Hasta La Ideas

La photographe Lituanienne Raggana est à l’origine de cette sublime série de photos rendant hommage au lien subtil qui lie les hommes à la nature. La photographe nous livre des images à l’univers surréaliste, dont certaines sont comme inspirées d’ « Ophelia », célèbre peinture de Millais. À découvrir en images.

Music: creative agency Rabbit Hole mixed oily magnetic fluids with water to create an abstract representation of primordial life in this music video for UK producer Max Cooper.

The video was created using ferrofluids – tiny magnetic particles suspended in liquid – which director Tim Dee and his team at Rabbit Hole added to a small tank of water and manipulated using magnets.

“We used two types of ferrofluid,” Dee told Dezeen. “One floated and the other sank creating this alien landscape. Magnets of different strengths were used to push and draw the ferrofluid causing it to connect and disrupt the environment.”

Because the oil-based ferrofluid wouldn’t mix with the water in the tank, the force of the magnets caused small droplets to form, replicating how the very first biological cells could have evolved.

“Spheres form of one fluid inside the other” Max Cooper explained. “[These are] basic cell-like structures. All living cells today exhibit this same natural property and it’s possible that the first cells arose through the sorts of processes shown in the video.”

Origins is part of a larger project by Cooper called Emergence, a live audio-visual performance that represents various stages of life, from its early beginnings to human existence today.

“I wasn’t sure how to approach the origins of life section,” Cooper said. “But when I saw the first tests of Rabbit Hole’s ferrofluid work I realised that we were looking at something fundamental – how natural materials and forces can produce the first sorts of structures needed to initiate early life.”

The final video features up to three shots at the same time, which Dee rotated and stitched together to create different varieties of movement. Camera zoom and tracking were added digitally.

“We’d seen a few videos using ferrofluid that interested us, but most of the videos we’d seen gave us a science class feeling,” Dee said. “We wanted to see if we could use it in a more creative way and possibly tell a story.”

The numbers next to each droplet represent the complexity of the organisms as different cells combine throughout the video.

“The way the fluid moves and morphs within its environment is an abstract depiction of lifeforms evolving in their habitat,” Dee explained. “The numbers signify that change. The more complex the life form the higher the number.”

The post Max Cooper’s Origins music video
explores the emergence of life appeared first on Dezeen.

Belgian studio De Smet Vermeulen Architecten designed this angular timber-clad cottage to create a music room in the garden of a house it designed over ten years ago near the village of Sint-Martens-Latem (+ slideshow).

De Smet Vermeulen Architecten completed the Braeckman-Staels property in 2000 and was later asked by its owners to work on an additional structure, situated at the edge of an orchard just outside.

The new building houses a toolshed, a chicken coop, a workshop and a music room where one of the clients’ children can rehearse with her band.

The appearance of the original house references American ranches. According to the architects, its intersecting sloping surfaces were a reaction against the abundance of faux-vernacular architecture in this part of Belgium’s Flanders region.

The new structure shares visual elements with the main house, including its angular form and a similar material palette, but certain details have been altered to give each building a distinct character.

“The cottage was designed to have the same general spirit as the house without being identical in style,” architect Paul Vermeulen told Dezeen.

“Like buildings on a farmyard, each of them is built according to prevailing practical considerations but in keeping with a general idea of accordance.”

A brick plinth supports a wooden-framed construction that has been cloaked in timber boards to evoke the cladding of the house.

However, while the exterior of the house is painted and its internal joinery is untreated, the inverse approach has been used in the cottage.

A slanted roofline that echoes the house’s gently angled surfaces culminates in a pointed overhang above a patio area, which can be used as an external work space adjacent to the toolshed doors.

At the rear of the structure, the corrugated steel roof folds out over the top of a cantilevered section that provides a protected roost for the family’s chickens.

Vertical surfaces on either side of the building have been painted red to contrast with the wooden boards while creating a connection with the tone of the main house.

Each of the rooms within the cottage is accessed by a dedicated entrance. This separation is reinforced by the lack of any internal connecting spaces.

One of the entrances leads to stairs that ascend to a hobby room with a large picture window set into the sloping wall. Another of the doors provides access to the concrete-lined cellar, which is used as a sound-insulated music room.

“Concrete was an obvious choice on the outside of the cellar,” Vermeulen explained, “and we thought it was nice to show it on the inside as well. This is a sort of interior that the main house, having no cellar, does not have.”

A wood-burning stove is situated in one corner of the cellar, while plywood panels covering parts of the walls enhance the heat and sound insulating properties of the space.

Both the hobby room and cellar incorporate ladders that ascend to small attics containing sleeping alcoves.

Photography is by Dennis De Smet.

Project credits:

Architects: De Smet Vermeulen architecten
Team: Henk De Smet, Nikolaj De Meulder, Paul Vermeulen

The post Garden annex by De Smet Vermeulen
sits on the edge of an orchard appeared first on Dezeen.

Le studio d’architecture Sweco Architects a été mandaté pour moderniser le Lugnet saut à ski de Falun, en Suède, en vue des championnats du monde de ski en 2015. L’intervention de l’atelier a impliqué l’ajout de nouvelles surfaces de roulement et des balustrades de verre et d’acier sur les côtés des deux sauts.

Phil ha una straordinaria manualità e confidenza con carta, colla e taglierino. Tre semplici strumenti che gli hanno permesso di esprimere e perfezionare anno dopo anno il suo stile. Le sue creazioni sono spesso vere e proprie sculture poligonali in carta che spaziano dai characters alle tanto adorate sneakers. Collabora frequentemente con vari artisti coinvolgendoli nei suoi progetti come l’appena trascorsa mostra Paperair 1.5 a Conegliano Veneto.

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