Hasta La Ideas

American artist Doug Aitken has installed a ranch-style house clad in mirrors in the snow-covered mountains of Gstaad, Switzerland.

The single-storey Mirage structure, so called because it reflects the surrounding landscape and disappears into it, is covered top-to-bottom in mirrors.

The structure will remain in its mountain location for two years “reflecting and interacting with the mountain landscape over the changing seasons”.

“Right now it’s completely minimal, removed of all colour and definition. It’s a whiteout, covered in a blanket of snow right now,” Aitken told Dezeen.

“The viewer can come back to the piece as the seasons are changing, in fall in a storm or in the summer when it’s a green pasture. As our lives change the artwork is shifting with us.”

Visitors can freely explore the mirrored structure, which has an open door. The interior is also mirrored to create a kaleidoscopic refracted effect on entering the house.

The structure is modelled on the Californian ranch houses developed in the 1920s and 1930s that incorporated the ideas of modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright with the traditional ranch houses of the American West.

Aitken has previously installed Mirage in the desert outside Palm Springs in 2017 and inside a former state bank in Detroit last year. He made slight optical adjustments to the angles of the structure each time it has been erected.

According to Aitken the “utterly generic” style is familiar as the archetypal 20th-century suburban house in the US.For this installation he decided to “embrace the banal as opposed to looking at the regional as exotic,” by installing the same style of house in the Alps.

However, here the shape also reflects that of low-lying Alpine buildings, built to withstand heavy snow.

Alpine houses tend to be built in the summer, but Aitken and his team brought the Gstaad house to its location in pieces over the course of three winter months.

Unlike the Detroit installation where artificial light was used to direct how the structure was seen, in the Alpine location, the artist relies on natural light and changing weather to illuminate the piece.

“The work really is the sum of the landscape around it. When you think of art you often think of something much more solid, but Mirage moves in an autonomous way,” explained Aitken. “It changes in an almost chameleon-like form.”

The installation forms part of Frequencies, a site-specific set of art performances that run from 1 to 3 February 2019 in Gstaad, curated by Neville Wakefield and Olympia Scarry.

Frequencies is the third iteration of the event, called Elevation 1049, following editions in 2014 and 2017.

Photography is by Stefan Altenburger, courtesy of Doug Aitken.

The post Doug Aitken’s mirrored Mirage house installed in Swiss alps appeared first on Dezeen.

Reader Juliana submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

How do you stay on top of your chores if both members of the household work demanding jobs all day? There’s no way we can afford a housekeeper and we are both exhausted at the end of the day. By the weekend, things have piled up to an overwhelming level and I feel like it’s too much to handle. Help!

Oh, Juliana, I know exactly how you’re feeling, and I’m sure a number of our readers do, too. After a long day of work the last thing you want to do are chores, and when the weekend arrives you want to do something more remarkable than clean. There have been many times when I have wished for a housekeeper.

• My first piece of advice is to set aside one weekend to simply catch up with all of the stuff around your house. In the days leading up to this weekend, tell everyone that you’re going out of town, stock up on groceries, and clear your entire schedule. Then, wake up early on Saturday morning and get down to business. Clean your place from top-to-bottom, inside-and-out, and do all of the big stuff that just has to get done. On Sunday evening, celebrate your efforts by going out to a dinner where someone else is responsible for doing the dishes.
• Once you have this clean slate, then you can get started on a daily maintenance routine that takes little effort and leaves your weekends free for your remarkable life.
• Your routine first needs to include a landing strip. You need an area where you can come in after a long day at work and immediately process items. Put a trash can and recycle bin/paper shredder in this space so that mail and paperwork are immediately handled (especially since you don’t want to sacrifice weekend time doing this). Have hooks for coats and hats, and designated spaces for your keys, bags, etc. Put all of your charging equipment for your cell phone in this space, and plug in your phone the minute you walk in the door. The landing strip provides a space for your things, and also makes it a breeze to leave your house in the morning for work.
• Next up, commit to doing exactly 30 minutes of cleanup a night. You may do best if you do this 30 minutes right when you get home, or it may work for you right after dinner. Yes, you’re exhausted, but if you remind yourself that 30 minutes now will save you two whole weekend days, it’s pretty easy to keep moving. I have a “cleaning” mix on my iPod that is 30 minutes of fast tempo songs. I play it while I clean to motivate me.
• Designate specific rooms for specific days, such as Mondays = Kitchen, Tuesdays = Bathrooms, Wednesdays = Bedroom, Thursdays = Living Room, and Fridays = Living/Family Room. Do a general 10 minute pick up around the house, but then spend 20 minutes really focusing on just one room. With both of you working together, you’ll be surprised by how much you accomplish. You’ll also reap the benefit of having your weekends free of chores.
• If you watch television as a way to relax, invest in a DVR. You can do the cleaning while a favorite show is recording, and then start it half-way into the program and watch the show without commercials.
• Finally, here are more time-saving tips and suggestions for establishing routines. And, remember to get ready for bed half-an-hour or an hour before you plan to go to sleep. Your clothes are more likely to hit the hamper, and shoes/belts/jackets are more likely to get put away properly.

Thank you, Juliana, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. I hope we helped a little to solve your problem.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

This post has been updated since its original publication in 2009.

Post written by Erin Doland

Mashup of Steve Buscemi and Jennifer Lawrence..(Read…)

Studio Mabb used a humble material palette of plaster, timber, and iron to fashion the rustic interiors of this eatery in Brescia, Italy.

The restaurant sits directly next to Palazzo Martinengo art museum and has been designed by Studio Mabb to feature an array of natural hues.

Offering a relaxed menu of beer, burgers and pizza, the restaurant takes its name from the Latin term ganea – a tavern or rest stop where travellers on long journeys could stop for refreshments.

While the adjacent 16th-century museum building features grandiose exhibition spaces with frescoed ceilings, the studio wanted the interiors of the eatery to have an overall more simple aesthetic with a “particularly earthy component”.

“La Ganea is a project in which the venue gives life to the history of the place,” Studio Mabb added.

As extensive changes were not able to be made to the historic fabric of the 200-square-metre building, existing walls have been kept in place and washed with a lime-based plaster.

Wiring is concealed inside black iron pipes that snake up and away from the walls, ending with exposed light bulbs that illuminate tables underneath. Iron has also be used to form a chunky bar counter, shelving unit for liquor bottles, and to frame a series of arched windows that look through into a garden.

Sandblasted wooden beams have been affixed to the ceiling, while handmade tiles have been applied across the floors – the studio hopes their slightly worn patina will enhance the aged appearance of the restaurant.

There are also two cosy side rooms where small groups of diners can intimately gather around long timber tables. A selection of books, maps, vintage trinkets, and glazed ceramic pots have been used to dress the space.

Architect Guillaume Terver also opted for a natural material palette when completing the interiors of a ceramics shop in Brittany, France, which boasts clay, granite and timber surfaces – it connects to a Japanese cafe, which Terver dressed with similarly simple oak furnishings.

Photography is by Carola Merello.

Project credits:

Interior architecture: Studio Mabb
Project architects: Andrea Baselli, Sara Magnone, Riccardo Belinci

The post Earthy tones complete La Ganea restaurant in northern Italy appeared first on Dezeen.

Tell me if this scenario feels familiar. You’re alone, you’ve got your hands occupied, and you need to film something on your smartphone. You prop your phone against something on your table or counter, perhaps a tin of coffee, or any stationary object you find around you. You switch on the camera, and as soon as you compose your shot, you tap the screen to hit record and your phone shakes. It’s inelegant, and is what Indians call jugaad, or a lifehack. Engineer and ex-rocket scientist Jeremiah McCoy found himself in a similar scenario and realized he wasn’t the only one… and rather than relying on a worthless lifehack, he developed a more concrete, appropriate solution to the problem.

Essentially a tripod for your phone, the Ultimate Kickstand is a small piece of plastic, the size of a thumb drive, and small enough to fit on your keychain (it even comes with its own carabiner). Fold it out, and it becomes a phone-gripping tripod that you can place anywhere, and even at any angle. It works universally, gripping any phone by the sides (you can only use it in landscape, unfortunately), and rests on two legs and a base. A worthy replacement for a coffee-tin, a couch cushion, or any cheap prop, the Ultimate Kickstand can be used to compose great shots of products, people handsfree (no more selfie-stick either!) The Ultimate Kickstand is currently 3D printed out of PLA plastic, but I don’t see why we can’t have ourselves a nice machined Aluminum one somewhere in the future. Did I also mention that it’s small enough to be carried with you everywhere on your keychain?

Designer: Jeremiah McCoy