Hasta La Ideas

What is the biggest struggle when you are living in the digital era 2020 but still have analog mediums like books and charts? You have to highlight and then manually type it all into a doc so you can print those selected notes. It’s not only a giant waste of paper, but it is also a giant waste of your time – and as students, we will never have enough. What we need is a stylus and a highlighter to have a kid…and they did, he’s called Hyler and he’s here to solve your productivity problems.

Hyler works smarter, not harder. This digital-analog hybrid pen seamlessly transfers your colored text from paper to phone. Press “search mode” and you don’t have to flip through notes to look up a particular sentence anymore or Google a term, just highlight it and the app will look it up. Hyler works with books, textbooks, journals, and even technical material, it works with all kinds of users out there.

The traditional highlighter has a makeover, this hybrid is minimal and sleek. You can still enjoy the experience of turning pages, color coding texts, and more without having to do the tedious back and forth of typing them out with Hyler. A highlighter that optimizes the work you do and helps you manage time efficiently – it exists!

Designer: BKID Studio

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando has released visuals of the He Art Museum in Shunde, China, which opens later this year.

The He Art Museum, or HEM, will be made from a series of stacked disks and will have a double helix spiral staircase at its centre.

Running from the ground floor to the fourth, this staircase frames a central oculus that turns this core into a lightwell.

Photos released by Ando’s studio show the concrete frame of the double helix staircase in situ. HEM is due to open in March 2020.

The four overlapping circular storeys will form HEM’s asymmetric profile. At the base there will also be a square exhibition space.

HEM will be a showcase for the art and culture of the Lingnan region, which includes Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan.

The museum is funded by Midea Group director He Jianfeng, son of billionaire He Xiangjian. He, or 和 in Chinese characters, means harmony, balance and union – words Ando said he took as a starting point for his design.

“I want to create a museum that can synthesise southern China’s rich diverse cultures that stretches many millennia and the influences that birthed Lingnan architecture,” said Ando.

“I imagined HEM as an energetic central anchor point to all the artistic and regional custom, climate, landscape and civilisation in Lingnan.”

Water is a key part of architecture in these regions, with the canals and waterways of Jiangnan earning its towns the nickname of Venice in the east.

A pond next to the HEM will reflect its facade and create a cooling effect in the subtropical climate.

The circular stories set over a square are a reference to ancient Chinese cosmology and philosophy, which imagined the heavens as round and the earth as square.

Tadao Ando, who was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995, has recently created an exhibition space in Chicago, and is turning the Paris stock exchange into an art museum.

The post Tadao Ando reveals design for He Art Museum in China appeared first on Dezeen.

Colorado architect Renzo Verbeck and artist Sylvia Adrienne Lisse have designed an eight-pointed angular structure to serve as the temple at the 2020 Burning Man Festival.

Called Empyrean, the pavilion will form the centrepiece of the temporary Black Rock City during the annual gathering. It will be burned on the final day along with the namesake “man” and other structures built on the playa.

Laurence “Renzo” Verbeck, the founder and principal of Verbeck Design Studio in Boulder, Colorado and project partner Lisse, an artist with experience constructing large scale art installations, were among a number of teams that vied to design the 2020 temple.

Their winning scheme is named Empyrean, which refers to a region beyond the physical realm said to be the birthplace of fire.

“Empyrean represents the region just beyond our physical realm that is the highest center of wisdom, and the source of energy-consciousness,” the design team said. “In ancient cosmologies, Empyrean is the realm of pure light that is believed to be the birthplace of fire.”

It will comprise eight angular pavilions that will be arranged to form a star shape. They will be constructed using conventional framing lumber, and latticework walls. Verbeck and Lisse chose the material for its ease of construction and its combustibility.

“The simple geometry of the star creates a sacred foundation and activates the temple as a transformative healing portal for every Burner to experience in their own way,” they said.

The celestial cutouts are designed to allow sunlight to filter inside during the day, while at night light from its interior will radiate outwards.

When visitors venture into the monument, they will enter through one of eight narrow apertures created by the formation of the blades and traverse into “the multiverse.”

“Approaching from the outer playa environs, the visitor encounters an octagonal palisade of monumental portal gates,” the designers added. “Passing through a portal, the visitor is experientially compressed as they move into the temple grounds: the multiverse.”

A pointed volume will rise from the centre of the structure. It will host an artificial light called the “Empyrean Flame”, which is intended to be visible from all directions on the Nevada desert site.

Flag poles will be set up at several of the access points and will comprise a saffron-coloured fabric wrapped over wooden structures, which will function as a pulley system. They will be available for festival revelers to write messages and prayers that will be motioned by the wind.

The team will build Empyrean through volunteer labor and funded by donations, and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for its construction.

Burning Man has been held in the Black Rock Desert each year since 1991 on the festival site known as Black Rock City. This year’s event will take place from 30 August to 7 September 2020.

Verbeck and Lisse’s design will follow on from the temple Geordie Van Der Bosch created for last year, which was influenced by the linear formation of Japanese torii gates.

Other temples include the swirling structure Arthur Mamou-Mani created for the 2018 event, while in  2017, the temple by artist Marisha Farnsworth was built from 100 dead trees to emphasise “dramatic changes occurring in our forests”.

The post Burning Man reveals 2020 temple design appeared first on Dezeen.

12 distinct works converse with one another and the space itself

In the Upper East Side outpost of the Almine Rech gallery, New Haven-based artist Vaughn Spann presents 12 distinct works that converse with one another and the space itself. Oscillating between abstract and figurative painting (with swathes of mixed media nuance), the body of work (all made in 2019) tackles dualism, identity and the human experience. Entitled The Heat Lets us Know We’re Alive, the sold-out exhibition (on now through 22 February) marks another milestone for the painter as it demonstrates his ability to captivate across numerous artistic styles.

For the sake of categorization, one can classify these stylistic explorations into three styles: dualist portraiture, abstract X pieces, and purely textural works. “I’m deeply invested in pluralism,” Spann says. “I feel most engaged when I allow my practice to steer me in directions I need to go, whether the works have a relationship or not isn’t as interesting to me.” While he believes that’s up to the viewer, he does see a connection running between all the works.

“I was using the idea of heat as a way of merging the mind, body and soul,” he says. “We feel hot when we are angry, or frustrated; oftentimes people use the expression ‘seeing red’ when we are over-worked and need a break; we travel to be in warm tropical places; when we are in love and feel passionate, our bodies poetically feel warm and fuzzy. This show was a way for me to think about the senses in that regard through a series of moments. Some tranquil, some symbolic, some loud… but allowing those things to embody our existence as humans.”

Whether it’s his figures’ garments or the layers of paint and Terry cloth carpet slices in his abstract works, Spann’s use of color carries meaning and mood. “I do gravitate toward saturated colors as well as black; I enjoy the intensity of those combinations,” he says. “In some of my silk diptychs from the show, I’m playing with varying degrees of transparency with an interest in luminosity. As the viewer, you are looking at these paintings through various layers of pigment that are competing with one another, but finding harmony at the same time. That leads to a type of visual vibration that is also deeply meditative.”

The dual-headed characters might be the most mesmerizing works in the exhibit. Details—and their meanings—continue to unfurl with each gaze. That said, “These works are traditional in the sense that they are oil paintings on canvas,” Spann explains. “I typically work from my imagination but use anatomical references and will map out poses/scenes via sketches beforehand.”

“Ideas for new paintings can come from a plethora of sources,” he continues. “Sometimes I might be referencing a place I’ve traveled, a conversation I’ve had; other times it could be a book that I’m reading or even something I saw someone wearing down the street. I like to keep things open. I’m consistently centering both real and imagined spaces as a way of conjuring poetry and metaphor for these black bodies.” And that’s another through-line of all the pieces: an undeniable poetry.

Hero image courtesy of Almine Rech New York

While it’s common to think of the universe as dark, mysterious and infinite, it’s less often that we consider all the human-made space junk floating around nearby. The cosmos is a graveyard of spacecraft—each with its own story. These defunct vessels “glide silently in Earth’s vicinity” with “their mission to chronicle the wonders of the universe long ended.” The Kepler, for instance, trails our planet since running out of fuel in 2018. This week, NASA will switch off the Spitzer telescope, which has spent 16 years in orbit. Several companies are attempting to recapture some; “they’re doing it as part of an effort to clean up an environment filled with space junk, but similar technology could be used to pull historically significant spacecraft into higher, safer orbits, or even toward one another to create an exhibit.” Read more about the space graveyard at The Atlantic.