Here are two more Halloween tricks from the UK’s Royal Institution. The first will look familiar to fans of Marvel’s “Ghost Rider” character and uses gunpowder to good effect. The second uses a chemical concoction to simulate what happens when a Jack o’ Lantern has had too much to drink:
Produced and assembled in Italy, Yniq goggles for skiing and snowboarding blend a luxury aesthetic with functional components seamlessly. Protecting against harmful UV rays, the goggles offer an extreme peripheral field of vision and an anti-fog coating……
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by Joel Porter
Set on a hilltop above the Chateau la Coste winery, Villa la Coste boasts views of gorgeous stone farm buildings, endless rows of neatly planted vines, and bushy olive groves—all perpetually bathed in warm orange sunlight. The views……
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Bringing back postmodernism, a style of architecture that thrived on irony, could be dangerous in today’s political climate, argues Sean Griffiths.
“I have nothing to say and I am saying it.” These are the words of John Cage, the American composer made famous by his musical explorations of silence. In recent weeks, it has occurred to me that certain architects might have something to learn from him.
I am referring to the latest purveyors of postmodernism, a style whose raison d’être is based on the far-from-established premise that architecture “speaks”, that it has a “language” and can even convey “narrative”. The latter term is one that the new postmodernists are wont to throw about all too promiscuously, perhaps not noticing the irony that it has long sat comfortably on its pedestal in the pantheon of management jargon. But in blatant disregard for this and other inconvenient facts on the ground, postmodernism it seems, won’t shut the fuck up.
I admit that saying this might seem a little strange to those of you who know me as a member of the practice FAT, renowned for its unashamed advocacy for the aesthetics of the postmodern, but please, let me explain.
In recent weeks, I have found myself writing references for young American academics who wear bow ties and Bertie Wooster jumpers, and who write about architecture’s relationship to literature on the internet in the style of David Foster Wallace. The Chicago Architecture Biennial is full of a renewed and apparently confident postmodernism, of a sort that seems just a little too respectable. The artist, Pablo Bronstein is plastering neo-Georgian all over the RIBA. And who today can switch on the television, read the newspaper or go online without the chirpy visage of Adam Nathanial Furman staring back from inside the 24-hour news cycle? And yes, these are all talented people doing interesting work, but something is amiss.
We didn’t do pomo because we liked it. We did it because we hated it
In 1995, in homage to the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, I wrote a column for Building Design magazine, heralding a non-existent postmodernist revival. The building was utterly loathed by architects and critics alike, and this had brought out the contrarian in me.
The column was largely self-serving. We at FAT had decided that the most radical position to take at that time was to embrace the style of architecture that had most recently gone out of fashion and which was now being condemned, often by the very people who had been its most ardent adherents. And so, in the spirit of exposing the relationships between fashion, architecture and taste, about which architects were in denial, we became postmodernists and cuddled up to the most reviled of architectural aesthetics.
By the mid 1990s, polite modernism had replaced postmodernism as the dominant architectural style. A perfect architectural backdrop for the age of Tony Blair, polite modernism sent out social democratic signals which, behind a thin layer of render, masked the hollow frame of unbridled design-and-build capitalism.
In this context, doing postmodernism, perhaps by dropping in a bit gold-coloured Baroque here and there, was transgressive. It certainly ensured that FAT got acres of press coverage, with the unexpected result that the practice began to spawn imitators. Even respectable architects of the sort who get to do things in Switzerland, started showing disturbing signs of having been influenced. Of course, nobody admitted it. Back then, postmodernism wasn’t something you mentioned in polite architectural society. It was not so much a style as a disease.
And that, my friends, was the whole point – a point that I now suspect is being missed. We didn’t do pomo because we liked it. We did it because we hated it. We were trying to challenge our own tastes. In telling us to “keep up the bad work”, our hero, Robert Venturi, showed that he understood completely.
But nevertheless, it has to be conceded that deals with the devil bring with them extreme danger. And in FAT, I suspect a kind of Stockholm Syndrome took hold. Without realising it, we began to love our jailor. My appearance began to resemble that of a rotund Roy Strong. And by the end of the practice in 2014, the work was skirting a little too close for comfort to Arts and Crafts revivalism.
While Donald Trump means that golden Baroque remains transgressive, it is now transgressive in a bad way
But putting these relatively minor dangers to one side, there is one big reason why now is absolutely not the time to be indulging in postmodern revivalism. Its name is President Donald Trump. And while Donald Trump means that golden Baroque remains transgressive, it is now transgressive in a bad way. Bigly so, to coin a phrase.
If, as many have suggested, the present political situation is beyond satire, what hope for its gentle sister and queen of postmodernist tropes, irony? The answer, of course, is none whatsoever.
As all good postmodernists know, signifiers – the vessels that convey meanings – have a tendency to become untethered from their moorings. In less dangerous times we can delight in their floating free, revelling in the magical manufacture of meaning that the detachment of the signifier from its signified permits. But the artful twisting of meaning through the gentle massaging of signifier is less appealing when the gaps between truth and representation provide a petri dish for the fake news of the alt-right.
Trump, of course, bypasses all that semiotic crap, rendering it irrelevant. He just lies outright.
The situation we find ourselves in has repercussions for architectural expression. In times like these, home-spun aesthetics can convey only home-spun values. And if your building looks fascistic – and yes, I too have known the seductive charms of the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana – I’m afraid it is ripe for appropriation by values that are fascistic.
If your building looks fascistic, I’m afraid it is ripe for appropriation by values that are fascistic
A disavowal of postmodernism changes none of these facts, but celebrating the niceties of the postmodernist game seems, at this point in time, at best, decadent and at worst collaborationist. Perhaps it is also time to dispense with the spurious idea that architecture “speaks”. Except for those buildings that are actually emblazoned with text, architecture is not a literary form. It can carry no “narrative”. Being in a building is not reading a book. It is an enveloping multi-sensory experience involving vision, sound, smell and touch.
In the 1930s, a time with disturbing similarities to our own, and when a similar choice existed as to whether architecture should look backwards or forwards, Walter Benjamin called for architecture to eschew the optical in favour of the tactile.
“For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning point of history, cannot be solved by optical means, that is by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit under the guidance of tactile appropriation,” he said.
Perhaps herein lies a clue as to how to proceed, perhaps towards an architecture that embraces the tactile and strives heavily to actively resist visual signification, that tries to disappear, that abjures meaning, an architecture that makes no attempt to speak and can tell no lies, an architecture of silence that has nothing to say and is saying it.
Photograph of Adam Nathaniel Furman’s Gateways installation is by Hufton + Crow.
The post “Now is not the time to be indulging in postmodern revivalism” appeared first on Dezeen.
A frameless glass roof panel connects with a window to allow natural light to flood this extension added to the rear of a Victorian house in east London by The D*Haus Company.
The house is located on Columbia Road, which hosts a famous weekly flower market in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Local studio The D*Haus Company was tasked with upgrading the existing ground floor and adding an extension that makes optimal use of the available space and light at the rear of the property.
The reconfigured spaces accommodate an open-plan kitchen, living and dining area, which extends outwards into an yard bounded on one side by a curved brick wall that separates the house from the street.
The clients stipulated that intrusions into the courtyard should be minimised, but a void between the end wall and the boundary wall that had previously been used to house a bike shed and barbecue was incorporated into the plan.
“By knocking through the rear wall and taking the floor to the extent of the site, we maximised floor area and created a portal to the sky,” said the studio.
The process got off to a difficult start, when early excavations revealed a old bakery oven almost as large as the existing yard. This had to be covered and made structurally sound using a reinforced concrete slab.
The existing floor was levelled off to create a single level across the entire ground floor, which helps the to enhance the sense of space.
A polished-concrete floor was added to provide a seamless surface that extends through the interior and into the courtyard.
The continuity of the flooring helps to minimise the threshold between the indoor and outdoor spaces, which can be connected to form a single room by opening the huge pivoting steel-framed door.
A large steel beam was installed to allow an existing kitchen wall to be removed. This creates space for a dining table big enough to seat eight people beneath a skylight set into the ceiling.
“These tectonic openings in the mass play and react with one and another and let the sun stream in,” the architects added.
The new kitchen extends all the way to the edge of the site and follows the curve of the boundary wall.
The former void is filled in with frameless self-cleaning glazing that extends vertically and across the roof to enhance the connection with the outdoors and the sky.
Marble countertops introduce a natural detail to this space, while another window behind the sink looks directly out onto the courtyard.
The rest of the interior features white surfaces that provide a neutral backdrop and focus attention on the textures of the floor and the brick walls surrounding the courtyard.
The D*Haus Company is an experimental multidisciplinary practice founded by Daniel Woolfson and David Ben Grunberg, which applies mathematical principles to architecture, furniture and lighting design.
The studio is best known for designing a shape-shifting house called the Dynamic D*Haus, which features angular sections that open and close in response to the time of day, seasons and weather conditions.
It has also developed a table based on the same formula for changing the shape of a square into an equilateral triangle.
The post Giant pivoting door connects Columbia Road extension to secluded rear courtyard appeared first on Dezeen.
The Nemo Stargaze Camp Chair($180) is a lightweight, portable swinging chairs that just begs you to sit down, kick back, and hang. There are 3 models: the regular Stargaze, the Stargaze Low, and the dad-special: Stargaze Luxury Recliner.”Part rocker, part recliner, this chair lets you find an ideal perch with the simple shift of your body weight.”..(Read…)
Sticking Together, No Matter What (Tsuruya Japan)..(Read…)
Microsoft’s new Surface Book 2, the new Surface Book 2 features up to 17 hours of battery life and the most powerful graphics performance ever from a Surface laptop. Available November 9 in 13-inch & 15-inch sizes.Starting at $1,499 (£1,499, AU$2,199), the Surface Book 2 costs about the same in all regions as the OG Surface Book. Though, with a total of seven configurations to choose from, the price is sure to escalate from there.The 13.5-inch model alone will be available in four configurations, the cheapest of which comes with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-7300U processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of PCIe SSD storage space.Should you care to spend some extra cash, you can net a 1.9GHz Intel Core i7-8650U, 16GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of SSD space paired with the same 13.5-inch display and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM.Meanwhile, the 15-inch Surface Book 2 packs an i7-8650U chip, 16GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage along with a GTX 1060 GPU sporting 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM…(Read…)
Captured weekly for 18 years…(Read…)
With each new device that gets released, and with current devices get smarter each month, it’s easy to get swallowed up into the ‘always active’ mode. We don’t have enough time for proper relaxation anymore. We find ourselves trying to take rest where we can find it – whether that be up against the rattling train window, a strangers shoulder on an airport bench or the office desk. Leave those days behind you with the Backpack – Relax, designed by Maya Prokhorova.
The Backpack – Relax is a gorgeous, innovative backpack that once you hear about it, it becomes an instant ‘must-have.’ With an internal air container, this backpack transforms into a pillow within seconds. Not only this, once inflated, the air container creates a barrier, protecting your valuables from outside damage. Not to mention the ability to fill this container with hot water and warm yourself up if you decided to bring your Backpack – Relax with you camping. Ideal for the workaholic, this backpack will transform your day in more ways than one.
Designer: Maya Prokhorova
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.
