Hasta La Ideas

Spécialisé dans le design graphique et la photographie, Mariyan Atanasov, basé à Sofia en Bulgarie, immortalise des lieux aux formes géométriques uniques. Ainsi, dans sa série de photos intitulée MAXXI, on découvre des structures aux formes étonnantes et aux détails abstraits. Dans ce projet, l’artiste a voulu mettre en avant l’architecture contemporaine d’un bâtiment. L’ensemble de ses photos sont en noir et blanc et offrent un rendu captivant. Son travail est à découvrir sur Behance. 

A translucent garden pavilion made from 3D-printed plastic blocks provides a lightweight counterpoint to a robust, stone-clad house by AZL Architects in the Chinese village of Shanyinwu.

The Nanjing-based practice designed LEI House for a local businesswoman who wanted the property to encapsulate the values of her bed and breakfast brand, and promote her idea of sustainable rural development.

The village in Tonglu County in Hangzhou is typical of many rural Chinese communities, where many of the houses have been modernised or rebuilt in the past decade. This action is often conducted without input from architects, with the traditional qualities of the buildings generally lost during the renovation process.

LEI House occupies a sloping plot facing a valley and reservoir, with hillside rising behind it. The square three-storey building aligns with its neighbours and allows plenty of space for an open courtyard garden.

The owner, who wanted to be able to live in the house at the same time as offering accommodation to travellers, asked for it to be built using local methods and materials to help tie it in with the vernacular of the village.

“The house has a brick and concrete structure that is most commonly used by local artisans,” the studio explained.

“The three-storey height, the simple vertical volume and the limited window openings together with the exceptionally compact interior space almost dated back to the old rammed-earth houses in the local area.”

The building is entirely clad in scraps of slate from a nearby stone-processing factory. The material is cheaply available and is commonly used throughout the area.

The stone is laid using a traditional technique around structural outer walls that are largely made from hollow concrete blocks, in an effort to show how low-cost contemporary materials and artisanal methods can be successfully combined.

The house’s interior features a flexible and open layout, with a staircase ascending through double-height voids that allow natural light entering through the roof to reach the central areas.

The garden pavilion in front of LEI House is constructed from translucent 3D-printed plastic blocks, which are intended to evoke a typical masonry structure.

“The transparency and texture of the pavilion contrast sharply with the heavy volume of the dense castle-like stone walls,” the architects added.

“Their extremely simple forms correspond nicely with each other in the rural setting, forming a pure, retrained, pristine yet mysterious futuristic rural touch.”

The structure aims to demonstrate how modern manufacturing processes could be used to counteract issues such as an increasing lack of skilled labour and professional project managers in rural communities.

The 400 plastic blocks units were produced in one month by three separate suppliers in Beijing and Nanjing. Two inexperienced villagers were then able to assemble the pavilion in just three days.

The printing process allowed the density of the material to be adjusted to create varying degrees of translucency, which is particularly notable when the volume is illuminated from within at night.

Previous projects by AZL Architects include a house in a forest near Nanjing featuring walls that appear to be peeling back from the facade, and a chapel with a V-shaped roof that is wrapped in vertical timber battens.

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Japanese architecture and joinery inspired Knight Associates design for this clothing shop in Wellington, which is defined by a sequence of slatted timber panels.

The flagship store for ethical clothing brand Kowtow in the New Zealand capital, which opened 11 years after the fashion brand was founded, is set within a former bakery.

Until now the brand has exclusively operated online, so for the design of its first bricks-and-mortar store they tasked Auckland-based interior design studio Knight Associates to create a space that reflected their eco-friendly ethos.

“Like many contemporary fashion labels, Kowtow had developed a compelling online identity, with a global following, and transitioning into a physical space meant a commitment to brand values and ‘seeing’ themselves for the first time,” the studio’s founder, Rufus Knight, told Dezeen.

“Rufus was excited to work with us as sustainability and traceability is core to what we do, and he wanted to execute that in the design,” Kowtow’s founder, Gosia Piatek, added in a statement.

The practice worked alongside local practice Makers of Architecture to carry out the project’s structural changes.

They began by inserting a series of floor-to-ceiling slatted panels made from interlocking beams of sustainably grown eucalyptus that are intended to give the store a more defined layout.

“It was important that areas of the store were not closed off to the senses,” explained Knight.

“The use of the panels enabled permeability of light, sound, and vision, meaning the space could maintain a sense of singularity and cohesiveness.”

Knight was heavily influenced by architect Kengo Kuma‘s Prostho Museum Research Center. This building in Nagoya, Japan, features a similar timber lattice facade and also uses Chidori, a Japanese joinery technique that omits the use of nails or mechanical fixings.

“These references seemed to coalesce into something that was tactical and poetic, but functional. It was then researching how this could be realised using sustainable materials,” added Knight.

The designers traded a pair of windows on the store’s facade for large panels of frameless glazing so that passersby can have a more open view of the activities taking place within the store.

The space has been dressed with a modular sofa, which sits on top of a dark grey rug crafted from salvaged materials like fishing nets. Overhead hangs an oversized lamp produced by Japanese company Ozeki & Co, which has specialised in the craft of paper lanterns since the late 19th century.

British designer Jasper Morrison also used timber shelving to divide up the interiors of the Good Design Store in Tokyo, creating a series of homely “rooms” by erecting full-height storage units made from maple wood.

Photography is by Simon Wilson.

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Athlete Eliud Kipchoge won the 2018 London Marathon wearing a pair of Nike VaporFly Elite trainers with the world’s first 3D-printed upper. This is the world’s first trainer that’s upper half is crafted through 3D printing (much like a conceptual design we covered before). Using a 3D printer and a thermoplastic polyurethane filament, Nike can produce shoes crafted to an athlete’s foot measurement and performance data.

How is this different from Nike’s Flyknit, you ask? They’re miles apart. While Flyknit can knit together a fabric of a certain shape and size, printing out shoe parts means you can achieve something that’s more three dimensional than a 2D fabric weave. Another advantage is that while in Flyknits, the interwoven threads of fabric rub across each other when flexed, causing frictional resistance between the interlaced (warp and weft) yarns, this doesn’t happen with 3D printed textiles, where material is melted, extruded, and made to fuse together to create a single part. This technique of 3D printing shoe uppers also allows you to experiment with different kinds of weaves with incredible precision and control, making certain sections of the shoe firm, while others flexible or even breathable. This 3D printed TPU textile also works seamlessly with many other materials, most notably Flyknit yarns, to provide an optimal balance of fit and structure. In fact, Flyknit yarns can be engineered to thermally bond with the Flyprint textile, eliminating any need for glue or stitching.

Developed for last year’s Berlin Marathon, and perfected over time for this year’s London Marathon (resulting in a victory), we just may see more completely 3D printed footwear in the future… and who knows, we may be able to print our own too, instead of having them delivered to our homes!

Designer: Nike

Forensic Architecture, the investigative team shortlisted for the Turner Prize for art, has expressed ambivalence about the accolade, which came in a week when it suffered several setbacks in its cases.

Architect Eyal Weizman, the team’s founder, tweeted that he was “very surprised and a little overwhelmed” by the nomination and expressed concern that the organisation would get “subsumed within the arts-financial complex”.

This week has been a momentous one for the previously obscure architectural investigative agency based at London’s Goldsmiths University, which uses video and spatial analysis to uncover human rights violations.

Along with being shortlisted for the UK’s most important art prize, the group was awarded the Princess Margriet Award for Culture by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and it was announced that it would be working with the V&A to curate the UK pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale.

But it also received disappointing news from three of the court cases it has been involved with in Israel and Italy.

“Mixed feelings” about shortlisting

“It’s a strange time for us as on the one hand there are a few cases that we are working on that we are having struggles with, at the same time there is the recognition from an art institute,” said Christina Varvia, deputy director of Forensic Architecture. “There are a lot of mixed feelings about that.”

Three cases that the agency has been investigating had difficulties this week. A court in Israel determined that the killing of an unarmed Palestinian at a Nakba Day protest by a border police office was accidental, while Forensic Architecture had aimed to prove it was intentional.

In a setback to its investigation of the death of a Bedouin teacher, the Israeli village of Umm Al-Hiran, where the incident took place, was destroyed.

The group also received bad news from Italy connected to a case involving the Iuventa ship, which is accused of colluding with smugglers in the Mediterranean. The Italian court voted against releasing the confiscated boat, as it ruled that the country did have jurisdiction to seize the ship.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating the ship was fighting the case in Italy, while Forensic Architecture was separately preparing to present evidence to the European Court of Human Rights, in case the NGO’s legal bid failed. The agency will now have to present its evidence later this year.

“It’s good to know that even when within the courts, within the political forums, there may not be space for what we are discussing, there are still people who are interested,” continued Varvia. “In cultural forums there is space to discuss complex realities.”

Although several of the cases that the agency is working are experiencing difficulties, Varvia believes that the investigate work Forensic Architecture is carrying out has an important purpose.

“In a way failure is our starting point,” she said. “We take cases that might never lead to anywhere, but we still think that it is important to be talking about those things and archive those events by way of analysis and research.”

“This is also a form of resistance. When there is an effort to erase those violent events, just the effort to record, to clarify and to debunk the official line, it’s an act of resistance towards that erasure.”

Turner Prize has “shifted focus”

Forensic Architecture is the second architectural organisation to be shortlisted for the UK’s most important art award, with London-based collective Assemble winning the prize in 2015.

The investigative agency is shortlisted alongside three artists: Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson. All four nominees tackle political or humanitarian issues in their work.

“We have to consider that the Turner Prize is about young artists, so we have to consider what this new generation of artists is about and what is relevant,” said Varvia.

“I think that they very consciously shifted the focus onto those issues and I think they are trying to recognise that there is a whole generation of artists that are not self obsessed or interested in small irrelevant things, but are actually trying to tackle things that are difficult, that are not straight forward to discuss, that are messy truths, hard truths – complex realities,” she continued.

“It’s nice to see the other nominees and it’s nice to see that contemporary art can also become something that tackles issues of race, identity, gender, political struggle etc. It’s a very positive note for us,” said Varvia.

Although they are an investigative agency, Varvia believes that Forensic Architecture has a lot in common with the other artists as they are reconsidering how you look at incidents and objects.

“The methodology in which you unpack complex realities, this is the same for the other nominees, they take an interesting perspective into the realities that try to unpack. It’s beautiful to be considered part of that group.”

“Always a risk of being dismissed”

Although Forensic Architecture has been recognised by the UK’s leading art prize the group’s primary purpose is research. It is unavoidable with the work that the agency produces that some will consider them artists says Varvia.

“It’s unavoidable that it becomes part of the conversation,” she said. “Some of our team are practicing artists, but within the frame of forensic architecture they turn their skills to investigative purposes.”

“It is true that there is an aesthetic front that has come with the research. People can find ways to tell difficult truths through the granular understanding of an event, through its mediatisation, through its representation. To question representation, to question how we even begin to understand a problem is a nice thing to shift focus to.”

Unfortunately, being considered artists has been detrimental to the group’s efforts to highlight serious humanitarian issues.

During a case in Germany where Forensic Architecture was investigating the death committed by a neo-Nazi, the report it produced was presented in the parliamentary enquiry. According to Varvia the report was dismissed by the Christian Democrat party as work from an an unserious “artist group”, even though it had expert testimony from ballistic, fluid dynamics and acoustic experts.

“There is always a risk of being dismissed, but that is [proof of] not engaging with the work,” concluded Varvia.

Image is by Mark Blower.

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