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.
PSLAB: Mybar
Lebanese design firm PSLAB designed the lighting concept and fixtures for HGroup Architects on the restaurant/bar project MyBar in downtown Beirut.
Three distinct areas needed to be addressed: the long entrance corridor; the bar; and the dining area. The challenge was to provide a trendy and edgy atmosphere for the evening crowd while keeping it sophisticated to avoid alienating the business professionals who work in the same building and have lunch there.
All the lighting and decor is quite striking, especially the oddly shaped hanging lights. I’d say they succeeded in mixing trendy and sophisticated.
Baguettes to Bentleys: Vending Machines
This week as part of Fashion Week here in NYC, the Hudson Hotel’s already impressive, over-sized Semi-Automatic vending machine has been stocked with products from up and coming designers. Some of these include: Alice Ritter, Grey Ant, Jolibe (rabbit fur jacket), Public School (wool ties), Sang A (python clutch), and Ruby Kobo (Diamond bracelet). This is just one of many in a growing trend of nontraditional vending machines. The Mondrian Hotel in Miami has had their purple-illuminated machine for a couple of years, offering everything from sundries to extreme luxury items including a Bentley.
Recently the three of us (plus cousin Moni) were on the The Standard Hotel’s rooftop (Le Bain) checking out the view as well as the waterbed poofs and jacuzzis, when we noticed a vending machine selling bathing suits on our way out.
In Paris, French baker, Jean-Louise Hecht invented and installed a 24-hour baguette dispensing vending machine this past summer. The loaves are partially precooked and finish baking after the customer makes their selection.
Two summers ago on a trip to Barcelona, we happened upon the largest vending machine we had ever seen right in a subway station next to the turnstiles. It looked like the refrigerated section of a deli built right into the station wall.
And in Nanjing, China, a crab-selling vending machine has been installed with much success, selling live crabs in specially patented plastic cases!
Photo credits: top two Hudson Hotel; Mondrian Hotel; Baguette machine photos: Michael Euler, AP. Crab photos: screen shots from Hood News Network.
University of Sistan & Baluchestan Restaurant
Click to enlarge.
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
Marcin Faber: Magnetica Type
Polish designer and coder Marcin Faber wrote some code in Processing – using approximately 10,000 particles – to create a visual approximation of what the lines of a magnetic field would look like if you used magnets in the shape of letters instead of a typical magnetic bar. Voila! Magnetica.
via typetoken
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
Chus Garcia-Fraile: Barcode
Click to enlarge
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
Cuarto Pensante: Interior Design
Spanish architects Cuarto Pensante like to say (at least on their website) that they are “creators of spaces and emotions.” Seems to be especially true in their design for the offices of Hidrosalud, a water treatment company in Spain. Everything about the space, from the white walls tinted blue by the winding recessed lights, to the shapes and curves of the walls, has a very flow-y, water-like feel. In addition, some of the glass walls/windows utilize an Xray lighting system that, when off, allows the glass to be transparent and, when the electric current is on, makes the glass opaque. (Very Bar89-bathroom.)
You can see more of Cuarto Pensante’s projects on their site.
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
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.
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
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.
Bosphorus Bridge Nightly Light Show
When we were in Istanbul last month we spotted the Bosphorus Bridge on multiple occasions, usually during the day. One night, however, we passed and witnessed a sort of LED light show with changing colors and animation. We wondered if it was a Ramadan-related occasion or some other special event, but as it turns out it’s more of a we-just-like-our-bridge nightly event.
Built in 1973 and linking Europe to Asia, the 1500 meter bridge has been illuminated at night since 2007. It’s a pretty impressive show. Watch it in action in the video below. The light show begins midway into the video.
Photos: Wikipedia and Stockholm Lighting
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.
Jan Henrik Hansen: Music Materialization
Click to enlarge.
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.
Miler Lagos
Colombian artist Miler Lagos works in several mediums including sculpture, installation and video. Much of his art is a metaphor for the fine balance between nature and culture especially in today’s state of diminishing resources.
For his upcoming show here in NYC, Lagos will create his installation piece Igloo, a 9-foot domed structure (see top photo) constructed of layers of reference books laid like bricks in a cylindrical shape. The igloo symbolizes the transfer of knowledge through generations at the same time serving as a shelter to protect from nature, despite its own fragility.
The second work from the top is Pie de Amigo (Foot of Friend) is an arc of stacked architecture books with one pencil placed in the leaves of each book that, if removed, would cause the whole piece to tumble.
Tree Ring Dating is a cross-section of a tree made from folded stock pages from newspapers, exploring the relationship between commodity and nature.
The last three pieces shown are: Silence Dogood; El Papel Aguanta Todo (The Paper Resists Everything) ; and Fragmentos del Tiempo (Fragments of Time)
Miler Lagos’ show Home opens September 8th at MagnanMetz Gallery in NYC.
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
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.
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