September 19, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Chrome Hotel in Kolkatta, India

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Continuing with Sanjay Puri Architects (I told you I liked their work), the Chrome Hotel in Kolkatta, India looks like a hotel I’d enjoy checking out if I were to be in Kolkatta one day. The circular cutout windows in the skin are arranged in a graphic pattern and are deliberately created in an opaque glass to allow the interior public spaces to have an ambiance of their own, allowing only the light to come through and not the view. In addition, the windows are shaded by concrete fins that surround them which offers privacy as well as acting as a heat barrier, reducing the amount of air conditioning necessary to cool the hotel by a quarter.

The hotel was designed so that each space has its own distinct identity: the sculpted free flowing entrance lobby, the abstract design of the restaurant, a variety of room designs and the fluid shape of the bar offer the guest a series of experiences. Personally, they had me at polka-dotted façade.

September 19, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Triose: Sanjay Puri Architects

Sanjay Puri Architects in India were recently shortlisted for the LEAF Awards 2011 on their Triose building in Lonavala, India.

This dramatically angled, folded concrete skin structure houses a few retail shops, a food court, two restaurants, a large bar and an entertainment gaming area. The building is comprised of three volumes that jut out from the core circulation section that interconnects them. There are several trapezoidal windows, including the large balcony area that cantilevers out offering an impressive view from one of the restaurants housed in that section. In fact, the sculptural quality of the building integrates the external surroundings seamlessly with its interiors throughout the edifice.

It’s well worth checking out the rest of Sanjay Puri’s work. Very interesting architecture that pushes boundaries. You can visit their site here.

via e-architect

September 16, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

“Social Media” in Chelsea

Tonight, as the cold air blew into town (what’s up with that, anyway?) so too did the crowds into Chelsea. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Chelsea so crowded. Part of the attraction was the opening of David Byrne’s installation, Tight Spot, the huge inflated globe squeezed in under the High Line. Byrne was there himself, looking tan and chipper, while we listened to his very deep, bass, pre-recorded distorted vocal sounds emanating from the globe.

Next door in the Pace gallery itself, was the opening of the show Social Media. Among the interesting pieces (in all honestly, it was a little too crowded to appreciate in its entirety) I really enjoyed Christopher Baker’s Murmur Study and Penelope Umbrico’s Sideways TVs.

The Murmur Study is instantly engaging and fun with all its ticker-tape spewing live Twitter status updates from twenty thermal printers attached to the gallery walls.

Sideways TVs by Penelope Umbrico made me chuckle. A large collection of miniature photos nicely hung separated from the wall and all displaying a collection of outdated TV monitors. Impressive how those things have trimmed down in the past few years.

There is plenty more to see at the Pace show and all the other galleries as well. Looks like the fall is here to stay and, just like that, another season of Chelsea art shows has begun.

Tight Spot will be on exhibit through October 1st, and Social Media runs through October 15th.

Top photo: Mustafah Abdulaziz for The Wall Street Journal

September 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Sena Arcak: Scale Room

I had to smile when I came across Sena Arcak’s installation Scale Room/These Scales are Correct. I would imagine this would be many people’s worst nightmare.

The Istanbul based artist installed eighty-four bathroom scales on the floor of a 6-meter square room. The scales act as tiles making up the floor. Love it.

From the artist:
The idea of producing this project emerged as a reaction to the societal pressure that is induced by a constant flow of images of thin women in print and digital media. But more than that, I feel much more troubled by the competitive and judgmental pressure imposed on each other by women.

Also part of the Scale Series is Just, only (three bottom photos) displaying a pair of armless hands pressing down on a scale.

Photos courtesy of Sena Arcak.

September 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Ardan Özmenoglu: Post-it Art

In recent years, there has been quite a bit of Post-it based art, taking advantage of its pixel-quality square shape. Turkish artist Ardan Ozmenoglu’s Post-it art seizes upon a different quality of the note: the transient nature, such as curling or falling over time as well as the disposable aspect. Whether using a grid of Post-its as her canvas, or printing on each individual Post-it and overlapping them en masse, Ozmenoglu counts on the changing quality of these notes as part of the work, creating an interesting result.

From the artist:
… I subject images to reproduction on that most ubiquitous yet disposable of modern conveniences, the Post-it. Social commentary enters into the experience as the images eventually curl and fall away like so many autumn leaves.

Check out more of her work here.

September 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Just Fold It by Kutarq

Kutarq, a multidisciplinary firm led by Jordi López Aguiló in Valencia, Spain, has just come out with an interesting design for a room divider. “Just Fold It” is flexible, easy to assemble and disassemble, and the individual models fold compactly making them convenient to store or transport. The length of the screen can be adjusted by adding or subtracting the number of modules. Perforations on the surface increase stability by counteracting wind resistance in addition to varying the porosity which creates a nice visual effect that varies depending on the angle and distance from which it is viewed.

Be sure to check out the rest of Kutarq’s products and projects on their site.

September 13, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Chus Garcia-Fraile: Protected Zones

More work from Chus Garcia-Fraile (see previous post). Protected Zone Sea and Protected Zone. Both are photo stills and videos, and both are eerily surreal.You can see the video of the bottom image, Protected Zone, here.

September 12, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

University of Sistan & Baluchestan Restaurant

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Located in Zahedan, Iran, as part of the Sistan & Baluchestan University, this restaurant, designed by Lida Almassian and Shahin Heidari of New Wave Architecture, has a dramatic folded skin that works beautifully sitting over the water. By breaking the mass into two volumes, the architects were able to make the building communicate nicely with the surrounding landscape.

Consisting of two dining halls, each seating 400 people, deliberately separating the two genders. The total built area is 3000 sq. meters. The building was originally designed in 2006 but was just completed in 2010.

via e-architect

September 9, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Frank Kunert: Small Worlds

German photographer Frank Kunert creates intricate, flawlessly detailed miniature models, full of humor and satire, and then photographs them. I’ve come across one or two of these photos before, but visiting Kunert’s website to see his extensive collection was a real treat. I felt myself grinning stupidly at the computer screen.

It’s too bad these can’t be enlarged to see more of the detail. Pretty incredible work. For one more week you can see a couple of Frank Kunert’s photographs live at the Museum of Art and Design as part of the Otherworldly exhibit.

via MAD

September 8, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Chus Garcia-Fraile: Barcode

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Chus Garcia-Fraile lives and works in Madrid, Spain. She works in all mediums, fluctuating between photography, drawing, sculpture, video and installation.

Barcode is an oversized sculpture that she created as part of the International Festival of Bennicassim — a music festival on the eastern coast of Spain, north of Valencia — a few years back. Nice!

Photos from fiberfib’s flickr

September 8, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Nada Sehnaoui: Bringing Order to Chaos

Beirut-based artist Nada Sehnaoui creates installations that deal with issues of war, history and identity. In her installation Haven’t 15 Years of Hiding in the Toilets Been Enough?, Sehnaoui installed 600 toilets in downtown Beirut in memory of the 15-year long Lebanese war, a time when people used to hide from bombs and shrapnel in the bathrooms. She invited residents of the city to sit on the toilets, rest their feet and contemplate what had taken place.

In This Too Shall Pass (a prayer), Sehnaoui positions a large number of rolling pins in a circle, almost as if holding hands and united in prayer against the constant threat of war. And in Plastic Memory Containers, Nada Sehnaoui, surprised by the strong connection people felt with their 6000-year old history yet complete alienation from the more recent history of the civil war, she filled 100 plastic buckets with 3000 crumpled up pieces of paper with the question “How meaningful is it to have a 6000-year old history when we have no memory of our recent past?”

via moversnshakers

September 7, 2011 by collabcubed - 16 Comments

EARonic iPhone Cases

We are very (no, really, VERY) excited to announce the launch of our first CollabCubed production: EARonic iPhone cases. Designed by Daniela Gilsanz – a cube root of CollabCubed – the EARonic iPhone cases are EARefutably EAResistible. Available in our new shop, in five different styles, it’s your chance to don that multi-pierced ear you’ve been wanting, or maybe just the opposite.

Daniela first came up with the idea last fall when applying to art schools. She was getting a portfolio together and while sketching some ears in her sketchbook (one of the prompts from a school) the initial EARonic mockup and portfolio piece came to be. (See spread with sketches second from top.)

Since then, we’ve improved on the original concept, photographed many an ear, and produced the actual phone cases. So, go take a look at our new shop and check them out for yourself.

UPDATE: We are giving away three EARonic iPhone 4 Cases. To enter, just like us on our facebook page by September 27th. We will announce the winners on our facebook page on Wednesday, September 28th.

UPDATE on November 27th: Starting today, shipping is free within the U.S. for standard first class mail and $5 for international shipping via USPS air mail.

September 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Urban Daddy Cycling Classic

This looks like it must have been a lot of fun. As part of the E2NY Festival this summer in the Hamptons, Red Paper Heart – a collective of artists and coders who make music videos, installations and games by combining interactivity and animation –was asked to create an installation for UrbanDaddy. They proposed a head-to-head bike race with a design focus, mapping forests, foxbears and orbs to the speed of the bikes, giving the rider a sense of their speed. The rides lasted 60 seconds. The faster the cyclist the farther they got unlocking multiple environments. Some even made it to space.

Here’s a video worth checking out for a better sense of the event as well as the added treat of listening to a Collabcubed favorite: Ed Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros’ song “Home”.

I think they should implement something like this in my spin classes…

via TagoArtwork

September 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Joshua Stern: Spitball Portraits

To see him, you wouldn’t think Joshua Stern to be the spitball-throwing type, and you’d probably be right. He is, however, a spitball-creating type who, instead of firing spitballs at others, chooses to make the tiny objects into sculptures of heads. He then proceeds to photograph them and magnify these miniature spitball sculptures onto 4 x 6ft. prints, or a least that’s what the artist did for his solo exhibit at Parker’s Box in Williamsburg, Brooklyn titled Straw Economy. “Magnifying the grandness of the insignificant” seems to be a theme in Stern’s work with some of its significance relating to art market values today.

You can see more of Joshua Stern’s work here and here.

September 5, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Ahmed Mater: Medicine and Art

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Ahmed Mater is a Saudi artist and M.D. who was born and raised in an Aseeri village which, unlike much of the rest of Saudi Arabia, retained its traditional architecture and culture. When his family moved to Abha, the regional capital and a modern Saudi city, he began to question the values of his traditional and conservative upbringing. The turmoil that he experienced “influenced and gave birth to new experiments” in his art.

From top to bottom: The Evolution of Man (silkscreened prints on lightboxes); Antenna series (neon tubes); Cowboy Code (plastic gun caps); Magnetism (UV Curved Virtu Print on White Aluminium)

Mater’s exhibit at the LACMA ends today and his next exhibit is at the British Museum in London starting at the end of January 2012 running through April. CORRECTION: Some of Ahmed Mater’s work was and will be included in the above exhibits, but these are not solo shows.

You can see more of his work on his site, blog, and flickr.

September 2, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Jan Henrik Hansen: Music Materialization

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Swiss artist and architect Jan Henrik Hansen has been transforming music into space with his unique digital technique for the past 12 years. It’s not completely clear to me what that exactly means, but the results are singular and impressive. Working with all types of materials ranging from metal to wood to plastic and glass, Hansen creates both spectacular sculptures as well as architectural collaborations that include structural façades, window screens, and interior sculptural walls. He even has a proposal for a Vertical Park based on the USA National Anthem for New York City.

Yes, so back to the music aspect: all these works and structures are based on individual pieces of music from Bach Fugues to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”.

From the artist’s site:
“…His music sculptures relate to their musical source on a subjective as well as on an objective level, dealing with the wide spectrum of music, from single sounds to whole arrangements.”

I would be interested to understand how the transformation from music to artwork takes place, but even without that understanding Jan Henrik Hansen’s work is amazing enough to stand on its own.

August 31, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Punched Sofa

Here’s a very fun couch for the right room. The Punched Sofa designed by Serbian-born and Canadian-based designer Danilo Cvjetkovic, is an “interactive” sofa. The bendable plastic bars are covered with soft foam and colorful fabric (they remind me of those pool noodles) and get inserted into the punched holes of the fiberglass shell base functioning as the backrests. Different heights and angles are possible and adjustable by the user. Manufactured by Furnituredesignmarket.com in Norway.

via designspotter

August 31, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Blurry Photo Pencil Drawings

I first saw Paul Chiappe’s amazing pencil drawings a few months back at VoltaNY and was reminded yesterday when I was looking through my iPhoto gallery for something else and spotted photos I had taken of his work that day.

At first glance, I thought I was looking at a wall of blurred old yearbook photos, which in itself held some interest, but when I realized that these were in fact pencil drawings, well, I was completely awestruck. I had such a hard time believing it that I kept asking the gallery representative if she was sure that they were all pencil drawings. Surely some were photoshopped images. Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe I had misunderstood. No. These small-sized (the largest are postcard size), hyper-realistic portraits and group photos are all drawn by hand by artist Paul Chiappe of Edinburgh, Scotland. It would be impressive enough if these were in focus, but to be able to render the blurred aspect takes it to the next level.

You can see more of Chiappe’s incredible work on his site and at Madder139.

Click to enlarge

Top photo: Mustafah Abdulaziz for The Wall Street Journal

Photos courtesy of Sena Arcak.

From the artist: … I subject images to reproduction on that most ubiquitous yet disposable of modern conveniences, the Post-it. Social commentary enters into the experience as the images eventually curl and fall away like so many autumn leaves.

Click to enlarge.

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From top to bottom: The Evolution of Man (silkscreened prints on lightboxes); Antenna series (neon tubes); Cowboy Code (plastic gun caps); Magnetism (UV Curved Virtu Print on White Aluminium)

Click to enlarge.

From the artist’s site: “…His music sculptures relate to their musical source on a subjective as well as on an objective level, dealing with the wide spectrum of music, from single sounds to whole arrangements.”

From the artist:
… I subject images to reproduction on that most ubiquitous yet disposable of modern conveniences, the Post-it. Social commentary enters into the experience as the images eventually curl and fall away like so many autumn leaves.

From the artist’s site:
“…His music sculptures relate to their musical source on a subjective as well as on an objective level, dealing with the wide spectrum of music, from single sounds to whole arrangements.”