October 17, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

The Comedy Carpet in Blackpool

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The Comedy Carpet in Blackpool – a seaside resort town in the Northwest of England – is a typographic celebration of comedy in a grand way. The 2,200 sq. meter installation contains over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete, making it virtually impossible not to tip toe through the type.

A super-sized homage to those who have made the nation laugh, as well as to wood type, the amazing sculpture, that will also act as a stage, was designed by Gordon Young with typography by Why Not Associates (both previously mentioned in Architypeture I) and inspired by old theater posters and playbills. The jokes span a full range including one-liners, catchphrases, gags and sketches, with something for everyone’s sense of humor…or not.

via typetoken

October 17, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Matthew Parker: Event Installations

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Matthew Parker Events is a boutique design studio from Seattle, WA that produces custom event decor, paper art, and prop styling. Most recently, Parker’s design for the Design*Sponge Book Tour backdrop has been popping up on various design blogs, but he’s got other interesting work as well, that ranges from window displays to event installations to a custom wedding altar.

Using common elements such as paper and cardboard in combination with influences that include typography, tessellation origami, pop art and the future, Matthew Parker creates original handmade decor.

Top two photos: Paper airplane installation at the EMP for an Artsfund event. Photos by Jena Lacomis Garcia.

Other photos: Coffee filter sculpture/installation in collaboration with Sam Trout. Photos by Kip Beelman.

October 15, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Ariane Roesch: Electroluminescent

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Originally from Germany, artist Ariane Roesch currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Interested in how we situate ourselves in today’s mechanized society, Roesch uses color, light, and textiles to create a sensory experience that often questions both physical and psychological structures; how people communicate and behave as much as the structures that are a part of their everyday. Sustainability is turned inward, addressing the viewer, rather than examining the external.

Top four photos: Take the Path of Least Resistance, installation. An investigation that takes shape as series of drawings and a light installation. The heating coil shape is transformed into a diving board for visual analysis of what it means to take the path of least resistance and its social implications.

Bottom four photos: More Heat, installation. Part of The Kenmore, a project at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston.

If you’re in Houston, Texas next week, be sure to visit Ariane Roesch’s site-specific installation Going Undercover at the TX Contemporary Fair. If you’re anywhere else, you might want to visit her site and see the rest of her work.

October 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

London 2012 Shooting Venue: Woolwich

Magma Architecture, 2012 Olympics, Royal Artillery Barracks, collabcubed

Architect’s rendering

I’m not one to understand the appeal of shooting, as a sport or otherwise, but the design of the new London 2012 Shooting Venue at the Woolwich Royal Artillery Barracks definitely piqued my interest. Designed by German studio Magma Architecture, the three enclosures are clad in a fun and colorful 18,000 sq m phthalate-free pvc membrane. The bright colored openings contrast nicely against the white in addition to providing tension, ventilation and light.

The exteriors are just about completed, with the installation of seating and back-of-house facilities to come shortly. The venue will be dismantled immediately after the Games.

All images courtesy of the ODA.

via World Architecture

October 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Liam Gillick: Type, Color & Light …Trifecta!

Yes siree, three of my favorite elements all combined by one artist: Liam Gillick. The British artist is based both in London and New York. He has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork, and the artwork itself often incorporates typography. In addition to Gillick‘s installations, he has collaborated with architects on the façades and interiors of many buildings including the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver, Canada (see our Architypeture II post) and the Marsham Street Home Office in London.

Gillick’s installations are at once minimalist, conceptual and ironic. They are often seen as abstract representations of the various social projects that he participates in. Definitely would love to see one of these in person.

via artnet

October 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Barbara Licha: Wire Figures

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Polish artist Barbara Licha, based in Australia, is interested in the complexity of the human condition and explores parallels between actual people and the ones in her imagination. I particularly like her wire figure sculptures with their gestures in their tangled worlds or boxes. In her work, Licha tries to convey what she sees inside people: their wishes, dreams and desires.

You can see more of Licha’s work here and here.

via Brenda May Gallery

October 13, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Rebecca Baumann: Automated Colour Field

I love this installation by Australian artist Rebecca Baumann. Automated Colour Field, originally commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, is made up of 100 flip-clocks, laser cut colored paper, and batteries (a later version replaced the over 100 batteries with over 100 power regulating circuit boards designed by Cake Industries.) Such a clever and simple concept beautifully executed. Who wouldn’t want one of these in their home?

You can see the piece in action in the video above and you can see it being installed in the video below.

Photos by Andrew Curtis, courtesy of the artist. Circuit Board photo courtesy of Cake.

via acca

October 13, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Jaume Secondary School: Ramón Esteve

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When I started middle school, one of the things I was most excited about were the rows of colorful lockers that alternated between yellow, red and orange. I mean, the concept of just having a locker was pretty exciting too, but the bright colors that lined the walls were part of the appeal.

The Jaume Secondary School in Ontinyent, Valencia, Spain takes the color concept way beyond. Designed ever-so-smartly by Ramón Esteve Architects (Estudio de Arquitectura), what could have been a rather straightforward high school is lively and welcoming by contrasting the white, prefabricated concrete panels of the exterior with colored glass and tiles, as well as paint. That combined with the use of light, both natural and artificial, enhance the building scheme and bring relief, brightness and dynamism to the interiors and exteriors.

All four buildings that complete the complex, creating outdoor spaces including the sports ground, garden and parking, enclosing them with the architecture and working harmoniously. The solid volumes are ventilated and lighted through the cut-out openings with different color tiles in each.

Definitely a school I would have enjoyed attending, based on the look anyway.

Photos by Xavi Mollá, courtesy of Ramón Esteve and The Archhive.

via the archhive

October 12, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Yvette Cohen: Sculptural Paintings

New York City based artist Yvette Cohen was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Paris and Montreal. In her art, Cohen seeks to create a balance of calm and intrigue. Her Ara Pacis Series (from the Latin meaning ‘altar to peace’) consists of richly colored oil paintings on shaped canvases with wood dowels. They appear three-dimensional, but in reality mount flat to the wall and sometimes floor. It’s amazing how the illusion of depth is created through her use of geometric shapes and painting technique.

Groupings of two, three or more of these oil paintings seemingly defy gravity and appear to exist in a boundless space, activating entire walls.

Hence the name of Cohen’s upcoming exhibit in NYC: Defying Gravity.

Defying Gravity: Sculptural Paintings will be shown at Cassina in Soho (151 Wooster Street) from November 8 to December 20, 2011. If you can’t make it to the exhibit, be sure to check out the rest of Yvette Cohen’s work on her website.

October 12, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Molly Hunker & Gregory Corso: Sports

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Designers Molly Hunker and Gregory Corso – whose talents range from interior and installation design to products and graphics – started their own design collaborative in 2010 called SPORTS. They believe in design and its ability to easily and immediately change a person’s spatial and visual experience of a place.

Within the past year they have put that belief into action with two very cool installations in L.A. California: Stay Down Champion, Stay Down and Life Will Kill You. Stay Down Champion, Stay Down (photos at top) was installed at the Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery. Focusing on the ground plane, the piece was comprised of terracotta tiles creating a flowing and colorful interior landscape with bulging areas elevated by transparent acrylic supports highlighted by vibrantly colored lighting.

The earlier installation (bottom images) Life Will Kill You was installed temporarily at the Revolve Clothing showroom in West Hollywood. The cloud-like piece was created using over 100,000 zip ties with the exterior surface composed of longer white zip ties, and the interior levels of shorter colored ones, resulting in a richly textured effect.

Photos by Justin Harris

October 11, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Aldo Bakker: Beautiful Tableware

I have admired Dutch designer Aldo Bakker’s beautiful tableware for years and recently came across his site to discover some newer designs. They are all so lovely. If I had one, I’d probably keep it out all the time as a sculptural piece more than a serving one.

October 11, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Aaron De La Cruz

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Illustrator, street artist, graffiti artist, designer Aaron De La Cruz started drawing on everything, including the walls of his bedroom, from a very young age. Much of his street art appears in California, from L.A. to San Francisco. His work, “though minimal and direct at first, tends to overcome barriers of separation and freely steps in and out of the realms of design, graffiti, and illustration.”

Next Saturday, October 15th, 2011, De La Cruz will be showing past, present, and future work at his exhibit Long Walk Home at Loft in Space in Honolulu. Included in the exhibit will be a room created to look like his childhood bedroom… the one where he drew on the walls.

via Arktip

October 10, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Anekit Bhagwat: The Drum House

The House with Drum or Drum House designed by Anekit Prabhakar B. Bhagwat is a weekend residence on the outskirts of Ahmedebad in Gujurat, India. Composed of three main sections – the drum, the veranda and the stockade – each space was sited with respect to the larger landscape of the project. Brick was used innovatively, with specially made extra flat styles and different sizes, to create the ‘vault’ that is the main living area. The veranda includes a glass dining pavilion at one end that faces the gardens and the stockade houses two rooms and a pool at the back. Other facilities include a projection room, a shaded deck, a water tank with lilies, and an India garden with an elevated trampoline. Definitely lots to keep a person busy for the weekend.

October 10, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Cecilia Vissers: Minimalist Sculpture

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Dutch sculptor Cecilia Vissers’ minimalist steel and aluminum flat sculptures are inspired by the Scottish and Irish landscapes.

From the artist:
I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.

From top to bottom: Orange Tide III, aluminum; Very Likely L, two-part, aluminum; Silent Light, two-part, aluminum; Very Likely I, two-part, aluminum; Medardus, aluminum; Blacksod Bay, steel; Follow the River, steel.

Cecilia Vissers’ work will be on exhibit as part of a group show at Acquire Space in London from November 13-27, 2011 and in a solo show at Masters & Pelavin Gallery in New York, February 23 to April 5, 2012. If you can’t make either of those you can always visit her website to see more of her work.

October 7, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

EARonics: Redux

Thinking of getting the new iPhone 4S next week? Maybe upgrading to the iPhone 4G instead? This could be the perfect time to get yourself a new EARonic iPhone 4 Case. Just sayin’…

We’ve restocked, so visit our CollabCubed Shop and pick the one that makes you chuckle the most.

October 7, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Magic Carpet: Sarah Crowley & David Brooks

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Australian architect Sarah Crowley, whose jewelry we posted about previously, joined forces with David Brooks on their winning entry for Austral Bricks’ Architectural Ideas Competition. The design challenge was to “design an experiential element for an urban space that reflects the future of brick.” Crowley and Brooks’ solution: a magic carpet installation made of bricks.

The Magic Carpet forms an undulating terrain providing ergonomic curves that serve as seating and lounging spaces, at the same time showcasing the extensive color range and texture of clay brick products.

Currently, it looks like the Magic Carpet will become a reality in the Docklands, Melbourne, Australia. Fun idea!

October 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Nils and Sven Völker: Captured

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If you’ve ever popped some Jiffy Pop on the stove, it’s likely that that experience will come to mind while viewing Nils and Sven Völker’s recent installation, Captured: An Homage to Light and Air presented at MADE Space in Berlin.

The German brothers – Sven a graphic designer and Nils a machine artist (see our previous post) – collaborated by combining four walls with 304 framed graphic pages surrounding a field of 252 inflatable silver cushion-like air bags. The bags were programmed by Nils Völker to create sequences according to chapters of his brother’s “books on wall”. The inflating and deflating of the bags, along with the colored lighting system, create a very dramatic and intensified effect.

You can watch it in action below.

October 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Ariana Page Russell: Skin Art

Em pointed me to Ariana Page Russell‘s work a couple of months back and now I see that the Brooklyn-based artist is having a show at MagnanMetz Gallery, here in NYC, at the end of the month. Russell has dermatographia, a condition in which her immune system exhibits hypersensitivity through the skin, causing painless, temporary welts that emerge when lightly scratched. She exploits this condition in her artwork by creating patterns on different parts of her body and photographing them as the skin becomes irritated and swells. A sort of skin tattoo. She has also created different wallpaper patterns using c-prints of her skin in all its irritated shades.

From the gallery’s site:
Russell’s recent work continues to explore the possibilities of flesh, using her skin as both source material and an entry to go deeper into the body and its emotions. Images of Russell’s abdomen appear throughout the exhibit: covering the gallery window; in a photograph of her torso blanketed in triangular welts resembling raised sails; and as the temporary tattoo mask that she manipulates over her face in the video, Blouse. In this piece, she exhales sharply into the mask to produce a fleeting, gauzy window. A sudden inhale collapses the window to create a skin-tight barrier with each breath. Blouse comes to a close as Russell removes the tattoo, her unadorned face remaining interrogative but naked of the revelatory mask.

Maybe not for everyone, but definitely pretty unique.

Ariana Page Russell’s exhibit titled Blouse opens at MagnanMetz on October 21st and runs through November 19, 2011.

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Top two photos: Paper airplane installation at the EMP for an Artsfund event. Photos by Jena Lacomis Garcia.

Other photos: Coffee filter sculpture/installation in collaboration with Sam Trout. Photos by Kip Beelman.

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Bottom four photos: More Heat, installation. Part of The Kenmore, a project at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston.

All images courtesy of the ODA.

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Photos by Andrew Curtis, courtesy of the artist. Circuit Board photo courtesy of Cake.

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Photos by Xavi Mollá, courtesy of Ramón Esteve and The Archhive.

Groupings of two, three or more of these oil paintings seemingly defy gravity and appear to exist in a boundless space, activating entire walls.

Click to enlarge

Photos by Justin Harris

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Photos ©Edmund Sumner via View and Prabhakar B. Bhagwat

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From the artist: I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.

From top to bottom: Orange Tide III, aluminum; Very Likely L, two-part, aluminum; Silent Light, two-part, aluminum; Very Likely I, two-part, aluminum; Medardus, aluminum; Blacksod Bay, steel; Follow the River, steel.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge.

From the artist:
I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.