From Amsterdam-based Feng Suave (aka Daniël De Jong and Daniël Leonard Elvis), “Maybe Another Time” showcases the duo’s talent for soulful songwriting and sleek production. This 6/8-speed single (which has no chorus) melts into a psych-inflected tune that also harkens to the sound of soul groups from the past. The sweet, falsetto-laden track will appear on Feng Suave’s forthcoming second EP, Warping Youth, out 26 June.
In search of some visual peace amidst all of the bad public news, I’ve been trawling art websites and just stumbled across the work of David Hansen. Hansen, an architect with 25 years of experience, creates wonderful and evocative images of cities and architectural spaces using a self-invented technique:
Photographic Impressions, and “Architectural Landscapes” as [Hansen] has coined the finished pieces, are a unique new expression from exposing traditional photographic images to the new digital darkroom and creative tools and techniques. His subject matter is broad, spanning from local Utah landscapes and Architecture, to exotic figure work and beyond. His art exposes a passion for the beauty, complexity and unity of the natural world in which we exist.
Hansen sells his work on Fine Art America. Here’s a sampling:
Check out more of Hansen’s work here.
The American Institute of Architects has urged Congress to support small architecture firms and their employees as they struggle amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The call comes as small creative businesses in the US fear they could go out of business as the pandemic slows the economy.
“The mega galleries – Larry Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, Pace – will survive,” American sculptor Barry X Ball, who runs a gallery in Brooklyn, told Dezeen. “Many of the others will not.”
In a letter addressed to house speaker Nancy Pelosi and senate majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) asked for improved aid, including loans and tax breaks, to help architecture firms amid the economic downturn caused by the virus.
AIA calls for relief to save architecture firms
It urged Congress to extend the relief past the HR 6201, which was introduced to offer benefits such as paid sick leave, free coronavirus testing, food assistance and unemployment benefits.
“To address pressing short-term economic needs, AIA urges you to expand temporary relief for business owners to avoid layoffs and the sharp economic downturn that would follow,” said the statement.
“Architecture firms come in all sizes, but the majority are classified as small businesses. The relief provided in HR 6201 was an important first step, but more will be necessary. Businesses cannot wait until the next tax filing season to see relief.”
AIA has urged Congress to invest in Small Business Interruption Loans so that businesses with 500 employees or under can cover the cost of payroll for employees unable to work due to health issues caused by the virus or working in isolation.
It has also called on Congress to provide loans so that they can cover costs like payroll and rent during uncertain times, and has suggested Congress suspend the collection of business taxes, including payroll tax, for the duration of the pandemic.
In addition, it has asked for changes to offer tax breaks to pass-through entities, which are businesses that pay taxes through the owners, like many architecture firms.
The letter, was sent by AIA president Jane Frederick and chief executive officer Robert Ivy, comes amid economic uncertainty caused by the virus.
“The short term hurt is upon us”
David Galullo, who is CEO of American design firm Rapt Studio, said that measures to confirm economic stability were necessary to ensure that businesses could keep afloat.
“The biggest impact is the uncertainty,” Galullo told Dezeen. “There are many reports that have outlined the potential trajectory of the virus globally and the markets are responding to the potential outcome of the potential trajectory but it’s all just guessing.”
“Financial stability is built on the foundations of societal, emotional and systemic stability,” he added. “With uncertainty comes instability, which leads to a big impact on economic health. We are in a ‘wait and see’ situation at the moment, waiting for the world around us to become certain.”
“Construction has all but halted in California”
Galullo said that the short-term effect on the architecture and construction industry was already apparent in California, where all residents are placed under a stay-at-home order.
“From a business perspective, construction has all but halted in California and many of our clients are in a “wait and see” mode,” he said. “The long term impact? No one knows, but the short term hurt is upon us.”
Barry X Ball, who has a gallery in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighbourhood, said the art and design industries were already seeing an impact, after a number of high-profile events were cancelled, like ArtBasel Hong Kong, TEFAF spring New York, Frieze New York, and ArtBasel.
“When travel is severely restricted, the artworld grinds to a complete halt (as has occurred over the last few days),” he said. “When there is great financial uncertainty, art purchases also almost completely dry up.
UK introduces financial package to support businesses
“Even the 0.1 per cent get cautious in a storm. Most galleries – especially small and mid-size ones – do not have deep enough pockets to maintain their staffing levels for long without the sales opportunities provided by art fairs.”
While the support offered by the US remains uncertain, the UK government has introduced a huge financial package, worth an estimated £78 billion, to help companies protect jobs during the crisis.
Under the temporary measures, the government will cover up to 80 per cent of salaries for workers that are “furloughed”, meaning they are still retained as employees but not engaged in any work. Called the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, it will offer payments up to £2,500 per month for each furloughed worker, for up to three months.
The relief package will offer support to a number of small businesses. But the UK’s Creative Industries Federation said more needed to be done to help workers without salaried jobs, including freelancers and self-employed workers.
Photograph is courtesy of Shutterstock.
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Fubiz et Adobe Stock reprennent cette année leur collaboration et mettent en avant les tendances visuelles de 2020.
Pour débuter l’année, nous avons choisi de nous intéresser à la tendance « Handmade Humanism » et à l’intégration de la sensibilité naturelle du « fait main » dans la création digitale.
Il y a quelques semaines, la contributrice Adobe Stock Nadezda Grapes et les 2 artistes Sacrée Frangine ont imaginé des créations en commun.
A l’aide des créations de Nadezda Grapes présentes sur Adobe Stock, Sacrée Frangine a conçu 2 très belles oeuvres colorées et minimalistes.
Nous vous avons proposé sur Facebook de choisir les 5 images Adobe Stock représentant le mieux le thème « Handmade Humanism », un style simple et artisanal qui apporte une touche personnelle dans un monde numérique.
Cette sélection de 5 images vient renforcer le propos fort de ces oeuvres collaboratives en présentant de manière visuelle la volonté et le besoin d’un retour à la simplicité.
Merci aux lecteurs ayant sélectionné ces images, qui viennent alimenter la mosaïque des tendances visuelles de l’année 2020 d’Adobe Stock sur notre site.
© Guoquan
© Anna
If you’re unexpectedly working from home, don’t feel bad if your neglected home office isn’t exactly Instagrammable. Someone always has it worse than you, as these photos clearly show.
“Conveniently close to the fitness center”
“The trick to not getting crumbs in the keyboard: Seal the gaps first with sauces”
“The headphones are red, so I can find them if I ever put them down”
“I like to surround my workspace with reminders of inspirational brands: Newport, Heineken, Red Bull, McDonald’s”
“I didn’t care for the color of the floor, and found an easy way to obscure it”
“I like the convenience of having documents that take me 20 minutes to find, all within arm’s reach”
“Design-wise, I’m going for the ‘Fugitive in a Crawlspace’ look”
“The beauty of working out of a converted school bus: I can just pick up and go, anytime I like. It makes me feel very free”
“I wanted my home office to provide a seamless blend between indoors and outdoors”
“Ironically, I can’t find my ‘Bless This Mess’ sign”
Disaster preppers are often thought of as DIY blue-collar folk, steadily stacking cans inside their self-modified underground shipping containers. But Robert Vicino, founder of the Vivos Group, is betting that there are plenty of moneyed families who also believe in impending global doom, are not interested in learning to build their own hydroponic gardens and would like to ride out the catastrophe in style.
Thus Vicino’s company built Vivos Indiana, an “impervious underground complex” built in a Cold-War-era nuclear shelter and kitted out with luxury amenities. The idea is that you sign up in advance and plunk down $35,000 per person ($25,000 for kids) to secure one of the 80 spots available within the shelter. In the event of disaster, travel to the publicly-undisclosed location in Indiana and make it inside before they lock it down, and then you can survive for a year amidst leather couches, 600-thread-count sheets and gourmet chow.
A fascinating Vice article looks at Vivos’ system, talks to Vicino, and examines the type of paranoia that drives disaster preppers. One thing the article doesn’t mention is the well-rounded community–perhaps society is a better word–that Vivos Indiana is hoping to pull together underground. Think about it: If you’ve got a shelter filled with 80 people whose sole credential is that they each have 35 grand to burn, but none of them know how to turn a wrench or boil water, you’re going to have some problems.
And so Vivos has apparently been selective in their admissions process. The company claims they’ve signed up “active duty and retired military officers, police, combat veterans, security experts, doctors, nurses, surgeons, psychologists, caregivers, nutritionists, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, farmers, lawyers, pilots, teachers, computer and internet professionals, chefs; as well as experts in hospitality, housekeeping, transportation, banking, finance, accounting, management, strategic planning, radio communications, and much more.”
Furthermore the company says “There are very few remaining spaces for this shelter,” and “discounts are available to members with needed skill sets.” (Don’t you feel silly for choosing industrial design as your career? There’s no way your knowledge of injection molding cycle times is going to get you that discount, not when mass production has ceased to exist.)
Now I know what the super-rich among you are thinking–“Do I really want to live side by side in a shelter with, like, plumbers and electricians?” Ew, am I right? Well, don’t worry; all you’ve got to do is skip Indiana and get on the list for Vivos Europa One, their much-larger European shelter—”one of the most fortified and massive underground survival shelters on Earth, deep below a limestone mountain”—designed exclusively for 34 “high net worth families.”
Available by invitation only, each family will be provided a private 2,500 square foot floor area, capable of two-story living quarters, with a build-out potential of up to 5,000 square feet. With fit and finish comparable to a mega-yacht, each family will commission the build-out of their living quarters, to the standard they require…including pools, theaters, gyms, a kitchen, bar, bedrooms and deluxe bathrooms. The possibilities are limited only by each member’s personal desire.
Once each member’s private accommodations are completed, furnished and fully outfitted, their respective quarters will be locked and secured, limiting access only to their family and personal staff prior to lockdown; while Vivos will operate and maintain all common areas (under and above-ground) pending a catastrophic event.
Members will arrive at their own discretion, prior to lockdown, landing their private planes at nearby airports. Vivos helicopters will then be deployed to rendezvous with each member group, and fly them back to the shelter compound, safely secured from the general public, behind sealed and secured gates.
I wonder if either of these places will have any need for a design blogger.
Since Apple announced the first iPad 10 years ago they’ve continued to evolve the tablet from what, at first, felt like an oversized iPhone to a device that’s now a major contender for laptop replacement. We’ve been hands-on with the new iPad Pro since it was announced last week and while at a glance it doesn’t seem like a big update on the previous version, there are two massive changes that make this one stand out. The first is a software update that allows trackpad support, and the second is a new sensor in Apple’s kit-of-parts—LiDAR.
LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a sensor that emits laser light and measures the time it takes for that beam to hit an object. It does this at a very high frequency, allowing it to build a highly accurate 3D model of a space in near real-time. LiDAR sensors are becoming commonplace among cars with some level of autonomous driving capability, but this is the first case we know of using the technology in a hand-held consumer device. The LiDAR sensor in the new iPad Pro is much smaller than the ones you’ll find in a car and, as a result, its range is limited to five meters—but that’s just fine for most creative applications.
The iPad is already a valued tool by architects and interior designers, and the new LiDAR sensor (plus a new ultra-wide camera) definitely creates significant new opportunities. Shapr3D—an architectural and industrial design drawing tool—is one of the first apps promising to update and take advantage of the new sensor and Scene Geometry API. We expect many to follow. For existing augmented reality and human motion capture apps, the LiDAR sensor already feeds them its more accurate data, improving the overall user experience significantly.
As for trackpad support, that actually comes to all iPads with today’s release of iPadOS 13.4. After pairing a trackpad over Bluetooth, an adaptive cursor appears on the iPad screen. For pointing, it’s a simple dot, but the shape shifts based on what you hover over—resulting in a clear communication of what will occur when you click and also keeping the visual sensibility of the user interface super-tidy. Multi-finger gestures are also supported, just like in MacOS.
Now, carrying around a separate trackpad is highly unlikely for most of us, which is why the forthcoming Magic Keyboard is the missing link. It’s a case that protects the tablet, but also has a backlit keyboard and integrated trackpad. There’s a USB-C port in the hinge of the case for pass-through charging and the screen floats cantilevered above the keyboard so that you can adjust the viewing angle as needed.
The latest iPad Pro is available now and the Magic Keyboard will be shipping in May.
Images and video courtesy of Apple
This past February a report from Greenpeace confirmed suspicions about how few plastics, despite being explicitly labelled as recyclable, are not actually being recycled. Looking at this new data, the facts of how much waste single-use plastic is creating through the ill-equipped US recycling system is more undeniable than ever. With this bleak new reminder I found myself once again looking around my apartment, through the cabinets and closets, taking stock of all the problematic plastic I am shackled to. Distressingly, I found plastics to be plentiful in my bathroom.
Shampoos, ointments, creams, and all sorts of liquid soaps packaged in single-use bottles. Which is why the recent kickstarter, FORGO, is interested in etching out plastic packaging from the cosmetic industry. With its first product, a liquid soap alternative, FORGO cuts out the need for single-use plastic soap dispensers. All that is required is their reusable dispenser, a twelve gram paper-packet of soap powder, and 250ml of hot water from the tap. Give it a shake, and with that you have yourself a bottle of liquid soap that foams when it is dispensed. The space-efficient packets of powder are shipped to those who subscribe to the service in recycled cardboard and recycled paper packaging.
Maximizing functionality and sustainability with this minimal design was the goal of Form Us With Love (FUWL), the Stockholm-based studio that designed the product . This alternative for liquid soap is founded upon one notable fact: liquid soap is pretty much water. As are many liquid “personal care” products. While this fact has not been hidden – and actually seems kind of obvious when you think about it – it certainly isn’t advertised.
FORGO saw the truth of liquid soap’s simple mixture as an opportunity for minimizing the impact of an often wasteful product. Though there is another obvious way to avoid all the problems associated with liquid soap products—one could use a bar of soap. This is an already existing ecological solution that FORGO is quick to acknowledge but instead of shrugging their shoulders and moving on, FORGO recognized that people still buy liquid soap and it likely isn’t going anywhere soon. Acknowledging that reality, FORGO appeases the cultural and market ubiquity of liquid soap and offers their refillable system as sustainable alternative to single-use plastic.
In function and the strictly modern design, FORGO lives up to its name. The utilitarian bottle is almost entirely unornamented. Graphically, it is as sterile as you hope to have your hands after using it and the paper packaging is nearly as brief.
No flowers, no flowing honey, no gradients, no sparkles, no bright colors, nor gushing blue waters adorn this soap dispenser. While I admit that I am sometimes charmed by the comically excessive graphics and scent descriptions of Palmolive (Dial), Unilever (Dove), Henkel AG & Co (Softsoap), P&G (Ivory) soap dispensers—the graphic communication of most of these liquid soap products acts only as hollow marketing for these atrocious industrial polluters. FORGO’s soap not only illuminates the fact that liquid soap is basically water but also, through its packaging, it reminds us that so much of visual communication used by soap packaging is as insubstantial as the product it contains.
Soap and the access to sanitation it provides is incredibly important, this has been made brutally apparent in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet relying on excessively designed, single-use plastic to store that soap is simply unnecessary and wasteful. While I would advocate for anyone to just use a bar of soap if they can, FORGO’s deconstruction of liquid soap is a great example of using design as a means of disentangling elaborate and often ecologically-destructive marketing-myths about the products we use everyday.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando is restoring an 18th-century stock exchange building in Paris and turning it into a contemporary art gallery.
Exhibition spaces are being built in a circular concrete structure that sits under the historic painted dome of the Bourse de Commerce.
The project is a collaboration between Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Niney et Marca Architectes, the Pierre-Antoine Gatier architecture agency and building engineering consultant Setec Bâtiment.
French businessman François Pinault, founder of luxury group Kering, commissioned Tadao Ando to transform the heritage building to display some 5,000 artworks he owns.
They previously worked together in Venice, where the architect restored the Palazzo Grassi for Pinault.
Built as a corn exchange in 1767 on the site of a demolished mansion, the Bourse de Commerce was turned into a stock market in the mid 1800s.
Murals depicting trade between the five continents of the world dating from the 17th century decorate the underside of the dome.
Ando decided to work with the existing shape of the building to create an internal gallery without disturbing the historic fabric of the building.
“The circular section, faithful to its urban symmetry, includes a rotunda in its centre,” said the Japanese architect.
“It is within this rotunda that there has been inserted a concrete cylinder with a diameter of thirty metres and a height of nine metres.”
Along with seven exhibition galleries, the concrete shell will contain a reception space and a meditation room.
Underneath, a basement level will hold a 284-seat auditorium in a central cylinder, with a black box-style studio for displaying video and sound installation around the perimeter.
“So far, the concrete for the walls of the cylinder has been set and the project is being completed,” said Ando.
“The structure of the former edifice has not only been conserved, but it remains alive thanks to the creation inside of a new architecture, which extends to the basement,” he added.
“It was a delicate project, but the construction team has done a remarkable job.”
The Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection is due to open to the public in June 2020.
Tadao Ando has also used circular floor plans for the layout of the He Art Museum in Shunde, China, which is due to open later this year.
Photography is by M Tetard unless otherwise stated.
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Breaking news: the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has been postponed until next year as it becomes the latest global event to be impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The summer sports event, which was set to begin in Tokyo on 24 July, will now take place “no later than summer 2021”.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the decision to protect the health of the athletes and attendees of the event.
“In the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the WHO today, the IOC president and the prime minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled,” said a statement from the IOC.
The Olympics will now take place on “a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”
More to follow…
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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.
