Hasta La Ideas

Product news: Dutch designers Studio Makkink & Bey have combined a desk, shelves and swivel chair to create a flexible workspace in a single item of furniture.

Designed for Dutch Brand PROOFF, the chair can be spun ninety degrees so the arm can be used as a side table and partition while reading, or a surface for desk-based work.

The seat is raised above the chunky base so it can move independently from the rest of the piece.

A shelving unit propped on two feet sit at one end and extends out past the seat so legs can fit underneath. Surfaces can be mixed and matched with shades of beige and bright blue.

The product was first shown at last year’s Super Brands London event during London Design Festival and has since gone into production.

Other designs by Studio Makkink & Bey on Dezeen include a shoe store full of seemingly infinite staircases and a house built from scaffolding.

See all our stories about designs by Studio Makkink & Bey »
See all our stories about chair design »

The post #006 SideSeat by Studio Makkink & Bey
for PROOFF appeared first on Dezeen.

The Hello, Again performance started with an idea — Beck would reimagine David Bowie’s classic, “Sound and Vision.” But it became more than another cover. It became an experience that presented a fresh take on the possibilities of the once familiar, for both the audience and the performers.

In collaboration with Beck and a “band” of more than 160 diverse musicians, Director Chris Milk created a concert experience that was fully immersive for both the audience and the performers. By capturing the concert with 360-degree cameras and binaural microphones, online viewers will have the opportunity to experience the show from any and every seat in the house.

Croatian design studio Brigada was inspired by cigarettes and smoke rings to create glowing cylindrical rooms for an exhibition about the culture of smoking (+ movie).

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo took place at the Gliptoteka gallery in Zagreb and focussed on the role smoking has played in Croatian art, photography, graphic design and film over the last 150 years.

Brigada was interested in the idea of smoking as a social taboo. Although a ban on smoking in enclosed public places in Croatia was lifted in 2009, there are still strict regulations on the promotion of smoking in the country.

In response, the designers wanted to hide the paintings, photographs and artefacts on show. They created a series of glowing fabric cylinders, which they describe as “reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes”.

The interior of each space was lit from above to avoid any shadows, plus artworks and prints were hung from scaffolding structures, as they couldn’t be mounted onto the walls.

The walls of the surrounding gallery were painted black to contrast with the brightness of the white fabric. Curtains hung over the entrance to every room.

Past projects by Brigada include an installation for a book that can only be identified in the dark.

See more exhibition design on Dezeen, including an architecture exhibition with looping walls and a performance exhibition filled with concertinaed ribbons.

Photography is by Domagoj Kunić and Domagoj Blažević. The movie is by Red Studio.

Here’s some extra information from the designers:

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo / exhibition design

Brief

Glypthoteque HAZU, an art institution in Zagreb, Croatia, wanted to explore the link between smoking, art, and the concept of taboo – a hazy relationship made even more complex by Croatia’s strict laws on the promotion of tobacco. The resulting exhibition, The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo, ­focuses on the role smoking has played in artistic and popular culture by bringing together paintings, posters, photographs, films and ephemera created over the last 150 years.

Idea

Taking inspiration from the phenomenon of smoke, the main goal of the agency Brigada was to recreate its very essence in the gallery space itself by completely altering a well-known exhibition space. Playing with the idea of taboo, their intention was to design an anti-exhibition – a display that hides the exhibits even from the museum itself.

Execution

They decided to create a ‘nonspace’ that plays with perception on different levels. By transforming and concealing all the existing elements of the gallery and painting the entire area black, the conventional exhibition space disappeared. Inside of it they built a completely new space, one that has no walls or ceilings, only cylindrical display rooms reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes.

Softly illuminated from within, their enticing glow invites visitors to come take a closer look. But only after stepping into the space are the objects of taboo revealed. With no walls to hang paintings on, they designed modern easels that hint at the moment of artistic creation – usually in a smoke-filled studio. A special system of freestanding display cases and slender cylindrical rods exhibits smaller objects.

Ceiling lights illuminate the exhibits without creating any shadows to provide a contrast between the outer (black) and inner (white) space without disrupting the ephemeral feeling of the whole exhibition.

The display rooms create an atmosphere charged with mystery, discovery, and sustained interest. Visitors excitedly move back and forth between display spaces, revisit their favorite rooms, and ultimately create their own path through the exhibition.

Design team:
Brigada – Damjan Geber (Creative Director), David Kabalin (Architect, Project Manager), Simon Morasi Piperčić (Product Designer), Marina Brletić (Architect), Kristina Jeren (Architect), Lorenzo Cetina (Assistant)
Bruketa&Žinić OM – Davor Bruketa, Nikola Žinić (Creative Directors), Zrinka Jugec (Account Director), Ana Baletić (Art Director), Branka Lovrić (Designer)

Curators: Igor Zidić, Feđa Vukić

The post The Culture of Smoking
by Brigada appeared first on Dezeen.

The Hayward Gallery’s latest exhibition, Light Show, contains a handful of immersive pieces from artists like James Turrell, Anthony McCall and, above, Carlos Cruz-Diez that reward the viewer the longer they stay within the artwork…

Visitors are advised to let their eyes become accustomed to the light in both Turrell’s Wedgework V room and Cruz-Diez’s vibrant walk-in installation, Chromosaturation, a version of a piece he has been making since 1965.

While Turrell’s chamber is a brooding and meditative place, Cruz-Diez’s series of three small rooms are a joy to move around, simply staring wide-eyed at the walls or, rather, at the colours that flood the space (made by sets of fluorescent tube lights with blue, red and green filters).

The space around each set of lights is dominated by that single colour, but things get really interesting in the areas where the colours merge and overlap. And just look what the green room did to my camera (below). I’m no expert on wavelengths, but something was going on – the visual equivalent of wub wub wub.

Anthony McCall’s piece, You and I, Horizontal, is also a beguiling treat (below). It’s referred to a “solid light installation” and, using subtle smoke effects, teases the viewer into thinking the beam of the projection is in fact a three-dimensional shape.

I must have pawed at it at least twice before I looked to see if anyone else was doing the same (they were).

Other highlights on show include Conrad Shawcross’s Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV (shown, below), ostensibly a giant mesh cage with a moving light inside that projects through its walls. This, in turn, distorts the space inside the room to an unnerving degree.

Both Leo Villareal’s piece, Cylinder II (below), made from white LEDS and and mirror-finished stainless steel, and Cerith Wyn Evans’ columnal S=U=P=E=R=S=T=R=U=C=T=U=R=E (‘Trace me back to some loud, shallow, chill, underlying motive’s overspill…’) make great use of the cavernous Hayward Gallery space.

But in as much as there are plenty of installations in which to bathe in colour and light, or stare at the shadowplay, the Hayward makes sure that you leave with your senses ringing, if you save the upstairs gallery until last that is.

Up here, in another large blacked-out room, is Olafur Eliasson’s Model For a Timeless Garden, which he first made in 2011.

There are no pictures of the piece I can find online that do it justice, suffice to say that it is a long, deep-set bench of working fountains of all shapes and sizes, bathed in the most intense strobe lighting I’ve ever witnessed. (The Southbank Centre recently uploaded the video below, which gives you some idea of the effect.)

Once over the pounding effect of the lights (which strangely become less of a headache the longer you stay there), the effect that the lamps have on the moving water is quite extraordinary: the light appears to freeze it as it moves through the air, making the whole arrangement look like set of rapidly pulsing sculptures.

As disorienting as Eliasson’s Timeless Garden is, I could happily have stayed in there much longer.

Light Show is on at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London until 28 April. More at the Hayward’s website and at the Light Show page.

CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.