Hasta La Ideas

Venice Architecture Biennale 2010: Toronto architect Philip Beesley has installed a forest of acrylic fronds that move as though breathing inside the Canada pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens this week. 

Called Hylozoic Ground, the installation is covered in sensors, microprocessors, mechanical joints and filters.

Above photograph copyright Pierre Charron

These allow the structure to move in response to its environment, drawing in and filtering moisture and organic particles from the air.

Above photograph copyright Pierre Charron

The title refers to hylozoism, an ancient philosophical view that matter has life, and proposes a future city that would operate as a living being.

Above photograph copyright Pierre Charron

Beesley collaborated with University of Waterloo engineering director Rob Gorbet and chemist Rachel Armstrong.

The Venice Architecture Biennale opens 29 August – 21 November 2010.

Here are some more details from Beesley:

HYLOZOIC GROUND ‐ PHILIP BEESLEY
CANADA PAVILION AT THE 12th INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

For the 12th International Architecture Exhibition Hylozoic Ground transforms the Canada Pavilion with an immersive, interactive environment made of tens of thousands of lightweight digitally-fabricated components fitted with meshed microprocessors and sensors. The glass-like fragility of this artificial forest is built of an intricate lattice of small transparent acrylic meshwork links, covered with a network of interactive mechanical fronds, filters and whiskers. The environment is similar to a coral reef, following cycles of opening, clamping, filtering and digesting. Arrays of touch sensors create waves of diffuse breathing motion, luring visitors into the shimmering depths of a forest of light. The project is designed by Philip Beesley, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, with engineering director Rob Gorbet, experimental chemist Rachel Armstrong, and many collaborators.

The project’s title refers to ‘hylozoism’, the ancient belief that all matter has life. Hylozoic Ground offers a vision for a new generation of responsive architecture. The Hylozoic Ground environment can be described as a suspended geotextile that gradually accumulates hybrid soil from ingredients drawn from its surroundings. Akin to the functions of a living system, embedded machine intelligence allows human interaction to trigger breathing, caressing, and swallowing motions and hybrid metabolic exchanges. These empathic motions ripple out from hives of kinetic valves and pores in peristaltic waves, creating a diffuse pumping that pulls air, moisture and stray organic matter through the filtering Hylozoic membranes. ‘Living’ chemical exchanges are conceived as the first stages of self-renewing functions that might take root within this architecture.

HYLOZOIC GROUND BOOK LAUNCH

Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground publication, edited by Pernilla Ohrstedt and Hayley Isaacs, will be launched during the opening reception of the Hylozoic Ground installation. This book describes Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground project as it has evolved over the past five years and includes generous design documentation and installation photographs. In addition to contributions by colleagues at PBAI and collaborators Rob Gorbet and Rachel Armstrong, the book contains a curated collection of essays by Michelle Addington, Geoff Manaugh, Neil Spiller, and Cary Wolfe. Preface by Eric Haldenby and Detlef Mertins.

See also:

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The Transcendent City by Richard Hardy	Belly Love by Florence Jaffrain	Funktionide by Stefan Ulrich

In what we hope is a nascent trend, Best Buy has announced that it will add a chief design officer to its executive ranks. The multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services, which in its most recent fiscal year generated a whopping $49.7 billion in revenue, has appointed Aura Oslapas to the new position. She begins work for the Minneapolis-based company on September 15. As senior vice president and chief design officer, Oslapas will lead Best Buy’s design and brand identity team worldwide. “Aura is a highly creative design leader,” said Barry Judge, the company’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, in a statement announcing the appointment. “She is able to bring forth progressive, customer-centered programs that define product and service offerings while being grounded in research and solid creative.” Oslapas, the principal of San Francisco-based A+O Design Methods, has held leadership positions at organizations such as Esprit de Corp and IDEO, and her work with clients including Hewlett-Packard, Target, Apple, and McDonald’s has earned shelves of awards. The founding chair of the industrial design program at California College of Arts, she holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Art (BFA, industrial design) and Cranbook Academy of Art (MFA).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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pWhether for fame, fortune or function, any industrial designer would be lucky to have one, just one, project in an entire lifetime that hits the big time–I’m talking MoMa, millions sold and magazine covers./p

pIndustrial designer David Rowland, who passed away earlier this month, was one of the lucky ones. His 40/4 chair, of which you can stack 40 in a four-foot-high space, has sold in the multimillions. They’re in the MoMA. And every space-tight place from church basements to submarines has a pile of them tucked away, ready to deploy./p

pRowland designed the chairs largely on his own time in the late 1950s, but companies were not interested and his design lay fallow for eight years. Then a big-name architecture firm suddenly needed 17,000 chairs for a massive project at the University of Chicago and the rest, as they say, is history. Read the full story in A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/business/26rowland.html?_r=2hpw” Rowland’s INY Times/I obituary./Abr /
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A sumptuous Brazilian chocolate bar designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer

Q elevates the chocolate bar to new heights of gastronomy. The recently launched confection owes its rich taste to Brazil’s finest cocoa beans and equally sensuous curves to Oscar Niemeyer, the country’s celebrated modern architect.

Q was concocted by Samantha Aquim, chef and head of the chocolate division at her family’s eponymous restaurant business. After studying with renowned chocolatier Thierry Alain in Paris, she visited cocoa farms in Bahia with a desire to explore “the magical possibilities of the perfect cocoa bean.” Aquim used a painstaking fermentation process—without adding any other ingredients or flavorings—to draw out its raw characteristics.

The final product is a piece of edible architecture that’s 77 percent cocoa. As a guide to its complex, tropically infused palate, Q comes with seven blends of the chocolate with different levels of intensity and smoothness. A gold-placed utensil and storybook on Q complete the experience.

Visit Aquim online for more information (in Portuguese only).

The unconventional UK brewery ‘BrewDog’ created this taxidermy packaging for their ‘The End of History’ beer, which holds an astonishing 55% ABV and costs just $765 a pop. More about their other wacky brews after the jump.

BrewDog started up in 2007 when 24-year-olds Martin and James decided that the market needed a brewery that was willing to experiment with beer in all aspects. Now their line up includes Tokyo (18.2%), ‘Sink the Bismark’ (41%), and ‘Tactical Nuclear Pengui’ (32%)., amongst others. Check out some more of their sweet packaging and campaigns below, and hit their site to order some for yourself.