Hasta La Ideas

Hellman-Chang’s ground-floor Brooklyn facility has the offices in the front and the shop area in the back. Until their upcoming expansion brings their own finishing facility online, they’re currently building the pieces in-house, then trucking them over to a finishing facility a few blocks away. What’s interesting is that the pieces don’t go from the shop area to be loaded onto a truck out back, as you’d expect; they go out through the front. The workers carry each and every piece through the office, meaning that even while on the phone or sending e-mails, Dan and Eric can eyeball the pieces as they go out of the door.

“We’ve made changes at the 11th hour, before it goes into finishing,” says Eric. “If we see something, some portion that we’re not happy with, we can go back in and make a change. The danger of a designer who doesn’t make their own product is, they’ll draw something on paper, send it out to someone to make, get it back and not be happy with it, because they’re not a part of that production process.”

Dan and Eric were kind enough to give Core77 their full story, describing how they built their business up from nothing into the highly successful brand that is the Hellman-Chang of today, with clients ranging from hotels to Hollywood, partners ranging from Showtime to Swarovski. A lot of their individual clients (whose names we cannot print here) include movie stars, CEOs, owners of sports teams, owners of department stores, and at least one Middle Eastern princess, who commissioned a Hellman-Chang table to be finished with a custom tabletop made from bone by craftsmen in India. (Sadly, the tabletop did not weather the transoceanic journey from India to Brooklyn very well, and a warped version of it is now holding up magazines and Snapples in the shop area’s break room. Undaunted, the princess ordered more from the Indian craftsmen, and three tops later, Dan and Eric received one good enough to fulfill the order.)

We knew the story of how they’ve gotten to where they are would be of interest to up-and-coming designers, and Dan and Eric are no strangers to the concept of lending a helping hand. As a highly successful business in their own right, Hellman-Chang makes it a point to help the creative community develop in what ways they can, as evidenced by the rear of their shop area, which they rent out to fellow craftsmen.

“Dan and I started at the co-op in Brooklyn, sharing space with a dozen other woodworkers and artists. We all traded ideas, discussed fabrication techniques and created bonds,” Eric explains. “That was an important part of Hellman-Chang’s early days as a Brooklyn-based studio. When we opened up our own space, we wanted to maintain that energy and sense of community, so we set aside around 2500 square feet for rental and brought many members of our old co-op with us. We all built the new shop together – it was a great bonding experience, and now they each have their own bench space where everyone can communicate, bond, and work together.”

Now that they’ve given us their history, it’s Hellman-Chang’s turn to tell us about some of their pieces. We asked them to walk us through some of their classic and current projects, so you can see what the company they’ve built is now capable of producing:

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Deadstock film recaptures a decades-old conflict in a new exhibition

As pro-am DSLRs and post production software make photography increasingly accessible, photographer Richard Mosse seems set on making his life more difficult. Armed with dead-stock Kodak infrared film—originally developed to detect camouflage for military aerial surveillance—Mosse ventured into the heart of the Congo to take some pictures. The forty-year-old technology was a cumbersome addition to his rural exploration, with Mosse playing the role of a time-traveling photographer under the hood of his camera. Consciously drawing from the photojournalistic tradition, Mosse’s collection “Infra,” on display at NYC’s Jack Shainman Gallery through 23 December, is a revisitation of familiar themes. He plays a dangerous game, trying to imbue life into themes so commonplace that viewers have become apathetic. The result is a new meditation on the problematic genre of photojournalism in regions plagued by conflict, one that uses art to decontextualize the familiar.

The obvious narrative is simple. Hardened rebels stand among expanses of eye-popping magenta, a comic irony that contradicts the gravity of war. Mosse is using a discontinued technology to revisit an old yet ongoing problem, creating a dialogue between the generations of inhabitants affected by war and the omnipresent lens of western civilization. “Infra” forces the viewer to look with fresh eyes at images to which they have become blind. This experience holds true not only for viewers, but for Mosse as well. Without the perspective of his camera’s infrared film, Mosse experienced his subjects for the first time during development.

Beyond the political ramifications of his work, Mosse’s images are compositionally stunning. His ability to find geometry in figures and landscapes is especially apparent in infrared, where the contours of trails and human limbs soberly interrupt the mass of color. While child soldiers supply the initial interest, Mosse’s landscapes are the surprise pleasure of the exhibition. Vegetation gives off a high amount of infrared light, which makes the Congo’s lush terrain a particularly gorgeous subject for Mosse’s lens. A stunning 3×3 series showcases the fragile structures of the Congo, lending valuable insight into village life.

The project marks an ongoing fixation for Mosse and next year the photographer will return to document the texture of the Congolese topography. To catch his current work, check out the exhibition at Jack Shainman, on display through 23 December 2011. A monograph of Infra is also available from Aperture for $80.

Images courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Danish architects BIG and Paris studio OFF have won a competition to design a research centre for Sorbonne Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. 

The tilted glass facade reflects the famous Notre Dame Cathedral and surrounding Parisian skyline down into the surrounding square.

The centre will combine research and business with transparent walls between laboratories and offices, which will be visible from a public staircase leading to the rooftop terrace.

Light will filter to all floors through a central atrium containing informal meeting places.

BIG and OFF won the competition in collaboration with engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte.

See all our stories about BIG here, more about Paris here and more about mirrors here.

Here are some more details from BIG:

BIG + OFF WIN THE COMPETITION TO DESIGN THE RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF JUSSIEU IN PARIS

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine.

The facility will bring together academic scholars and the busi­ness community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.

Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility.

The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university.

“As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it. Inflated to allow daylight and air to enter into the heart of the facility, compressed to ensure daylight and views for the neighboring classrooms and dormitories, lifted and decompressed to allow the public to enter from both plaza and park and finally tilted to reflect the spectacular view of the Paris skyline and the Notre Dame to the Parisians.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder, BIG.

A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club.

A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces.

The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.

“We propose a building that creates the optimum conditions for encounters and exchange among the academics and visitors of Paris PARC.

Like a scientific incubator the new building will provide the physical environment for nurturing growth of cultures and sharing of ideas – through the internal mix of laboratories, research facilities and informal meeting spaces, and through a reunification with the public life of the city.” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.

The Paris PARC becomes the interface between campus life and city life by reuniting the Jussieu Campus with the city of Paris.

The iconic view of the Notre Dame Cathedral is brought into the daily life of the building through the large panoramic windows while the façade towards the entrance square is slightly tilted, hence, a mirrored image of the Cathedral becomes visible at eyelevel on the square, connecting the building to its iconic location.

PARIS PARC FACTUAL INFORMATION
PROJECT: Paris PARC

TYPE: Competition

CLIENT: UPMC University

SIZE: 15.000 m2

LOCATION: Paris, France

STATUS: 1. Prize

BIG
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen
Project Leader: Daniel Sundlin

Architect: Gabrielle Nadeau
Team: Camille Crepin, Edouard Boisse, Tiina Liisa Juuti, Alexandre Carpentier

OFF
Partners-in-Charge: Manal Rachdi, Tanguy Vermet, Ute Rinnebach

Project Leader: Daniel Colin, Antonio Rovira
Team: Akram Rachdi, Olfa Kamoon

Graphic artists modify imagery of the metropolis

Following an event in Hanoi earlier this year, Tiger Beer brought its free art and music series, Tiger Translate, to Beijing. The most recent installment brought together artists from East and West to collaborate on the theme of the metropolis. This time around, however, Tiger Translate tweaked the creative process and came up with “Double Vision,” for which four artists were each given photographs of Beijing to overlay with their graphic designs live during the Tiger Translate showdown.

Michael Paul Young, Mojoko, Marcie Liu and Shadow Chen worked alone and in teams to apply their signature designs to shots of the city’s iconic skyscrapers, landmarks and everyday street scenes. The results were wildly diverse, with some works exuding a comic book feel and others taking inspiration by the free form and colors of street art.

While the artists did get to preview the photos, they had to design on the fly, cut-and-paste-style. Each round lasted 20-30 minutes and audience members could watch the whole process go down on big screens. In all, almost a half-dozen images were produced for the event.

Tiger Translate’s next events will be in Manila on 18 November and Sydney on 23 November 2011. To see more images, check out the slideshow below.

Dezeen Wire: apparently, tomorrow is World Toilet Day and the latest issue of Colors magazine focuses on all things faecal, including the taboos, dangers and practical applications of excrement – Colors magazine