Fille de peintre, Nuria Riaza a, comme tout adolescente des nineties, été bercée par les figures fantastiques de classiques de la pop-culture, comme Beetlejuice ou les membres de La Famille Addams. Aujourd’hui, à travers l’encre bleue de son stylo à bille, l’artiste espagnole compose un cabinet de curiosités à la frontière entre le beau et l’inquiétant. Ses protagonistes semblent tout droit venus d’un ancien temps, comme tirés de ces vieilles photos de famille dont on détourne le regard, qu’elle allie à des objets archaïques. Le tout avec une harmonie saisissante.
Ces images ont été sélectionnées pour le concours Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Elles montrent de manière frappante et saisissante des comportements insolites des animaux, en fournissant des éléments intéressants pour l’étude de l’éthologie. Les images seront rassemblée dans un livre du Natural History Museum titré « Unforgettable Behaviour », racontant la joie, le courage et la survie dans le règne animal.
Fabien Courtitarat est un photographe de rue qui saisit des moments de vie quotidienne dévoilant des sentiments, expressions, gestes invisibles à l’oeil nu. « Crossing Instants » est une série basée à New York. Elle est une réflexion sur l’instantanéité des rencontres dans la ville. Une promenade solitaire qui retranscrit l’étrangeté de New York, sa dimension plurielle et ses habitants multi-culturels.
Skyline Sector 5 is looking for a Freelance 3D Exhibit Designer with experience in designing spaces with Skyline product. Building purposeful experiences for our clients, crew and community is at the core of everything we do at Sector 5. Trade show exhibits, branded activations, retail environments, events: you name it, we can do it. We’ve been forging authentic connections between brands and consumers since 2001 and we’re not stopping any time soon.
Fragrances to help you wake up, wind down or concentrate are emitted at just the right time of day by the Pium smart diffuser, which combines aromatherapy with the internet of things.
Launched by a New York-based start-up of the same name, Pium is a prototype product that has recently been successfully funded through Kickstarter and will be presented at this week’s IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
The diffuser automates the experience of adding scent to a home or work environment, by building up a profile of the user’s needs through an associated app and pumping out the optimal fragrance to suit their routine throughout the day.
Pium CEO Ryan Kihm told Dezeen that internet-of-things technology (IoT) presented an opportunity to use scent more effectively than is allowed by manually operated oil burners and diffusers.
“Olfaction is a powerful sense directly connected to our mood and mind,” Pium CEO Ryan Kihm told Dezeen. “The Internet of Things is the best technology for understanding user behaviour and their context to match scents automatically.”
“We developed Pium to make olfaction a fourth dimension of the user experience along with vision, audio and haptic.”
Like Nespresso or Juicero, Pium operates on proprietary capsules. Three of these capsules – each filled with natural essential oils – can be loaded into the device at one time, and are called into action at different moments.
Pium suggests a rosemary blend for the morning, to stimulate the body into waking up feeling refreshed, and a lavender blend for night, to promote relaxation and sleep. A peppermint blend could sharpen the mind during working hours, while a honey and cherry blossom formula might stir up romance in the evening.
The intensity of the emitted fragrance is also automated by Pium, which can draw on location data from the user’s phone to switch off the device when the user is away and switch it on when they are near.
The accompanying app gives the user the ability to control almost every aspect of the device manually, while additional integration with Amazon Echo or Google Home opens up the possibility for voice control and other features.
Pium will launch with two models initially – Brooklyn, which has a stainless-steel finish and a high-tech appearance, and the white Chelsea, which looks more like an item of homeware.
“We want Pium to be a home interior accessory rather than a tech gadget,” said Kihm. “We are already so tired of many IoT devices blinking and talking. They always want people to watch or touch them, and I believe those intentional engagements make people more tired.”
“The olfactory experience doesn’t require our focus, touch and engagement. It’s very ambient. So we want to reflect those features in Pium’s appearance.”
Pium’s Kickstarter campaign – which has already reached its $48,000 funding goal – continues for another two days. After further development, Kihm hopes to have the device ready to ship in March 2018.
The device will be presented at this week’s IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) consumer electronics fair, which gets underway in Berlin on 1 September. It will be shown within the Samsung booth, having come out of the company’s start-up incubator, Creative Square.
Six buildings have been shortlisted for architecture’s least illustrious prize – the Carbuncle Cup for the UK’s worst new building from the last year.
The projects nominated range from a new entrance to a rail station in Peston, Lancashire, to a student halls of residence in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station in London. The annual Carbuncle Cup is organised by architecture website Building Design (BD).
“Our six-strong shortlist contains a mix of buildings types of differing scales and demonstrates that buildings don’t have to be big to be bad and that poor-quality architecture touches all building types,” wrote BD magazine editor Thomas Lane in an article revealing the shortlist today.
Half of this year’s contenders are in London, as several key areas of the city including Victoria and Battersea undergo drastic regeneration. But a house extension in Malvern, Worcestershire, also makes the list.
The shortlist was drawn up by a jury comprising Lane and BD assistant editor Elizabeth Hopkirk, as well as Twentieth Century Society director Catherine Croft and urbanist David Rudlin, the director if Urbed and chair of the Academy of Urbanism. Reader comments were also taken into consideration.
The six projects have been published on BD ahead of the full shortlist reveal today, with the winner of the Carbuncle Cup 2017 to be announced next week.
PLP Architects’ mixed-use scheme near Victoria station in London was nominated for its lurid and angular towers, which aim to break up the bulk of the development.
“Pity poor Victoria. Rebuilt in the 1960s after world war two bombing, the area is now being extensively redeveloped by Land Securities but sadly not for the better,” said Lane.
“The architect, PLP, has attempted to break up the monolithic nature of the scheme by expressing it as a pair of sliced and chamfered towers and jazzing it up with several bright red prows presumably to give it that ‘landmark’ quality.”
Photograph by Paul Melling. Courtesy of BD
Preston Railway Station Butler Street Entrance, Preston, by AHR
The new entrance to Preston Railway station by London firm AHR made the list for the negative attention is garnered from residents on social media, with Twitter users calling it an “eyesore”.
“The residents of Preston took to Twitter in droves to denounce Preston Railway Station’s new entrance which replaced a 1980s building that mimicked the station’s Victorian style,” noted Lane.
Park Plaza London Waterloo, London, by ESA Architecture
ESA Architecture’s conversion of a former 1950s government building in London’s Waterloo into a hotel offended jurors with its newly patterned facade.
“The lower storeys are swathed in tiles whose pattern would cause havoc on a TV screen, and whose colours manage to be both gaudy and drab at the same time,” said Lane.
“To draw attention to the entrance, the architects lifted the cornice at one corner and wrapped a weird screen around it. It looks like the skin has been peeled from someone’s torso, exposing a spaghetti of blood vessels and veins beneath.”
Photograph courtesy of BD
Greetham Street Student Halls, Portsmouth, by Cooley Architects
This student halls of residence in Portsmouth by London-based Cooley Architects made the list for the questionable colouring of its facade, which has allegedly led locals to dub the building the “fag butt”.
“It was nicknamed the ‘fag butt’ by unimpressed locals for a centrepiece tan- and beige-coloured circular tower,” said Lane, who commented that the buildings form is a “discordant jumble of multi-coloured rectilinear blocks”.
Photograph courtesy of BD
8 Somers Road, Malvern, by Vivid Architects
An extension to a home in Malvern by Worcester-based Vivid Architects was shortlisted for its “Lego brick” aesthetic, which the jury and BD readers believe is out of kilter with the “crisp modern aesthetic” described on its planning application.
“I am aware that planning guidelines today are to keep a clear boundary between new and old structures, but the architect has made no attempt to unify the house and now most people assume this family home to be a medical centre,” said nominator Robert Smith.
Photograph courtesy of BD
Circus West, Battersea Power Station, London, by Simpson Haugh
Part of the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, this scheme by London studio Simpson Haugh was nominated in part for its scale.
“Circus West pulls off the feat of making Europe’s largest brick building look small and was a very popular nomination with the BD readership,” said Lane.
“Unfortunately, this scale of overdevelopment has been forced on the power station because of a series of bad deals made by a series of owners needing to recoup their investments.”
South Korean architect Moon Hoon has completed a concrete house on the island of Jeju, featuring cantilevered boxes stacked on top of each other and braced by diagonal reinforced-concrete beams.
Moon Hoon designed the building for a plot on South Korea’s largest island, which is located to the south of the Korean peninsula and is a popular holiday destination.
The island’s tropical climate, attractive beaches and lush vegetation attract many visitors, but its location also means it is exposed to changeable weather and strong winds that impact the local architecture.
Moon Hoon’s Seoul office originally proposed a simple, bunker-like single-storey property that respond to the client’s request for a home suited to their private lifestyle.
However, the client later changed their mind and asked for a more distinctive design, which prompted the studio to replace the humble structure informed by traditional Jeju homes with a far more expressive building.
In place of the low-lying house, the studio created a three-storey building named Simple House that comprises robust board-marked concrete volumes layered vertically and angled to make the most of the available views.
Openings at the ends of each section are filled with glazing to capture daylight and views of the surroundings.
In response to the need for a more unique aesthetic, and to protect the vulnerable structure from harsh weather, the architects added diagonal braces that connect the corners of the boxes.
“The erected houses now boasted much presence, but needed something more to give it a distinct character,” explained the studio in a statement.
“Then the strong wind and rain started cracking the floors, and slowly the three-floor and rotating home came into existence. Too much wind gave nausea and anxiety. Something had to be done, thus the binding structures between the end points to other points.”
The final layered composition provides usable outdoor spaces on the roofs of the lower levels, which are accessible from the living areas on each floor.
An al-fresco dining area is situated off the kitchen on the first floor, with a small garden and patio on the opposite side. Another garden and a terrace with space for a jacuzzi are accommodated on the level above.
At the centre of the building is a void containing a twisting timber staircase lined with built-in bookshelves. A skylight at the top of this circulation space allows daylight to filter down through the various levels.
A window and a glazed door leading out onto the first-floor patio also reinforce the connection between the stairwell and outdoors.
The ground floor contains an entrance sheltered beneath the overhanging volume above, as well as a playroom and a spare room used as a home gym at either end of its elongated plan.
The stairs ascend to a first floor housing a kitchen and dining area at one end, with a lounge space at the other. A toilet is squeezed into a corner next to the stairs, with a curving wall separating it from the kitchen.
The upper storey contains the master bedroom and a bathroom on opposite sides of the stairwell. The bedroom is flanked by full-height glazing and doors onto terraces on two sides.
An external staircase leads up from the jacuzzi patio on the second floor to a large roof terrace lined with glass balustrades that provides panoramic views of trees and neighbouring rooftops.
Moon Hoon’s studio is known for its idiosyncratic architectural style, and has produced several unusual formed buildings including a concrete housing block designed to resemble an owl, and a museum for a Pinocchio-doll collector featuring a nose-shaped fountain.
LG’s newly unveiled pair of projectors set to debut at IFA in Berlin this fall, the ProBeam UST and MiniBeam, are built to make installation simple and portable setups possible. The ProBeam UST is an ultra short-throw laser projector. The Pro Beam UST projects a 100-inch full HD image onto your wall from just 4.7 inches away. The MiniBeam LED model is made for portability, with a 9k mAh battery and USB-C port for plugging into your mobile devices…(Read…)
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