OK Go is known for making visually complicated music videos, which we’ve posted about here, here and here, that require a fiendish amount of coordination. These videos are shot in the real world and (as far as we know) eschew CG. The group Brunettes Shoot Blondes, on the other hand, recently released this video for their song “Knock Knock” that swaps out IRL props for a succession of iDevices:
Despite the creepy “True-Detective”-esque plot—as far as we can tell, a woman is being stalked by a dude with an animal head who smokes cigarettes—it’s pretty neat, if nowhere near as stupendous as OK Go’s kinetically riotous spectacles.
« Poligon » est une collection de sculptures métalliques qui forment un animal après avoir réussi à accomplir le jeu de construction : des pingouins, des baleines, des insectes et des gorilles. Il ne reste plus que peu de temps pour soutenir le projet sur Kickstarter. De très belles créations à découvrir en images.
Now in its third year, Amsterdam’s Unseen Photo Fair is a veritable artistic force. Housed in a former gasworks, the impressive selection shows that while the world may be drowning in images, when expertly curated, it’s still an enlightening medium that teach, surprise…
This house on a narrow site by German office Philipp Architekten follows the slope of its hilly location with a series of stepped levels (+ slideshow).
House M was designed by Philipp Architekten for a couple with two young children.
It occupies a narrow, hilly site at the foot of the Swabian Alps in Balingen, Germany, with a single-storey entrance that opens up to three storeys deeper into the plan.
“The brief was to create a light-flooded living space for the family, their art and their books,” architect Anna Philipp told Dezeen.
“Due to the vertical block, the villa appears to be a tower from one side, housing an extensive library which extends over two floors,” she said.
A white plastered facade has been added to accentuate the home’s pared-back form, with an algae-resistant coating to minimise maintenance.
“The building has been designed to have a purist and sculptural character – less is more,” said Philipp.
“The vertical cube at the back and the horizontal glass volume at the front gain maximum expression through the reduction of materials.”
Glazing and terraces have been concentrated along the southern facade to maximise exposure to the sun throughout the day, with large sliding doors providing access between the indoor and outdoor spaces.
A pond was also added to the southern side to help frame the house within its setting, and to reflect light and shadows inside.
Rooms in the 33 metre-long house have been divided into two zones. Social spaces run horizontally along the upper-ground floor, while the more private spaces are arranged vertically across the upper and lower levels at the back.
“The family like coming together with friends and family, but also wanted a sheltered retreat for privacy,” said Philipp.
The dining room, kitchen and living room follow a linear sequence from the entrance on the upper-ground floor. Three bedrooms sit on the lower-ground floor, with direct access to the terrace and pond.
A study with a double-height library occupies the top two levels of the house, which replaces an old printing office on the site.
“The family is in the publishing business, and not only has a passion for books, but also a huge collection. It was their wish to live with the beauty of these books,” said Philipp.
A band of skylights runs through the centre of the house to bring more light into the middle, and give the interior “a museum-like character”, according to the architects.
A void has been also cut between the living room and the floor above to make room for a large artwork on the wall.
“The family’s passion for art and graphic design was central to the design throughout the house,” said Philipp.
Ingo Maurer’s Zettel lamp, which features 80 sheets of printed and blank paper, hangs in the centre of the dining room.
White dominates the interior scheme, apart from the kitchen, which has been conceived as a black box to contrast with the rest of the house, and one of the bathrooms, which features walls covered in gold expoxy resin.
News: owners of Apple’s newly released iPhone 6 handsets have taken to social media to complain about a possible design fault – using the hashtag #bendgate and posting images of devices that appear to have bent under pressure.
A number of twitter users and technology blogs have been posting images and videos of “bent” iPhones.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus both feature a new aluminium shell, designed to make the devices thinner than any of Apple’s previous mobile phones. The iPhone 6 is 6.9 millimetres thick, while the iPhone 6 Plus measures 7.1 millimetres thick – both marginally thinner than the iPhone 5 S. The devices also have a larger screen than any previous iPhone design.
But users say that this shell is not strong enough for the size of the device, and cannot withstand the pressure of being carried in the pocket of a pair of trousers.
Images of crooked devices began to surface online yesterday. The bends shown range from a slight curve only visible when the device is laid on a flat service, to almost a 10 degree angle between the top and bottom sections of the device.
Various technology blogs have now posted videos showing makeshift “stress-tests”.
Video blogger Lewis Hilsenteger, who runs a popular video channel about mobile phones on YouTube called Unbox Therapy, posted a video titled iPhone 6 Plus Bend Test that has been viewed more than 8 million times in the last 24 hours.
“I’ve been using it as my regular phone for the past couple of days and upon inspection I actually noticed a tiny little indentation towards the centre of the device, which implies a little bit of a bend,” said Hilsenteger.
“Under the pressure of my hands it does bend quite significantly,” he said in the video. “Will this happen in your front pocket? That probably depends on how tight your pants are,” he added. “I think it could.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook described the launch of the devices as “the biggest advancement in the history of the iPhone” during the company’s presentation earlier this month. “These are the best phones ever made,” added Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple.
Apple have declined to provide any comment about #bendgate, but insiders are suggesting that they will release a statement shortly.
Spotted during this year’s London Design Festival at RCA’s Big Small show, which delved into contemporary contradictions, were some hats—striking in their simplicity. They’re the debut product from newly launched label Industrial Fashion, dreamed up…
Speaking at the launch of his first major built project in the UK – a gin distillery in Hampshire – London designer Thomas Heatherwick said he was “lucky” to be a British designer, but added that projects that promoted industry in the UK were “rare” (+ interview).
Heatherwick said that British designers were enjoying a period of “receptiveness”.
“Some of the best minds of the world are based in Britain and I feel very lucky to be working at a time when there is receptiveness to what we’re all doing,” said Heatherwick.
“When we worked on the UK pavilion in Shanghai I was trying to redress the image of Britain only being about castles and Sherlock Holmes and postboxes, to the level of innovation and different lateral thinking that in Britain we have around us. I feel lucky to be working at this time and in that context.”
Photograph by Iwan Baan
Heatherwick said the distillery project, which involved reviving an historic paper mill, was an opportunity to celebrate British industry and production – which has been in decline after years of political neglect and recession.
“This could easily become a gated housing community, but it’s most meaningful if we can retain in-Britain production,” he said. “What drove our excitement in this project, the whole way through, was how rare that was to grow production in Britain.”
Photograph by Iwan Baan
Laverstoke Mill operated as a paper mill and sole-manufacturer of Bank of England bank notes between 1719-1963, but the site sat unused for over a decade before singled out as the new home for Bombay Sapphire Distillery.
Heatherwick Studio began work on the Bombay Sapphire Distillery four years ago, at the height of the recession when many industries were making cutbacks.
21 lean-to extensions and structures were removed from the “jumble” of 49 existing buildings on the site, leaving a collection of low-rise red brick buildings that date from the mid-19th to 20th centuries, three of which are now Grade-II listed.
“We felt blessed to have a site with so many layers to work with, and a sense that we were just adding a next layer, an imprint,” said Heatherwick. “In another two centuries from now, will this still be a distillery or will it be reappropriated for another form of manufacture? Whatever we do, if we can make it that housing is the least likely to be, that would be great.”
The River Test, which once powered the mill, had been “industrially squashed”, and was excavated as part of the project to increase its breadth by up to three times at its widest. The main entrance to the distillery is positioned over this newly exposed section of river.
It runs from the entrance park, below the main entrance hall of the building and pools under the centrepiece of Heatherwick’s design – a pair of glasshouses that contain the 10 botanicals used to create the London gin’s distinctive flavor.
These fluted glass structures are made up of over 10, 000 separate components and represent a reaction against the “sterility” of modern high-tech glasshouse design, according to Heatherwick.
“There’s been this heritage of historical phenomenal glasshouses, people like Joseph Paxton, who did the palm house at Kew, and The Crystal Palace,” he said.
“We felt that there was an opportunity to make the smallest attempt to regain some of the confidence that some of those glasshouses and structures used to have. In high-tech manufacture, sterility has crept into more recent forms of glasshouses.”
The taller of the two structures stands at 15-metres-high and houses botanicals originating in a Mediterranean climate, the shorter 11-metre-high structure is kept at 75 per cent humidity to suit tropical species. A flue at the top of each hothouse connects with the redbrick building to the rear, which houses two copper gin stills and an educational area for visitors.
The heat produced by the stills is drawn into air vents below grates in both glasshouses and not only heats the houses but encourages air circulation that prevents a build up of condensation on the panes.
Together the structures form an educational area for visitors that is integrated into the main body of the distillery, and Heatherwick’s get-out clause for the visitor centre that was originally included in the brief. “We actually felt allergic to visitor centres,” said Heatherwick.
Read on for an edited transcript of the interview with Thomas Heatherwick and project architect Eliot Postma:
Jessica Mairs: Can you tell me about how you came to work on the distillery project?
Thomas Heatherwick: The studio was lucky to win a competition. Bombay Sapphire had a glass design prize every year for about a decade, and we won it about ten years ago. It was a design for a glass bridge – an idea for a concept of a bridge built from just glass. Ten years later we won a competition, to figure out how we could turn this historical, complex jumble of buildings, untangle it and put industrial production into it.
Jessica Mairs: Can you tell me about the changes you’ve made to the site?
Eliot Postma: Really the predominant thing, and what we felt when Thomas and myself first visited the site, was that there was this amazing asset sitting right in the heart of it. It’s the clearest river – it’s certainly the most beautiful river – that I’ve seen in the UK and you just couldn’t see it. We came here and we walked around and it was a couple of old buildings and there was just this general sense of a maze on the site and you would feel lost as you were walking around it.
So it was two things – an amazing opportunity to bring this river back to life, whilst [allowing] the historic buildings on site to sort of breathe. These modern buildings had started to suffocate it a little bit. The real focus for us was creating this organisational device, using the river to help people understand the way through the site and navigate their way across it. So, widening those riverbanks and bringing their natural habitat back.
Thomas Heatherwick: Because it [the river] had been channeled. There was no foreshore. So there was no sort of interstitial space between English countryside and the other piece of the countryside, which was the river water itself – the purest in Britain. All channeled, industrially squashed. By opening it up we not only allowed you to see it, but we also allowed the plants and animal species to thrive and reconnect itself, in certain places opening it up to three times as wide as it originally had been which was exciting to be able to do.
The trigger of it was this making of a public space at the heart of the site, using the decision to put the arrival over to one part so that the river drew through the site and that heart space wasn’t immediately as you arrived. I suppose we deliberately used our master plan to tease you, you can see some clues over the top from where you first arrive. The river draws you towards them, and then pulls you in. There were 21 different structures needing to be removed to do that. So that was a big work.
I was brought up with the sense that English Heritage stopped everything, but actually English Heritage were fantastic and really worked with us and get the spirit of what we were trying to do. This could easily become a gated housing community, but it’s most meaningful if we can retain in Britain production. So what drove our excitement in this project, the whole way through, was how rare that was to grow production in Britain.
We were able to use the excess heat from the production to grow the plants that are key to the particularity of that product and then place them in the river itself. And the Environment Agency and British Nature really worked with us to let that happen. I don’t think we expected that.
So in a way it’s a big sign of a culture in these British agencies of openness. People sometimes assume that they’re going to be limited.
Jessica Mairs: Other than the glasshouses, have you added any new structures to the site?
Eliot Postma: For this to be a state-of-the-art distillery there are certain production facilities that needed to come in. A huge aspect of the master plan was ensuring that tankers could come in and there’s also an enormous sprinkler tank behind these buildings here, so there are other aspects that we’ve had to add in that were production orientated to make the distillery work and make it as efficient as possible.
River section
Jessica Mairs: Can you tell me about the glasshouses?
Thomas Heatherwick: The shape is derived from this need, by creating an umbilical link, to use the excess heat from the gin production we needed to collect, in order to be able to take the warm air in at the low level and then extract the air from the top to make it flow. So that was driven by the physics of the air movement.
There’s been this heritage of historical phenomenal glasshouses, people like Joseph Paxton, who did the palm house at Kew, and The Crystal Palace. We felt that there was an opportunity to make the smallest attempt to regain some of the confidence that some of those glasshouses and structures used to have. In high-tech manufacture, sterility has crept into more recent forms of glasshouses.
We looked at some of the cloches that were used in some of the kitchen gardens. Gardeners used these glass domes that they placed over particular plant specimens that they want to give extra heat to and to help them grow. So to us these were just like two cloches. The Victorians also had a craze for these things called wardian cases which people would have in their living rooms and grow exotic plant species in. We were really interested in these wardian cases and the culture for the glasshouses with botanical specimens in. [We thought] why can’t this be a botanical distillery. So that drove a lot of our decisions.
River section
80 per cent of our work was with the exiting buildings and only 20 per cent with the glass houses. With the existing buildings, in general they were office buildings with polystyrene ceilings and nasty fitted carpets and so there were no spaces big enough to have the stills. So it was figuring out how we could create gin halls of sufficient space, working to see whether we could get permission for those major moves – three of those buildings were grade II listed structures. And then trying to unreel – sort of delicately take off layers – and be proud of all the layers and layers that exist here because the site is built up from the mill workers cottages, which are built up literally over centuries.
We felt blessed to have a site with so many layers to work with and a sense that we were just adding a next layer and imprint. In another two centuries from now, will this still be a distillery or will it be reappropriated for another form of manufacture? Whatever we do, if we can make it that housing is the least likely to be, that would be great.
Jessica Mairs: This is your first major project in the UK. How do feel about the state of British design and where you fit into that?
Thomas Heatherwick: I think some of the best minds of the worlds are based in Britain and I feel very lucky to be working at a time when there is receptiveness to what we’re all doing. When we worked on the UK pavilion in Shanghai, I was trying to redress the image of Britain only being about castles and Sherlock Holmes and postboxes, to the level of innovation and different lateral thinking that in Britain we have around us. I feel lucky to be working at this time and in that context.
Did you know that the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut is the oldest public art museum in the United States? Now you do. The 172-year-old institution, now in the final stages of a five-year, $33 million renovation, announced today that it has received a combined $750,000 from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving (HFPG) to fund the comprehensive reinstallation of its collections and to continue related programming aimed at community engagement.
The NEH awarded the Wadsworth Atheneum $400,000 for “the creation of an interdisciplinary gallery with interactive technology” to introduce visitors to the Cabinet of Art and Curiosities: an exhibition of remarkable 17th-century objects, many of them collected by J. Pierpont “Remarkable Objects” Morgan, combined with natural history specimens and other rarities. The space will be part of the reinstallation of European artworks in the restored Morgan Memorial building, slated to open in September 2015. The HFPG grant of $325,000 will fund community engagement initiatives over the next three years through the museum’s “Beyond the Walls/Behind the Scenes” program.
In a stroke of good fortune for design-minded gift givers with a charitable bent, Target is linking up with TOMS for a holiday collection of home goods, apparel, and accessories for women, men, and children. All items, from a scented candle and wool blanket to a denim jacket and, of course, classic slip-ons, will be under $50 each. Los Angeles-based TOMS, a past winner of the Cooper Hewitt People’s Design Award, is adapting its buy-one-give-one model for the Minneapolis mega-retailer: for each item purchased from the collection, Target is donating a blanket, meals, or shoes in partnership with TOMS and American Red Cross Disaster Relief, Canadian Red Cross Disaster Relief, Feeding America, and Food Banks Canada. Target estimates that “TOMS for Target” has the potential to provide more than 11 million meals, blankets, and shoes to those in need. The collection is set to launch on November 16 at all Target stores in the U.S. and Canada, as well as Target.com.
L’objectif de ce projet réalisé par Mattia Mognetti était de ramener des photographies de lieux de culte anciens à leurs origines et de leur rendre ainsi leur entière spiritualité. L’artiste nous offre une magnifique série de chef d’oeuvres architecturaux en noir et blanc imprégnée par une atmosphère gothique. À découvrir dans la galerie.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
In a stroke of good fortune for design-minded gift givers with a charitable bent, Target is linking up with TOMS for a holiday collection of home goods, apparel, and accessories for women, men, and children. All items, from a scented candle and wool blanket to a denim jacket and, of course, classic slip-ons, will be under $50 each. Los Angeles-based TOMS, a past 
