Français, Georges Rousse est d’abord un photographe. Inspiré par les volumes du Bauhaus et le Carré noir sur fond noir de Malévitch, il fige dans ses photographies les oeuvres qu’il dessine dans l’espace. Egalement peintre et sculpteur, il redessine malicieusement la perception de l’oeil face à l’espace au gré de ses humeurs et de l’esprit des lieux.
Tels des mantras colorés, ses oeuvres éphémères sont des tâches surréalistes dans l’extrême réalisme des paysages, des incursions du merveilleux dans le quotidien. Son oeil aiguisé redessine les murs dans des illusions d’optique saisissantes.
Work has begun on a 200-metre-high office tower designed by Foster + Partners in Shanghai, as part of a regeneration programme in the east of the city.
The 42-storey tower is being built for property development company China Resources Land in the Shanghai’s Suhewan district. It will be the first office tower in this primarily residential area, and is intended to be the centrepiece of the Suhewan East Urban Complex.
The tower’s facade has a stainless steel structural frame that was chosen to reflect the industrial aesthetic of surrounding buildings and bridges. Dark glazing will complete the look and reduce glare from the sun bouncing off the glass tower.
A recessed centre will split the slender tower into two wings and allows natural light to reach the centre of the offices.
Lifts will rise to the rooftop, which will have views out over the Huangpu River and The Bund waterfront area. At lower levels offices will look out over the greenery of the new Suhewan Park.
“We have designed the building in the most flexible way possible to accommodate the changing nature of the workplace,” explained Foster + Partners head of studio Gerard Evenden.
“The floorplates have been designed to enhance collaboration and communication, with special emphasis on natural daylight, as organisations look towards healthier and more open spaces to work.”
“In consonance with the city’s future vision for the area, our focus has been to provide a modern landmark inspired by its rich history and industrial past,” said Evenden.
Digital artists R Luke DuBois and Zach Lieberman have both created installations to reveal the primitive nature of facial-recognition technology that is used by organisations all over the USA.
Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, commissioned both artworks for its London Design Biennale installation Face Values, which represented the USA.
They are described by Cooper Hewitt director Caroline Bauman as “a provocative design response to the social challenges presented by facial-detection technology”.
Both invite visitors to sit in front of a camera and respond to instructions, while a computers makes judgments about their appearance and emotional state.
The US exhibition at the London Design Biennale featured two artworks exploring facial recognition technology
In Expression Portrait, by R Luke DuBois, participants are asked to perform a particular emotion, like happiness or anger, for 30 seconds while the computer analyses their facial features. A voiceover then announces which emotion their expression most resembles, according to its data, as well as deducing the sitter’s age, gender and race.
The fact that the computer’s impression often doesn’t align with reality is just part of the work.
“We need a huge push in media literacy around the ways in which artificial intelligence is deployed in our everyday lives, both in general and with image recognition in particular,” DuBois told Dezeen.
“The technology that makes your life easier in one instance – automatically tagging your friends on Facebook, for example – can easily be refactored for something much more sinister, determining whether you get a ticket or a warning at a traffic stop, setting your premium on your health insurance, determining your suitableness for employment, determining the odds that you are a risk to society, deciding whether you ‘belong’, simply based on how you look.”
In Expression Portrait, by R Luke DuBois, computer makes judgements on your facial expression, as well as your age, gender and race
Zach Lieberman – whose work, Expression Mirror, creates a composite portrait of the sitter using the features of previous visitors who have evinced the same feeling – said that privacy issues are heightened when it comes to faces.
“Face data is intensely personal since it is one of the main ways we express who we are as individuals,” Lieberman told Dezeen.
“This technology is often being pushed by governments and large tech companies, which may not be considering the ethical implications of these systems.”
Expression Mirror by Zach Lieberman identifies facial features in a similar way to the filters used on Snapchat or Instagram
Lieberman’s artwork identifies the sitter’s facial features in a similar way as the face filters that add embellishment to selfies on Snapchat or Instagram, or the Face ID that unlocks iPhones.
His system tracks muscle movements at 68 points on the face, including some grouped as “inner brow raiser”, “nose wrinkler”, “lip tightener” and “dimpler”. The positions of these suggest whether the sitter is angry, disgusted, afraid, happy, sad, surprised or neutral.
“Computers can detect emotional states in a very primitive way,” said Lieberman. “There’s a lot of subtlety and nuance in emotion. For example, the difference between anger and disgust can be really minimal.”
His system tracks muscle movements at 68 points on the face, to assess whether the sitter is angry, disgusted, afraid, happy, sad, surprised or neutral
For DuBois, the fact that computers will often guess emotions wrongly is an example of how bias can be encoded in seemingly neutral algorithms.
“Emotion is complex, idiosyncratic, and culturally coded – to say that open eyes and raised corners of the mouth implies happiness is a gross oversimplification,” said DuBois. “Yet machine learning technology will often conclude just that, in manners akin to the worst stereotypes that came along with photography and the pseudoscience of phrenology in the 19th century.”
Cooper Hewitt director Caroline Bauman said the projects were “a provocative design response to the social challenges presented by facial-detection technology”
Face Values won the Emotional States Medal at the London Design Biennale for the “most inspiring” interpretation of the 2018 theme.
It presented the two artworks within an environment of metallic reeds – reminiscent of optical – designed by Matter Architecture Practice. They were accompanied by a visual essay by designer and historian Jessica Helfand examining various ways scientists, criminologists and beauty experts have tried to quantify the human face.
In the unfortunate event of an accident while out in the field, it’s of paramount importance that the individual receives medical treatment urgently! However, the harsh environment and everchanging conditions may require the casualty to be protected from the elements, or worse, the rest of the team protected from the casualty. A regular stretcher is not capable of this… but the Milpod CBRN Stretcher is!
The Milpod Stretcher provides an environment for the casualty that has been either been injured or contaminated in a CBRN environment, in turn this ensures that no more members of the extraction team, or the extraction vehicle get contaminated also.
The transparent plastic screen allows for constant monitoring of the casualty by the medical team, and this, combined with the inflatable frame, also keeps the overall weight of the equipment to a minimum so it can be comfortably carried.
A rose and chai-flavoured ice cream designed by Sally Reynolds has won Bompas & Parr‘s ice cream competition, which took place during this year’s London Design Festival.
Designed by New York-based Reynolds, the winning ice cream takes the form of a woman’s breast, and is informed by classical sculptures.
Reynolds’ breast-shaped gelato was developed from a complex model she designed
Aptly named Homage to the Breast, the ice cream was intended as a celebration of the beauty of the female figure. As the designer explains, it “plays on the power of the currency of women in the days of royalty.”
The simple breast-shaped gelato design was developed from a more complex model that Reynolds sculpted in virtual reality.
The ice cream was made in a Rose Masala Chai flavour – consisting of vanilla gelato flavoured with rose syrup and chai spice.
Second place in the competition was awarded to Estela Gless’s ice cream inspired by a Mexican lolly
Food design studio Bompas & Parr’s competition asked architects and designers to come up with ideas for a three-dimensional ice cream mould based on those used by royalty in the 18th century in time for London Design Festival.
The winning design, and two runners up, were chosen by a panel of 11 judges from the creative sector, including Dezeen’s co-founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.
Gless’s ice cream was a cherry-flavoured dondurma
Second place was awarded to Estela Gless for her cherry-flavoured dondurma – a Turkish ice cream with an elastic texture – lolly inspired by the bright and colourful Mexican iced treat Paleta.
Called Mouth Toys, the design aims to reflect the physical and emotional sensations experienced when eating ice cream.
Michele Menescardi was named in third place for his Bubble-icious ice cream
In third place was Milan-based designer Michele Menescardi with his Bubble-icious ice cream, designed to replicate a bar of soap. The pineapple and basil-flavoured lolly took inspiration from fruit salads, as well as the ancient Arabic tradition of sweets and culinary art.
“Although gimmicky and paradoxical, it looks good, the flavours are interesting and I like the counter-intuitiveness of putting something that looks like a bar of soap in your mouth,” said Fairs.
Menescardi’s ice cream looks like a bar of soap
Each of the frozen creations were available to eat for one day only on 20 September at Scoop – an exhibition put on by the British Museum of Food, which is running until 30 September at Gasholder 11, London.
The competition was curated to celebrate the city’s annual design festival, which took place this year from 15 to 23 September.
All profits from the sales will be donated to Maggie’s Centres, which support people living with cancer, and their family and friends.
The “world’s first non-melting” ice lolly designed by Bompas & Parr was also displayed at the Scoop exhibition for one day only on 22 August. The non-melting lolly was inspired by a frozen composite material pioneered during the second world war.
Fungi can be used to break down waste plastic and create sustainable building materials, according to scientists from Kew Gardens in London.
The State of the World’s Fungi 2018 report – the first of its kind – highlights the aspergillus tubingensis fungus, found in a Pakistani rubbish tip and first documented in 2017. It claims this substance can break down plastic in weeks rather than years.
Aspergillus tubingensis can grow on the surface of plastics, where it secretes enzymes that break the chemical bonds between plastic molecules.
“This ability thus has potential to be developed into one of the tools desperately needed to address the growing environmental problem of plastic waste,” reads the report.
Report explores “huge potential for fungi”
The report was compiled by a team of researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, which is one of the leading institutions for fungal research internationally.
It provides an overview of current knowledge about mushrooms and other fungi, and charts their usefulness to both the natural and industrial worlds.
The report documents the more than 2,000 new species of fungus discovered in 2017, explores the threats they face from a changing climate, and chronicles their potential uses.
“The State of the World’s Fungi report has been a fascinating look into the fungal kingdom, revealing how little we know and the huge potential for fungi in areas as diverse as biofuels, pharmaceuticals and novel materials,” Kew Gardens senior researcher Tom Prescott told Dezeen.
“Fungi are being considered as a potential sustainable source for building materials, with companies in the US researching the possibility of expanding this market.”
Funghi can remove pollutants from soil
As well helping to accelerate the decomposition of plastic, the report shows that species of fungus can also be used to remove pollutants out of soil.
White rot fungi varieties pleurotus ostreatus and trametes versicolor can help remove pollutants such as pesticides, dyes and explosives from soil or wastewater, by degrading toxic polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) chemicals.
Trichoderma species, meanwhile, help with biofuels, by enabling the conversion of agricultural waste into sugars for ethanol.
The report also confirms that potential for mushroom-mycelium-based products to be used as replacements for polystyrene foam, leather and building materials – a topic that is being explored by a number of designers and architects.
Kew Gardens – known for its expansive southwest London grounds and its recently renovated Victorian greenhouse – is home to a “fungarium” with some 1.25 million dried fungi specimens from all over the world.
It also runs a “Lost and Found Fungi” citizen science project to helps raise awareness of some of the UK’s rarest species of fungus.
The organisation has launched a new website summarising the findings of The State of the World’s Fungi report. More than 100 scientists from 18 countries collaborated with Kew Gardens scientists to assemble the “horizon-scanning” document.
The latest video in our Dezeen x MINI Living series reveals a plan to recycle derelict homes, by demolishing them, combining the waste with mushroom mycelium and then using it to build new, biodegradable structures.
The technique, which is being developed by Cleveland studio Redhouse Architecture, is intended as both an answer to the housing crisis and a more sustainable way of building.
Described as “biocycling,” the process involves breaking construction waste down into a pulp and mixing it with mycelium, which is the vegetative part of a fungus.
Redhouse Architecture plans to create building materials using a combination of demolition waste and mushroom mycelium
The mycelium binds the mixture together as it grows, creating a mass that can then be compressed to form a new building material. This new material can be cut into bricks or used as insulation.
Redhouse Architecture founder Christopher Maurer claimed his studio’s research into mycelium is a response to the housing crisis in Cleveland, where there is an abnormally high number of derelict homes.
The plan is intended to combat the housing crisis in Cleveland, where there are an abnormally high number of derelict buildings and demolitions
“The housing stock is so cheap and so derelict that most people want to just tear it down,” he told Dezeen. “That waste just ends up in landfills for the most part, as it’s too expensive to extract any of the good materials.”
Rather than demolishing Cleveland’s abundance of derelict housing and releasing hazardous materials into the environment in the process, Maurer wants to recycle it. “Our ultimate goal would be to turn houses into new houses,” he explains. “So it would be recycling entire structures.”
The architects claim that the plan would allow them to create cheap and sustainable new homes
According to Maurer, the process would create a new kind of biodegradable home, which could be used as either permanent accommodation or temporary housing.
“The materials we use are totally organic,” he told Dezeen. “If you protect them they can be used indefinitely, but if you want to just use them as temporary housing as often happens in disaster zones, these can also be composted or biodegraded safely.”
Redhouse Architecture’s plans also incorporate a portable facility called a “biocycler”, which could be taken to demolition sites to enact the full process in-situ.
Christopher Maurer, founder of Redhouse Architecture, claims that using mycelium in construction could be useful in the developing world as well as in his home city
Maurer said that biocycling will empower a more DIY approach to construction, as the technique can be taught to communities and enacted on-site. “A maker society is developing around mycoterials,” he said. “It’s something that anyone can really do on their own because the processes are so accessible.”
Because of the accessibility and low cost of the technique, Maurer believes that it will be useful for communities in the developing world, where punitive import tariffs on building materials often prevent necessary construction from taking place.
Maurer even claimed that the technique could offer struggling communities a new stream of revenue.
“We’d like to go someplace, show people how to produce the materials, and using fab lab equipment turn the good that they’re manufacturing into an actual product that can be useful to local economies or even exported,” he said.
Currently, Redhouse Architecture’s efforts to build using mycelium are in the research and funding stages. But the studio is planning to recycle waste from a hotel renovation project they are currently working on for their first “mycotecture” build – a mushroom farm.
Maurer anticipates that the technique could be deployed at scale in the next five years
While Maurer’s practice is currently able to enact the process on a small scale, technological developments need to take place before mycotecture can become widespread. “We would like to see buildings come about within five years using these materials,” Maurer added.
This movie is part of Dezeen x MINI Living Initiative, a collaboration with MINI Living exploring how architecture and design can contribute to a brighter urban future through a series of videos and talks.
A rose and chai-flavoured ice cream designed by Sally Reynolds has won Bompas & Parr‘s ice cream competition, which took place during this year’s London Design Festival.
Designed by New York-based Reynolds, the winning ice cream takes the form of a woman’s breast, and is informed by classical sculptures.
Reynolds’ breast-shaped gelato was developed from a complex model she designed
Aptly named Homage to the Breast, the ice cream was intended as a celebration of the beauty of the female figure. As the designer explains, it “plays on the power of the currency of women in the days of royalty.”
The simple breast-shaped gelato design was developed from a more complex model that Reynolds sculpted in virtual reality.
The ice cream was made in a Rose Masala Chai flavour – consisting of vanilla gelato flavoured with rose syrup and chai spice.
Second place in the competition was awarded to Estela Gless’s ice cream inspired by a Mexican lolly
Food design studio Bompas & Parr’s competition asked architects and designers to come up with ideas for a three-dimensional ice cream mould based on those used by royalty in the 18th century in time for London Design Festival.
The winning design, and two runners up, were chosen by a panel of 11 judges from the creative sector, including Dezeen’s co-founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.
Gless’s ice cream was a cherry-flavoured dondurma
Second place was awarded to Estela Gless for her cherry-flavoured dondurma – a Turkish ice cream with an elastic texture – lolly inspired by the bright and colourful Mexican iced treat Paleta.
Called Mouth Toys, the design aims to reflect the physical and emotional sensations experienced when eating ice cream.
Michele Menescardi was named in third place for his Bubble-icious ice cream
In third place was Milan-based designer Michele Menescardi with his Bubble-icious ice cream, designed to replicate a bar of soap. The pineapple and basil-flavoured lolly took inspiration from fruit salads, as well as the ancient Arabic tradition of sweets and culinary art.
“Although gimmicky and paradoxical, it looks good, the flavours are interesting and I like the counter-intuitiveness of putting something that looks like a bar of soap in your mouth,” said Fairs.
Menescardi’s ice cream looks like a bar of soap
Each of the frozen creations were available to eat for one day only on 20 September at Scoop – an exhibition put on by the British Museum of Food, which is running until 30 September at Gasholder 11, London.
The competition was curated to celebrate the city’s annual design festival, which took place this year from 15 to 23 September.
All profits from the sales will be donated to Maggie’s Centres, which support people living with cancer, and their family and friends.
The “world’s first non-melting” ice lolly designed by Bompas & Parr was also displayed at the Scoop exhibition for one day only on 22 August. The non-melting lolly was inspired by a frozen composite material pioneered during the second world war.
A robot appears to mill three-dimensional sculptures from within a framework of scaffolding in Burberry‘s shop on London’s Regent Street.
British artist Graham Hudson wanted to explore the “idealism and horror of human making” in the robotic installation, called Sisyphus Reclined.
While the Kuka robot appears to be chiselling three-dimensional objects out of blocks of polystyrene, it is actually just revealing objects that are already made.
The multi-faceted installation is contained with a web of repurposed metal scaffolding that fills the atrium of the three-storey space.
Designed as a “nod to ghosts and collective memories”, the scaffolding poles are intended to suggest transience and unforeseen circumstances. “A month ago, the scaffold used was functioning elsewhere across the city. It is an echo, a frame for something else,” the artist told Dezeen.
The Kuka robot is located at its centre. According to Hudson, the objects it appears to be carving draw on a vast range of references, “from classicism and fiction to bodybuilding, ideals and everyday realities”.
All of the objects were actually made in advance. “The sculpture is already complete within the polystyrene block before I start my work,” explained the artist. “It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
The brief given to Hudson by Burberry‘s new creative director Riccardo Tisci was fairly open. He simply asked that the sculpture, which will remain at the Regent Street store until 26 October, should reference the heritage of both the brand and the building’s history, as a theatre and then later an art gallery.
“The curtains and carpets create a soundproofing that is emotive and nostalgic,” said Hudson. “It harks back to the grandest days of cinema.”
Hudson also looked to the brand’s history as an outfitter of trench coats for British soldiers during World War I, which he depicted through the limbless figures. These are modelled on classical marble statues found at art institutions like the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“But these bodies are 21st century souls,” Hudson explained, “evocative of war zones far away and psychological states close to home: cadavers that are fraught with dissociative disorders and the body dysmorphia of automation.”
A series of turntables play house music acapellas in the space, intended to represent the voices of the newly carved subjects.
“The history of house music is associated with the disenfranchised and minorities of the 1980s,” said Hudson, explaining that he modified the speed of the tracks to “slip and slide between horror and ecstasy.”
Hudson spent three months drawing plans on computer software (CAD), before spending three weeks constructing the piece and living on site. “It was a lot of engineering creativity: digging out old blueprints as well as going under the floor with torches, to connect to the original floor,” he said.
The artwork’s name is a reference to the character of Sisyphus in Greek mythology, who was sentenced by the gods to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill and watching it roll down again.
“I think he speaks to the zeitgeist, with the repetitive strain injury of forever rolling the boulder up the hill. A condition reserved in the 21st century for the desk bound typer or the tennis elbow and bodybuilder.”
Riccardo Tisci took over from previous Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey in March 2018 – a change marked by a new graphic identity for the fashion house by British graphic designer Peter Saville.
“It was interesting as Riccardo’s work is built on references and concepts that speak well beyond fashion. Whether it is his use of sub-cultures and the underground, his work’s relation to the dirt and texture of the streets,” added Hudson.
A robot appears to mill three-dimensional sculptures from within a framework of scaffolding in Burberry‘s shop on London’s Regent Street.
British artist Graham Hudson wanted to explore the “idealism and horror of human making” in the robotic installation, called Sisyphus Reclined.
While the Kuka robot appears to be chiselling three-dimensional objects out of blocks of polystyrene, it is actually just revealing objects that are already made.
The multi-faceted installation is contained with a web of repurposed metal scaffolding that fills the atrium of the three-storey space.
Designed as a “nod to ghosts and collective memories”, the scaffolding poles are intended to suggest transience and unforeseen circumstances. “A month ago, the scaffold used was functioning elsewhere across the city. It is an echo, a frame for something else,” the artist told Dezeen.
The Kuka robot is located at its centre. According to Hudson, the objects it appears to be carving draw on a vast range of references, “from classicism and fiction to bodybuilding, ideals and everyday realities”.
All of the objects were actually made in advance. “The sculpture is already complete within the polystyrene block before I start my work,” explained the artist. “It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
The brief given to Hudson by Burberry‘s new creative director Riccardo Tisci was fairly open. He simply asked that the sculpture, which will remain at the Regent Street store until 26 October, should reference the heritage of both the brand and the building’s history, as a theatre and then later an art gallery.
“The curtains and carpets create a soundproofing that is emotive and nostalgic,” said Hudson. “It harks back to the grandest days of cinema.”
Hudson also looked to the brand’s history as an outfitter of trench coats for British soldiers during World War I, which he depicted through the limbless figures. These are modelled on classical marble statues found at art institutions like the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“But these bodies are 21st century souls,” Hudson explained, “evocative of war zones far away and psychological states close to home: cadavers that are fraught with dissociative disorders and the body dysmorphia of automation.”
A series of turntables play house music acapellas in the space, intended to represent the voices of the newly carved subjects.
“The history of house music is associated with the disenfranchised and minorities of the 1980s,” said Hudson, explaining that he modified the speed of the tracks to “slip and slide between horror and ecstasy.”
Hudson spent three months drawing plans on computer software (CAD), before spending three weeks constructing the piece and living on site. “It was a lot of engineering creativity: digging out old blueprints as well as going under the floor with torches, to connect to the original floor,” he said.
The artwork’s name is a reference to the character of Sisyphus in Greek mythology, who was sentenced by the gods to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill and watching it roll down again.
“I think he speaks to the zeitgeist, with the repetitive strain injury of forever rolling the boulder up the hill. A condition reserved in the 21st century for the desk bound typer or the tennis elbow and bodybuilder.”
Riccardo Tisci took over from previous Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey in March 2018 – a change marked by a new graphic identity for the fashion house by British graphic designer Peter Saville.
“It was interesting as Riccardo’s work is built on references and concepts that speak well beyond fashion. Whether it is his use of sub-cultures and the underground, his work’s relation to the dirt and texture of the streets,” added Hudson.
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