Après Weird Beauty, l’artiste russe Alexander Khokhlov a une nouvelle fois collaboré avec la styliste et photographe Veronica Ershova pour réaliser la série « Bloomshapes and Illusions ». Cette série de portraits conceptuels mélange différentes techniques artistiques en s’inspirant du symbolisme et du minimalisme.
L’artiste Karen Ann Myers réalise de sublimes peintures représentant des femmes allongées sur un lit. Elle s’inspire du culte de la beauté qui est souvent mis en avant dans les médias mais également de ses propres observations dans les chambres. Les décors et les corps sont si détaillés que ses créations peuvent, dans un premier temps, amener l’observateur à les imaginer comme de véritables photographies.
La photographe new-yorkaise BriAnne Wills a consacré tout un Tumblr à son projet « Girls and their cats », rassemblant des portraits de femmes posant chez elles avec leur chat. À travers ces photographies très personnelles, elle dévoile la relation complice et tendre que ces jeunes femmes ont tissé avec de jolis félins.
Le photographe Chris Forsyth, basé à Montréal, a capturé l’âme du métro de la métropole québécoise et deuxième plus grande ville du Canada. Dans les stations, la plupart du temps désertes, l’artiste saisit toute l’atmosphère particulière qui y règne, ainsi que l’architecture atypique. Les couleurs vives de certaines stations et le turquoise du métro tranchent avec la froideur du blanc et du béton d’autres. Un série de clichés qui respire l’urbanité.
This wooden pathway installed over the Fonte Luminosa fountain in Lisbon enables visitors to get close enough to the cascading water to be soaked by its spray (+ movie).
The Lisbon Falls installation was designed by local architect Marcelo Dantas to enhance the experience of visitors to the fountain, which was completed in 1948 to celebrate the supply of water to the eastern part of the Portuguese capital.
“The structure is presented as an idea of transition to another reality,” said the architect. “[It is] for the rediscovery of a known place, now experienced in a more complete way, covering all the senses of our body, in an experience that is meant to be total.”
The temporary structure extends from a public plaza at the top of the Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques park into the fountain. It has a structure of timber battens, but is clad in panels of oriented strand board – an engineered material made from wood particles.
This material is often chosen for temporary installations, because it is cheap and easy to source, but also because of its variegated surface. Other recent examples of its use include a hilltop camera obscura and a seaside temple.
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A long ramp stretches from the paved plaza over some short steps and enters a corridor that ascends gradually over the pool towards the fountain’s upper level.
As the floor rises, the height of the walls decreases until visitors emerge above them and are treated to a panoramic view of the surroundings.
Where the walkway reaches the fountain’s upper level it splits into two branches, with one branch continuing towards the cascading waterfalls, which plummet past sculptures of nymphs by early 20th-century sculptor Maximiano Alves.
The proximity of the water causes spray to rain down on the visitors, who can choose to stay dry by donning black waterproof capes when they enter the installation.
The other branch extends along the opposite side of the central statue of Tagus – this one by sculptor Diogo de Macedo – and brings visitors close to the streams of water projecting from the sculptures on either side.
This section of the walkway culminates in a transparent panel, intended to create the illusion that there is nothing between the floor and the water below.
At the start of a film presenting the project, the installation is described as a “photo opportunity” and an “urban cooling device” – which demonstrates the various ways it can be perceived and experienced.
“The choreographies generated in this scenario are spontaneous and diverse,” Dantas added. “Acts of discovery, contemplation, surprise – but above all, actions from the willingness to share the experience.”
The project is supported by the city municipality and construction was completed by Portuguese contractor Eurostand.
Photography and movie are by the architect.
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Graduate shows 2015: architecture graduate Liam Atkins has designed a workshop that is part building, part cave, to build props for a fictional series of biblical films directed by Wes Anderson (+ slideshow).
Atkins, a graduate from London’s University of Westminster, has imagined a scenario where the director – known for films including The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums – is working on a succession of biblical movie remakes, starting with Ben-Hur.
A new building would be constructed in the historic Italian city of Matera to facilitate the impressive sets necessary for these films, comprising buildings and caves, new and old.
Named The Grand Matera Prop-Shop, the large structure would also incorporate spaces that mirror some of the sets of Anderson’s previous films, from a long corridor that enables panning shots to carefully composed symmetries.
“Part projecting structure, part cave system, the architectural design is forged through an obscure and unplanned investigation into material subversion, spatial distortion and the cinematic techniques of Anderson – namely the panning shot, sectional shot and his obsessive use of one-point perspective,” explained Atkins.
Atkins developed the brief for the project based on a series of random selections – some made by the tossing of a coin, and others defined by more complex procedures.
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These selections led him to a site on the northern tip of the Sassi of Matera, a UNESCO-protected series of ancient cave dwellings. This location, coupled with Matera’s history as a setting for films – it formed the backdrop to Pasolini’s Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ – gave the project its framework.
“As with everything in the project, this aspect of the brief was a delicate balance between chance and reality,” Atkins told Dezeen.
“A study trip to Matera uncovered an existing narrative of film, which I then extended by randomly selecting a film director to become the theoretical sponsor of the building. The site was then randomly selected to be located within the biblical setting of the Sassi.”
As a real-life remake of Ben-Hur is already underway, the designer undertook an analysis of the props being made for it to work out the facilities he would need for his fictional alternative.
He then devised a sequence of spaces that include vaulted ceilings, grand arches and false facades. Columns, tiles and bricks also feature, and would be cast against waste props to give them an unusual texture.
“All spaces are conceived as a series of one-point perspectives that regularly change in scale and employ a variety of subversive techniques to distort the user’s spatial perception,” said Atkins. “This subversion is then extended into the building fabric, where the incorporation of props into the construction process results in an architectural language that appears both familiar and alien to the city.”
Colours change through the building, so the new part of the structure would be coated white to fit in with its surroundings, while the caves would boast a wide spectrum of hues.
Atkins developed the project as part of Studio 15 at the University of Westminster, which is led by FAT architect Sean Griffiths. Griffiths took up the position in early 2014 with an aim to highlight alternative forms of practice.
Other projects from this year’s London architecture graduates include a risk theme park and an airport raised above city streets.
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Avec son film d’animation au format très court intitulé A Tale of Momentum & Intertia, le studio House Special illustre de manière efficace, en une seule scène, le proverbe selon lequel « les blagues les plus courtes sont les meilleures ». Une animation fluide pour mettre en scène une montagne animée et un rocher mettant en danger un petit village, et ce en un peu plus d’une minute.
An Additive Mix est nouvelle installation signée Liz West qui a été inaugurée ce week-end au National Media Museum de Bradford en célébration de l’année internationale de la lumière par l’UNESCO. Du 18 Juillet au 1 Novembre 2015, les visiteurs pourront vivre l’expérience de la science et des lumières à travers des oeuvres interprétées par bon nombres d’artistes talentueux.
A kilometre of steel corridors are wound within this industrial-looking maze at a former coal mine by Belgian studio Gijs Van Vaerenbergh (+ slideshow).
The Labyrinth is installed at the C-mine arts centre in Belgian industrial city Genk. It was created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the exhibitions and events venue – which opened in 2005 at the decommissioned Winterslag coal mining site.
Located in the open space in front of the main building, the maze was created by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh – a collaboration between Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, whose previous installations in their home country include a see-through church and an upside-down dome of suspended chains inside another religious building.
The maze structure measures 37.5 square metres and uses 186 tons of five-millimetre-thick steel plates for its walls.
The partitions, which reach five metres in height, are laid out as a square grid with missing sections that form a pathway through the structure.
A series of voids were formed using Boolean transformations, which involve intersecting three-dimensional volumes in a digital modelling programme and using their edges to cut shapes out from each other.
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“A series of Boolean transformations create spaces and perspectives that reinterpret the traditional Labyrinth is a sculptural installation that focuses on the experience of space,” said the studio.
Shapes including spheres, cylinders and cones have been cut out from the box-like structure’s walls, forming larger open spaces within the maze and gaps in the vertical surfaces.
These gaps and clearings allow maze navigators to see into other sections and through to outside, but appear to provide little help in finding the way out.
“These Boolean transformations convert the walk through the labyrinth into a sequence of spatial and sculptural,” said Gijs Van Vaerenbergh. “At the same time, the cutouts function as ‘frames’ to the labyrinth.”
“Seen from some certain perspectives, the cut-outs are fragmentary, whereas from other viewpoints the entire cut-out shape is unveiled,” added the studio.
Visitors enter at one corner of the structure beneath an overhanging section, and can exit at two points where the outer wall is low enough to step over.
A bird’s eye view of the maze is gained by climbing the towering steel structure beside it, which is known as a headframe and previously functioned to hoist the transportation compartment from the underground mine shaft below.
“The goal is to create a certain layeredness and openness to interpretations,” said the studio.
The title Labyrinth is based on the name of a maze from Greek mythology, built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at his palace of Knossos to hold the part-man, part-bull Minotaur beast.
After Ancient Greece, mazes became popular across the world and have been made in materials that range from hedges and hay bales to bricks and books.
Recent interpretations include a triangle-shaped maze made from glass panes and a mechanical maze that rearranges itself as you move through it.
Photography is by Filip Dujardin.
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