in addition to taking a full load of academic classes. The fifth-floor space of the Samuel B. and David Rose Building at Lincoln Center was double-height, so Martins hoped to divide it horizontally, stacking the volumes “like pancakes.”


Before Diller took on the job, the architecture firm Davis Brody Bond suggested dividing the space with a conventional floor. Unfortunately that would have blocked the natural light from the windows, leaving the upper studio dark and cramped. Hoping for a more creative solution, Martins and his colleague Marjorie Van Der­cook, executive director of SAB, approached Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which was already overseeing an ambitious $700 million renovation of Lincoln Center. About five minutes after Dil­ler saw the space, she told Martins that it was certainly possible to stack a studio on top of another in a way that allowed for plenty of room and light. “You could suspend it,” she told him. “It would float.” Martins and Van Dercook were so enthusiastic that they asked Diller to draw up plans for a similar space next door. Eight months and $7.2 million later, there were two split-level studios separated by a lounge where donors and parents can observe classes.

From Metropolis Magazine 'Bodies and Spaces' by By Belinda Lanks

Wrapper, Edgware Road tube station

Wrapper is a permanent work of art by Jacqueline Poncelet, made especially to clad the new building and perimeter wall next to Edgware Road (Circle line) Tube station. The work, created in vitreous enamel, dresses the building in a grid of patterns developed by the artist. Each pattern relates to a different part of the local area and was made in response to the images and ideas that she has developed through her research there over the past three years. Like an enormous patchwork, Wrapper tells the story of the place in which it sits, weaving together elements from local history and the natural environment, the area’s architecture and its people.

Set in the urban environment of central London, Wrapper joins a diverse landscape of buildings, with a mixture of scales, functions and architectural designs. It stands out as a bright and colourful object whilst simultaneously blending in as a new addition to an area already full of constructions of all kinds and ages, from office blocks and houses to shops and schools. A work on this scale could have dominated the area, but Poncelet’s mix of patterns brings a kind of fragmentation to the building that helps to integrate it with its neighbours. In the busy environment of the Edgware Road area, the design also reflects the way in which the building will be viewed: more often in parts than as a whole.

Depending on where the viewer stands in relation to the artwork, Wrapper reveals a variety of stories. From the platform, for example, the fringe of the station's roof can be recognised in the zig-zag pattern integrated into the work. On the other side of the building, local residents who can view it from their windows, or the people who pass by on foot, will see many more elements from the local area: the detailed tracings of leaves reference the trees in Regents Park, while the delicate water pattern suggests the Tyburn stream that runs underground nearby. Seen from a distance or as a fleeting glimpse from a vehicle on Marylebone Road, Poncelet’s patterns, some of which she made from a drawing of cars, will look quite different again. The colours all reflect those of the Tube map, hinting at the building’s connection to it.

In Wrapper, and throughout Poncelet's artistic practice, patterns and colours play a key role as storytellers. She uses them in carefully considered configurations and each has a very particular place and purpose in the overall composition. Through this visual choreography, the artist aims to generate illusionary spaces or simply to modulate stillness and movement. “A pattern not only speaks of other places, but of changes in our culture and the passage of time”, says Poncelet. With the patterns devised for Wrapper, she has replicated how we choose what we see in a complex and busy environment. By condensing her experience of the area and her understanding of the site through these motifs, she highlights the pleasures large and small that a place can awaken in us. This is the largest work created by Poncelet to date; indeed, it is the largest vitreous enamel artwork in Europe.

Alongside the installation Wrapper, Art on the Underground has commissioned artist Jessie Brennan to work with station staff and local community groups including the St Marylebone Society, residents at 60 Penfold Street and students from City of Westminster College to develop a new drawing titled Everything Meets Here that parallels some of the research methods employed by Poncelet in her work. http://art.tfl.gov.uk/projects/detail/9457/

God’s Loftstory / LKSVDD

© Vincent van den Hoven

© Vincent van den Hoven

The  former  Dutch  Reformed  Evangelism  Building  in  Haarlo  has  been  transformed  into  a  unique  loft. The starting point for the design were the retained  (mostly with a need for restoration)  qualities of the 1928 dating monument,  the façade,  the bell tower with clock,  the volume,  the iconic location on the outskirts of the village  and nice details like  the wooden roof construction,  the old panel doors  and arch windows  with stained glass.

It was a conscious choice, not to fill the volume of 1100 m3 completely with as many rooms as possible, but to minimize the demands, in order to retain the spaciousness of the building. The only architectural additions are the mezzanine for the relaxation room  ( couch, bed and bath )  and the multifunctional “Stairway to have fun” ( stairs,  room divider,  closet,  build-in-kitchen,  acoustic element and exhibition wall ).

from archdaily.

Ben Morris - ETFE Enclosures Thursday 22nd November, 6.30pm, Room M421

Ben Morris - Vector Foiltec

ETFE Enclosures

Thursday 22nd November, 6.30pm, Room M421

Architecture and the Built Environment 

 

University of Westminster

School of Architecture and the Built Environment
London NW1 5LS

 

ETFE was first patented by DuPont in the 1940s, but went commercial in the 1970s when US manufacturer DuPont and Hoechst in Germany launched ETFE wire and cable insulation. Vector Foiltec, a sailmaking firm set up in 1982, pioneered the architectural use of ETFE. Vector Foiltec, located in London and Bremen, is now the leading fabricator of ETFE cushions.

This talk looks at recent advances in ETFE technology. Ben Morris will discuss variable light transmission, controlling solar gain and ultraviolet rays, speciality coatings and printing, specialist lighting effects, colouring and patterning, full pixelated LED graphic display, enhanced plant growth (including the first grass in enclosed stadia) and cloud (fog) formation in Enric Ruis Geli’s Media-ICT building in Barcelona.

 

http://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/

Theo Jansen's Strandbeests

Artist Theo Jansen makes self-propelled kinetic sculptures, primarily constructing them out of PVC pipes.

Akihisa Hirata: 'Tangling' at the Architecture Foundation until until 1 December 2012

For his first ever international solo show, emerging Japanese architect Akihisa Hirata will exhibit an immersive 1:1 scale installation – a contorted loop – to distil his architecture’s essence into a large-scale experiential structure. Over a hundred study models and conceptual sketches will be presented on and within the structure, as well as an interview with the architect and intimate films of his projects, illustrating Hirata’s view of architecture and ecology, form and function, as a complex, interwoven ‘tangle’. 

At The Architecture Foundation, 136-148 Tooley St, London SE1 2TU.

Admission is Free.

Information Session for IU 2013: Monday November 19

HEINER GOEBBELS: STIFTER’S DINGE RETURNS TO AMBIKA P3

Photograph by Nick Cobbing for Artangel

The 2008 Artangel project Stifter’s Dinge, by German composer and director Heiner Goebbels, is inspired by the 19th century poet and painter Adalbery Stifter and uses mechanical objects, music, projections and natural elements to create a composition in the form of an installation, written for five pianos with no pianists.

This year it returns for the final time to its original home at Ambika P3, a vast concrete construction hall on Marylebone Road. As well as reviving the 2008 seated performance, a new site-specific version has been created to renew the composition; Stifter’s Dinge: The Unguided Tour allows visitors to freely explore the environment, experiencing the work as a continuously developing installation.

Stifter’s Dinge is at Ambika P3 4th-18th November 2012. 

text from la scatola gallery.

snøhetta: lascaux caves visitor center

norwegian practice snøhetta has recently been awarded the bid to design the new 'lascaux caves visitor center' on the boundary of the vezere valley and the hillside, between a dense forest and man-formed agricultural land in motignac france. the project will display the artwork created by prehistoric artists on the walls of the natural stone vaults, and just like these artists who took cues from the existing textures and irregularities to communicate their ideas, so does the architecture exist within a small fissure following the contours of the landscape to effectively expose the subtle intricacies of the site. the long glass facade faces north towards the city of montignac to receive visitors. varying transparencies define the curtain wall facade that constantly maintains a profile with the immediate environment. the public service spaces are located towards this glass wall, receiving plenty of natural light, while the exhibitions are discovered as the visitor explores further into the earth through a similar path that the ancient inhabitants used in order to reach the same point. the project presents itself through a series of majestic spaces filled with silence, bustling trees, penetrating light in vast dark spaces, hard rock surfaces and lively vegetative components that restore the spirit of the caves and their treasured paintings.

from designboom

Tomas Saraceno

Artist Tomás Saraceno follows the tradition of those who have looked up to the sky to envision works of uncommon optimism that explore systems of interdependencies, both inside and beyond the natural world. 

Kengo Kuma - 'Power of Place' Lecture. Wednesday 7 November 2012

19:00 Wednesday 7 November 2012

Kengo Kuma - Power of Place

Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series

Lecture: Christopher Ingold Auditorium, UCL Chemistry Building, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ

The renowned Japanese architect has been featured on this blog  several times:

http://iasources.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/casalgrande-old-house-kengo-kuma-and.html

http://iasources.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/kengo-kuma-momofuku-ando-center.html

'Borderline' Installation

as part of 2010's international architecture biennale in venice, italy, the hungary pavilion 

explored the simplest and most fundamental act of the architect: drawing. 'borderline' 

defines the line as the origin of the architectural idea as opposed to the house or space. 

using the almost exclusively two-dimensional element as a focal point, the project utilized 

nearly one hundred kilometres of thread to physically illustrate how lines are translated 

into architecture. 

image © tamás bujnovszky

more at designboom

Jonas Dahlberg

Jonas Dahlberg is one of Sweden’s most prominent artists, working at the intersection of art, architecture and film.
http://www.jonasdahlberg.com

School Corridor, 1986

2010. Kinetic sculpture. Aluminium, steel, LED lamps, motor. Dimensions 135 x ø92.5cm


This work is something between a sculpture and a mechanical film. I’ve constructed a series of small, three-dimensional “film frames” creating a horizontal wheel, recalling a film reel. When the wheel rotates, the rooms are fed forward like a film in a projector, creating an animation. The rooms are constructed with imperfections and scratches so that the feeling of early animation mechanisms and early cinema comes to mind.

In the work I’m addressing an idea of how memories and film-animations have a connection to each other by the way they are similarly constructed. To be able to create an animation and an illuminated frame—or in this case a room—it’s necessary to always have a dark interval before the next frame/room. The illuminated image is then imprinted on the retina and is linked by the eye's memory to the ensuing room, creating a continued movement.

 

An Imagined City  (work in progress)

This October, Dahlberg will present a site-specific work on and around the old post office in Stockholm. The piece is an architectural sound and light installation produced by MAP, Mobile Art Production. During the restoration of the old post office on Nybrogatan 57, Jonas Dahlberg has transformed the building into an austere, black façade to use as his backdrop. In daylight, the temporarily blackened building becomes the archetypal image of contemporary architecture, only to be transformed into a seemingly black hole at night. When darkness falls, four windows light up and shine their spotlights down onto the street. The beams are filled with voices that take the viewer on a journey through cities, places and buildings, in stories that are based on an archive of memories of cinematic rooms and spaces. The austere façade, or the black hole, becomes a screen onto which the audience can project their own memories, thoughts and ideas regarding architecture and what a city could be.

Since the very beginning of his career, Jonas Dahlberg has worked with staged situations revolving around the viewer’s movements through spaces in different fictitious worlds. In An Imagined City, he deepens his interest in the mirroring of psychological architecture. To date, Dahlberg’s preferred medium has been film, but in An Imagined City, he leaves the medium behind and steps straight onto the street, where the viewer becomes the focus of events.

An Imagined City is a temporary staging of public space, a kind of theatre where everything is possible. What kind of city do we want? Which architecture is imaginable in the first place, and what happens when one temporarily dramatises a quotidian milieu?