Category Archives: Architecture

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Van Alen Books

Van Alen BookstoreClick to enlarge

Walking over to Chelsea the other day, I happened upon this very eye-catching and unique storefront on West 22nd Street. Turns out it’s the recently opened Van Alen Books, a bookstore and public reading room devoted to architecture and design publications. Designed by the architectural firm LOT-EK (the same architects behind the design of many impressive container structures, among other projects), the small space is predominantly occupied by the dramatic steps/seats made of recycled doors (if you enlarge the photos you can see where the hinges and strike plates were) stacked and bolted together to form a triangular hanging platform which felt surprisingly sturdy when I climbed up. The delightfully welcoming and enthusiastic young woman at the store told me that there will be a lecture series starting this Wednesday and the steps will be used as seating for the audience, stadium style.

If you’re in NYC and interested in architecture or design (which is likely, if you’re reading this blog), this may be a place you’d like to visit. The lecture series schedule isn’t up on the website yet, but you can call the number on their site to find out more. Van Alen Books is located at 30 W. 22nd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues.

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SOFTlab

Click images to enlarge

In my next life, I want to work at SOFTlab. These guys look like they have a great time doing everything they do. And what they do is everything. For them “a good idea does not discriminate between any medium or any type of project, it just works for everything.” That includes design of furniture, a website, a brand, a video, a gallery installation, a store display, and pretty much anything else that can be designed. Their approach is to make design customizable; it should allow for change, or growth, and be adaptable.

Just visiting their site is an immensely entertaining experience beginning with the computer animated video on their home page. Unknowingly, I was already familiar with (and a fan of) some of their work such as the colorful taped projection mapping of the New Museum as part of Festival of Ideas for the New City.

Above are just four of SOFTlab’s projects.
From top to bottom: CHROMAtex.me, a site specific installation for the bridgegallery, LES, New York. Photos: Alan Tansey
(n)arcissus, a site specific installation for NODE10 at the Frankfurter Kunsteverein in Frankfurt, Germany. Photos: Marius Watz.
POLYP.lux, a hanging installation for School Nite, part of the Festival of Ideas for the New City, NYC. Photos: Alan Tansey
CHROMAesthesiae, an installation for Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Photos: Alan Tansey

There are plenty more interesting projects on their website.

via fourthfifthdesign

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Port Authority Bus Terminal Goes Graphic

Come the end of this month, the Port Authority Bus Terminal here in NYC will be covered with a 6,000 sq.ft. LED-embedded mesh which, from the interior is transparent, but from the exterior provides a fabric for high-resolution graphics wrapping around the corner façade. The MediaMesh appears opaque during the day (see rendering above).

Hopefully the façade will be used as a medium for art though, unfortunately, unlike the renderings, it’s likely that advertising will be displayed instead. It would be great to be wrong.

via notcot, via Architect’s Newspaper

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Sebastien Wierinck’s Tube Formations

(Click on images for larger view)

Not since the Blue Men have I seen such great use of tubes. Sebastien Wierinck (whose Panels02 Chair we posted about previously) is a designer based in Marseille, France. He has designed everything from domestic furniture to commercial, interior design to stage and exhibit design. Above are some of his installations for public spaces, restaurants, galleries and art festivals.

From top to bottom, left to right:
Le Centquatre, Paris (top two photos); INSTANT Exhibit, Brussels (x2); Bed Supperclub, Bangkok; Light detail, Bed Supperclub; Brazil-Brazil Exhibit, Marseille (x2); Gallery Into Art & Furniture, Berlin; Tokyo Eat Restaurant, Paris; Design City, Luxembourg

Apart from being fun and amazing, these constructions are made of polyethylene plastic (plastic bottle waste) so it’s recycling at its finest. The tubes, usually used for water, gas and electrical distribution, are strong, flexible and readily available in multiple colors and sizes. It’s win-win all the way.

You can visit Sebastien Wierinck’s site for more info, and there are more photos on flickr.

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Lighter Than Air in Boston

Lighter Than Air_SHIFTboston_RachelyRotem_PhuHoangLighter Than Air, by Rachely Rotem Studio and Phu Hoang Office, is the winning entry for SHIFTboston’s Barge 2011 Competition and scheduled to be unveiled on Boston’s waterfront as a “pop-up” public space in September 2012.

Comprised of bright pink camouflage netting, helium balloons, and stationery bikes, the “camovapor” climate system (as the designers like to call it) will float over the barge with the interactive help of visitors who can generate power by pedaling the bikes that will inflate additional weather balloons, transforming water to vapor. As the vapor condenses on the pink nets, the 3D perforations will hold the water which then, combined with the natural harbor breeze, will create a cool area and an “interactive atmospheric phenomenon.”

Looks like a trip to Boston that fall will be in order.

via Architects Newspaper

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Ablaze-sentimento (s)travolgente

Ingo Maurer_Ablaze_Sentiment(s)travolgenteArchitetturaMutante_InterniLast month in Milan, as part of the Architettura Mutante exhibit by Interni magazine, lighting designer Ingo Maurer along with Axel Schmid created the fiery installation: ablaze – sentimento (s)travolgente (with the ‘s’ it means ‘contorted/twisted emotion’; without the ‘s’ it’s ‘overwhelming emotion’.)

Fire elicits extreme emotions, ranging from fear to amazement at its beauty and power. Here, the distorted house, stabilized by a rope, is lit up inside in an intense red with a floating pendulum slowly moving over a glowing green opening in the floor. The interior contrasts dramatically with the black, rough exterior. Click on images for better view.

You can see it in action in the video below:

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Synapse by Francisco Gomez Paz

Synapse Modular Lights_Luceplan_Francisco Gomez PazOn the eve of ICFF here in NYC I’d like to keep with the industrial design theme and present Synapse a modular lighting system by Francisco Gomez Paz, an Argentinean designer who lives in Milan. I don’t know whether these lamps will be at ICFF but if so, I certainly look forward to seeing them live. I think they’re beautiful. I can imagine these looking just as great in a private home as in a public space, whether office, hotel lobby, or store.

Each module is a smart cell that when combined with other smart cells creates illuminated surfaces of any size and composition. The use of advanced RGB LED technology allows the light to be white or colored. And the fact that they can be configured as desired, whether used as a single piece or a whole wall-ful makes each one a bit unique, no?

Manufactured and distributed by Luceplan.

via 90mas10

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BMW Guggenheim Lab

BMW Guggenheim Lab NYCAccording to their site, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, coming to NYC this August, is part urban think tank, part community center, part gathering space. At the border of East Village and Lower East Side, 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues will be the site of the first Lab. They are bringing together a group of very talented people from varied fields to see new ideas, experiments and solutions for the city. To explore the potential between private and public comfort. A platform for positive interaction that welcomes in the public to participate and be a part of the forum.

The project starts in NYC with the first cycle’s theme, Confronting Comfort, and will be traveling to Berlin and then Asia, with an exhibit at the end of the first cycle scheduled for the Guggenheim in 2013. The BMW Guggenheim Lab will open on August 3, 2011 and run through October 16th before moving on to Europe. Free to all. Visit their site for more information.

via Breger via Inhabitat

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NYC Art Installation Lobbies

NYC Lobbies with Art InstallationsOne of the nice aspects of NYC is that there are always new, or not-so-new, things to discover. Among them, are the various art installations in many an office building lobby. Some are permanent, some rotate. Some are by famous artists and others, less famous. All, when in the neighborhood, are worth popping in to see. Here is a sampling:

From top to bottom, row by row:
James Turrell; 3-dimensional Light sculpture; CIT Group Building, 42nd and 5th Avenue; KPF Architects.

Video Walls at IAC Building. World’s largest hi-resolution video wall, 120 ft by 11ft high. Alternating usage; West Chelsea; Gehry Partners Architect

Jenny Holzer; A continuous stream of prose and poetry about the history of New York City scrolls across glowing, 65-ft-wide, 14-ft-high wall; 7 World Trade Center; 250 Greenwich St; SOM Architects

Interactive Wall at Sloan-Kettering; the large lobby wall has a perforated appearance that transitions from regular on the front plane to apparently random on the back plane. The openings are determined by an array of eye-level viewpoints that cluster in programmatic hot spots throughout the lobby; 1275 York Ave.: LTL Architects

Rotating Art Installations in the Lever House lobby. A few examples shown (l to r): most recently Rachel Feinstein. Also Barbara Kruger, Tara Donovan. You can see other past exhibits here. SOM Architects.

Moveable Type by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, is a digital installation that reflects the movement of news in the New York Times building lobby. It pulls sentences and phrases from the newspaper’s databases, projects them onto a grid of small screens, and orchestrates the material into a series of changing sequences. Renzo Piano Architect.

Photo credits: MSK Wall – Halkin Photography; Moveable Type – Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
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Festival of Ideas for the New City

The Festival of Ideas for the New CityWe previously posted about the upcoming Festival of Ideas for the New City, here in NYC, from May 4-8, 2011, but now there seems to be much more information. The Festival is a “major new collaborative intitiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to effect change… It will harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place in multiple venues Downtown and is organized around three central programs: a conference of symposia; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery; and over one hundred independent projects and public events.” A small sampling of events and projects are pictured above (click image to see larger.)

Visit the Festival site for complete information on the conference, projects and street festival as well as for tickets.

via TheScout

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Open House 2011: Droog

Open House 2011_DroogDespite the heavy downpour of rain yesterday morning, upon my arrival at the Open House symposium I was greeted by a full house of black and gray-clad architects and designers. Open House is a concept/experiment/art installation by Droog and led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to encourage suburban homeowners to transform a portion of their homes into service-providing, collaboratively-minded, income-generating establishments.

The morning talks were very interesting and critical to understanding the afternoon’s Levittown tour of installations. Highlights of the symposium included: Renny Ramakers (co-founder of Droog) who laid out the concept and how it came to be; Charles Renfro (partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro) with a humorous (yet serious) presentation on finding one’s inner service provider; and Roo Rodgers (serial entrepreneur and director of Redscout Ventures) spoke about the rise of collaborative consumption and its success in models such as Zipcar, all tying into the Open House theme.

Two large buses took us out to Levittown, NY, where we met up with four minivans that circulated between the eight Open Houses. All the installations had interesting aspects and were cleverly executed, but the one I was most impressed by (design-wise) was Open House #2: Block Pantry by Janette Kim and Erik Carver with Gabriel Fries-Briggs; CNC cut in Brooklyn by Kontraptioneering. A large foam contraption, through which trays of mac ‘n’ cheese and meatloaf were served, had been attached to the exterior of the house around the kitchen window on a track that permitted the entire construction to be wheeled across the front of the house out to the lawn for an outdoor or self service option. Incredibly clever.

Open House #1: House Dress by L.E.FT (Makram El Kadi & Ziad Jamaleddine) inspired by the 1950s house dress made an impact as well, circling the perimeter of its house.

All of the houses and their services were fun to see, and though I’m not sure this notion will catch on right away, it does get the wheels turning.

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Daniel Arsham: Pixel Clouds

Daniel Arsham Cloud SculpturesInspired by photos of clouds that he took with his iPhone and blew up until pixelated, Brooklyn based artist Daniel Arsham used a total of 21,000 ping pong balls (hand-dipped in paint) to recreate the different shades of pixelated color and constructed these 10 to 15 ft cloud sculptures. Daniel Arsham is co-founder of Snarkitecture and is presently finishing up his Dig installation in New York City.

via fubiz

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Yotel

Yotel Pods and HotelI’ve been intrigued by Yotel since my first sighting two years ago in the Amsterdam airport. Fast forward to last weekend when I noticed a new Yotel façade with its 70s-style signage near Times Square, here in NYC. Turns out Yotel has three cabin-style airport hotels with cabins ranging in size from 75 sq.ft to 108 sq.ft and each comes equipped with wireless internet, flatscreen tv, fold-out desk, en-suite bathroom with shower and 24-hour room service. Oh, and a bed! All for about $50 for the first 4 hours and $12/hr for each additional hour for a standard cabin. In addition to the one in Amsterdam, there is one at Gatwick and Heathrow airports, in London.

The NYC Yotel is the first non-airport site, with larger “cabins” at 170 sq.ft and $149 per night. There will be an airport-style self check-in and a robot (Yobot) to store left luggage. Here’s a video tour:

You can learn more at Yotel’s site.

via Spot Cool Stuff

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DNA Lighting by Karim Rashid

DNA Lighting_Karim Rashid for SlideThis contemporary lighting fixture designed by Karim Rashid for Italian lighting/furniture manufacturer SLIDE, has been dubbed DNA lighting due to the aforementioned’s similar twisty structure. All illuminated with LED technology, DNA comes in modular pieces that can be interlaced to create different effects in various colors.

SLIDE also manufactures Karim Rashid’s Koncord stools (bottom right photo) that would go very nicely with the color scheme in the outdoor lighting shots.

via Contemporist