Hasta La Ideas

Slovenia-based graphic designer Jure Tovrljan has modified the logos of famous companies to reflect social distancing. While some are a mere play of words on that corporation’s catchphrase, others are compelling visual rearrangements:

We’ve saved the best for last:

The world, as a whole, has started to care for turtles and has quickly moved on to use eco-friendly straws. The options are metal straws and paper straws. Metal straws are good for homes and for people to carry them to their office but it is an inconvenient option for eateries. So cafes and restaurants have adopted paper straws as they are easily recyclable and don’t require the effort of cleaning. However, the only problem with paper straws is that they get soggy and your drink will taste like wet paper and you might accidentally eat a bit of it – both things don’t leave a good “taste” in your mouth and can deter people from using sustainable straws. Straw Wars – sustainable products vs drinks that taste like paper, who will win?

To solve this behavioral and environmental issue a Warsaw-based company has designed a better alternative straw made with dried stems! It solves the biggest problem we face with paper straws, it does not soak the liquid and it does not add any flavor to the drink – it is true. Stem straws work for both hot and cold drinks so we can make the collective effort to reduce the impact of plastic straws on the environment. The USA alone uses 500 million straws daily so you can imagine what the total global usage would be. According to One Less Straw fund, every year, as a result of swallowing pieces of plastic debris, 100,000 marine animals and about a million seabirds are die. This is why we need to make the switch to sustainable straws, so if you keep losing your metal straw then get a pack of STRAWS which has 50 stem straws and comes in 100% recycled cardboard packaging.

The inspiration behind the STRAWS was an old childhood memory – when you visit your grandmother in the village, go out into the field, grab a spikelet and drink fresh milk through it. Those very children grew up and turned to their roots to make this ingenious sustainable product that reduces the toxic impact of plastic on our environment. The product was inspired by Slavic traditions of making decor dried stems. The wicker shapes on the packaging are called “spiders” because in centuries-old Slavic culture it is believed that “spiders” protect the houses of villagers from fires, hurricanes and other natural disasters which made it a fitting symbol for the straws protecting nature.

Designer: PG Brand Reforming

Finnish artist Kari Kola used myriads of emerald and blue lights to transform an area of Ireland‘s Connemara mountains into what he claims was “the largest site-specific light artwork ever created”.

The Savage Beauty installation comprises 1,000 large lamps spread over three miles of the Irish mountain range flanking Loch na Fuaiche in north Connemara.

The artwork flooded the undulating topography in vibrant, pulsating colours. Intended to highlight the beauty of this remote landscape, the green and blue light was reflected in the loch and illuminated the low-lying clouds.

Kola was commissioned to create the artwork as part of the Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture events programme.

The installation takes its name after a quote by Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, who described Connemara as “a savage beauty”.

“Since I can’t paint, I paint with light,” said Kola, who has produced more than 2,000 installations in unique locations, including illuminating Unesco’s Paris headquarters for the opening of the 2015 Year of Light, and lighting Stonehenge for World Heritage Day in 2018.

“I’m also interested in light beyond its artistic value,” the artist added. “Everything on the planet is based on light. If I can choose, I always work with nature because that’s the best art that we have.”

It took several weeks to install the lights, as well as the 20 kilometres of cables connected to 16 generators that were deposited by helicopter across the mountainside.

Plans for up to 20,000 people to participate in self-guided walks to view the artwork over the St Patrick’s weekend had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

However, the light show went ahead privately and was documented in a film made available as a “digital edition” for the wider public to view without needing to visit the site.

“I am very disappointed that the public exhibition of this work had to be cancelled,” said Kola, “but I hope that the digital edition will show how we played with scale in Connemara and created something that people would not expect.”

Studio Drift also utilises lights to create captivating installations. The Amsterdam-based studio’s latest work saw it program 300 drones to perform a routine at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This installation was initially held in Miami Beach, where 300 drones were choreographed to mimic a flock of birds.

The post Kari Kola illuminates Irish mountainside with 1,000 lights appeared first on Dezeen.

White-painted bricks and pale timber reveals define this home in Spain by Escribanorosique Arquitects, set around a series of paved courtyard spaces.

Called Casa SD, the house is located close to the city of Valladolid in northwest Spain.

External patios on both levels act as outdoor extensions of its living spaces.

“The plot is located where the views out are not of particular interest,” Escribanorosique Arquitects co-founder Esther Escribano Rivera told Dezeen.

“So we decided that the idea of building the house around a landscaped, external space made a lot of sense.”

Two courtyards positioned to follow the sun throughout the day organise the plan of the home.

To the east a long, thin courtyard is aligned with the main entrance, dividing the home into a block housing the garage and plant room and another housing all of the living spaces.

A square courtyard sits in the centre of the living area, hugged by an L-shaped kitchen, living and dining area.

This courtyard spills out onto an external patio shielded by a slatted wooden partition, before opening out to a garden with a pool.

“The living areas are a series of connected spaces, which can keep their own character and independence with no actual divisions,” said the practice.

Sliding glass doors connect the living spaces to the internal courtyard.

External windows have been kept to a minimum and small in size.

Miniature windows provide glimpses between internal spaces.

On the first floor, a high parapet surrounds a terrace connecting to the guest bedroom,.

Large, wood-lined openings, in contrast to the rest of the home, provide views out over the landscape.

“The terrace on the first floor is the only place where we generate openings which look out towards the landscape, over the surrounding residential properties and towards the hills,” said Rivera.

A simple palette of white brick, timber, built-in furniture and concrete floors creates open and bright living spaces.

“We think it is important that materials express themselves, so we decided not to hide or cover them, except for the white paint we applied to the brick,” said Rivera.

“We love the defined shadows that the sun produces in Spain, and white painted brickwork maximises this effect whilst also helping to minimise the massing.”

Escribanorosique Arquitects was founded in 2007 by Esther Escribano Rivera and Miguel Angel Rosique Valverde.

A similar strategy was adopted by Architect Bernardo Richter for a recent home in Brazil, which features an almost windowless brick exterior and looks into a central courtyard.

Photography is by Juan Carlos Quindós.

The post Escribanorosique Arquitects use white bricks and timber for house in Spain appeared first on Dezeen.

Aaron Betsky, president of Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture at Taliesin, is leaving the post after a bitter fight to save the experimental institution. Here he details the behind-the-scenes battle to save the school.

For the last five years, I have led a small, experimental architecture school called the School of Architecture at Taliesin. Now it is being threatened with extermination. Herewith my thoughts on the matter.

There is no other architecture school in the world that is quite like the School of Architecture at Taliesin. It is both a fully accredited graduate programme that functions at a very high level, and an intentional community where the students, some of us faculty and staff, and several members of the original apprenticeship programme Frank Lloyd Wright started in 1932 live and work together.

The programme is again under a severe threat

Together, we not only learn about design, but also eat, help to cook and engage in a variety of cultural events. For the last five years, since the last attempt the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation made to close to the school, we have been building on Wright’s legacy. With buildings and thoughts, we reimagine what an experimental, organic architecture might be, and how it would help make a designed environment that is more sustainable, open, and beautiful. Now the School of Architecture at Taliesin’s programme is again under a severe threat.

When Wright and his third wife, Ogilvanna, started the apprenticeship programme, they envisioned a different kind of learning community, rooted in the arts and crafts ideals of the 19th century and therefore analogous to the Bauhaus, which was then just about to close. The difference was that they saw the programme as being both more focused and broader than similar experiments in design education and communities.

It was to be centred around the work of one man – Wright himself – but also dedicated to a diverse set of activities, ranging from agriculture and cuisine to dance and music, as well as “learning by doing”: building the structures that housed its activities.

That meant converting the school Wright had designed for two of his aunts on the Taliesin property outside of Spring Green, Wisconsin, as well as large parts of the house he occupied there, for use by the programme. In 1937, the community also began building its winter home, Taliesin West near Scottsdale in Arizona, explicitly for that purpose.

Over the years, the foundation became more and more removed from its original stakeholders

Wright died in 1959, followed by his widow in 1985. They left all of their property, both physical and intellectual, to a foundation they had started to continue the apprenticeship’s work. Late in her life, Ogilvanna Wright realised that the fellowship, as it had come to be called, needed to be continued in a more organised fashion.

She split it into what came to be the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and an architecture office (which closed in 2003), while opening the properties up to tours and licensing Wright’s designs to support the activities on the two sites.

Over the years, the foundation became more and more removed from its original stakeholders and evolved its self-image into being the custodian of Taliesin and Taliesin West. The organisation interpreted the will by believing that, by giving tours and licensing products, they were educating the general public in the importance and meaning of Wright’s work. In reality, most of the income they generated went, it seems to many observers, to support and ever larger and more well-paid staff.

In 2013, the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), which accredited the school as an institution of higher learning (it is also accredited as a professional school by the NAAB and by the Arizona Private and Post-Secondary Education Board), pointed out to the foundation that, if it was going to engage in post-secondary education, it should have as its primary mission the support of that activity.

That would not preclude the foundation from continuing its work selling objects or giving tours as many other colleges and universities do; it would just reaffirm why the Wrights had started the organisation. The foundation board refused to do so, instead announcing that they were going to close the school.

The foundation made a series of demands on the school in return for letting it continue to use its historic homes

The same sort of outcry as has arisen in recent weeks led the foundation to offer the school an alternative: if it could raise enough money to support itself for at least a five-year period (an amount it decided would be $2 million), it could continue as an independent entity. To the foundation’s surprise, the school raised the necessary funds before the deadline of 31 December 2015.

The school then set about applying to the HLC to have the accreditation transferred to the new entity, as well as recruiting students (something it was not able to do for over a year), continuing to raise funds, and developing long-term plans. However, the HLC denied its original request, requesting more information. The school worked to provide the data and assurances the commission asked for and the following year the accreditation was transferred.

However, the foundation made a series of demands on the school in return for letting it continue to use its historic homes – large parts of which were built by its students, faculty, and staff, and which the Wrights had left for its use – that proved extremely onerous.

The foundation, which had already sold its archives and much of the land the Wrights had left in its care, felt that, if it gave the school the academic freedom its regulators expected it to have, it would lose control over its copyrights and trademarks, as it could not control what student work would look like. They therefore would not let the school use its name and suggested instead that it use the geographic designator “at Taliesin”.

The school’s growth was not as fast as it had planned

The newly named School of Architecture at Taliesin had to rebrand itself completely and communicate that its new name still embodied the legacy it carried on. The foundation also insisted that the school restrict its fundraising in various ways, put limits on the uses of the property, and in general set about placing a plethora of rules and regulations, which it felt were necessary to protect the historic properties, on the school and its community.

Because of these difficulties, but also because the school was now a small entity responsible for its own operations, its growth was not as fast as it had planned in the many planning documents it produced. Though it continued to meet fundraising targets and the quality of students’ work improved at a rapid rate, the school missed enrolment targets and had trouble attracting and retaining qualified personnel (although not faculty). The latter issue was exacerbated by, in the eyes of the school staff felt, was an extremely difficult working environment created by the foundation.

The foundation also refused to guarantee or provide a loan that the school always had indicated it would need as it grew, and which the foundation had indicated it would provide in the agreement it made with the school. The school was therefore forced to find a lender who would provide it with operating capital without any collateral or independent borrowing history.

It was able to do so eventually, obtaining a line of credit from JP Morgan Chase and another one from the Tawani Foundation. Meanwhile, the school attracted a great deal of attention and students at an ever-higher level. Graduating students were getting placed at world-renowned firms and the school was thriving.

The school has met the foundation’s seemingly unreasonable demands

Throughout this process, however, the foundation appeared to doubt the school’s ability to survive and did very little to support it – beyond the agreed-upon donation of the use of the property, which it values at an absurdly high amount – and operating support that declined to zero as of last year. Even still, the school has met the foundation’s onerous demands by paying not only for all of its food and certain services but also by paying the foundation a general administrative fee.

The agreement between the foundation and the school expires at the end of this fiscal and academic year (31 July 2020). Over the last year, the foundation indicated that it would make strong demands for increased payments from the school, as well as saying that the school needed to somehow prove its viability and plans.

When the school tried to provide such documentation, the foundation did not react. The school board chair felt he had developed a compromise by agreeing to a two-year extension of the current arrangement, during which time the school and the foundation could collaborate on developing programmes and structures that both would felt be more viable (I had announced my resignation as school president in November of 2019).

At the school’s board meeting on 25 January of this year, however, the foundation board chair announced that the foundation would not enter into a new agreement, let alone continue the existing one, “under any circumstances”.

The school board enquired as to whether the foundation board would change its mind if the school found more money to pay them, and the board chair answered in the negative. The three members of the foundation board present at the meeting explained that they felt that their mission would be better fulfilled using Taliesin and Taliesin West for educational programmes “that would reach thousands rather than the few students there,” and that would bring in more money.

The school was given two choices: close immediately, or give up its accreditation and continue for one more year while developing programmes with the foundation. However, the school would have to continue paying the foundation’s fees while not being able to recruit students, retain those who sought an accredited degree or raise funds. This would have been financially impossible, so the school was forced to take the first option and announce its closure.

All we need is for the foundation to continue the task for which Frank Lloyd and Ogilvanna Wright founded them

Since then, shows of support and solidarity have come from students, faculty, staff, and alumni (the foundation proposed to the alumni group, the fellows, that it would develop new educational programmes, and the fellows declined, opposing the foundation’s actions and pledging to raise and additional $500,000 for the school). The school was able to affirm that a promising exchange programme, which would bring in a minimum of six full tuition-paying students every year, could still occur.

Over 12,000 people (and counting) signed a petition started by the students. Educators and professionals from around the world pledged their support. The Arizona Private and Post-Secondary Education Board, at its 25 February meeting, pleaded with the foundation and the school to go to mediation to resolve their differences – an option the school immediately accepted, but which the foundation has not indicated any openness to.

To make it clear that the school was not closing because it wanted to, but because the foundation was forcing it to, and because of this outpouring of support, the school board voted on 5 March to rescind its vote and remain open. It feels it is obliged to its students, to the Wright’s will and legacy, and to the architecture community in general, to fight to continue its work. It believes it has a clear – though difficult – path forward and is asking the foundation to give it that chance.

When I joined the school in 2015, I believed that it could build on its legacy to become the best experimental architecture school in the country. Though I am now leaving and though the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has done its best to stymie our vision and spirit, I am still convinced that the school is well on its way to fulfilling that goal. All we need is for the foundation to continue the task for which Frank Lloyd and Ogilvanna Wright founded it.

The photo of Taliesin West is by Andrew Pielage.

The post “The Frank Lloyd Wright foundation has done its best to stymie our vision and spirit” appeared first on Dezeen.