Hasta La Ideas

Seven graduate students studying adaptive reuse at RISD have reimagined uses for the art-deco Superman Building in Providence, Rhode Island.

The art-deco building was built in 1928 by Walker & Gillette and George Frederick Hall as the Industrial Trust Building. It has been vacant for almost eight years and is listed by the Providence Preservation Society (PPS) as an endangered property.

Its visual similarity to the Daily Planet office building in the DC comics series influenced its nickname as the Superman Building.

Saving Superman, the spring studio course for graduate students, was led by the Interior Architecture department head Liliane Wong and faculty members Elizabeth Debs and Jonathan Bell at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Students worked with the PPS and the city planning office to each propose their own design for the interiors of the vacant structure. Each of the proposals was presented virtually on 22 May and can be viewed online. Read on for the seven designs:

The Second Act by Ankit Mandawewala

Ankit Mandawewala’s proposal involves converting the building into several theatre and performance spaces. A jazz bar occupies the basement level and terraces would be situated on the higher floors.

Large LED screens cover a portion of the steel-framed structure to create a drive-in theatre on the city streets below.

Super Farmer by Shreya Anand

Shreya Anand has suggested converting the structure into a vertical urban farm that uses hydroponic technology. In the design, the walls and platforms of the 20 storey atrium are filled with plants that could provide food for local restaurants.

The top floor of the building is occupied by several dining options promoting a farm to table scheme.

Synaptic City by Michele Katora

Synaptic City is a biotech and science innovation centre outfitted with laboratories. They can be adapted to research a number of technology-related projects such as wind turbine production, interstellar satellites, artificial intelligence or medicine.

Beyond Years by Rashmi Ravishankar

Beyond Years is a cwith recreational rooms, housing and healthcare resources. The coronavirus outbreak prompted Rashmi Ravishankar to research air quality and its relationship to virus transmission.

Garden spaces inside the building are included as part of the scheme to purify the air and also serve as a therapeutic resource for the residents.

Super Normal by Yiren Mao

Yiren Mao has imagined what city living could be like following the pandemic. It separates the building into three towers that offer, residential units, offices, retail stores and other community facilities such as a library and outdoor dog park.

The middle portion of the building would house communal resources such as laundry and recreation space, with a co-working tower and living quarters in the adjacent towers. Restaurants, stores and a dog walking trail would occupy the building’s lower levels.

Expedition Superman by Nameera Najib

Najib has designed a corporate headquarters for international toy company Hasbro, which is located in Providence.

Features of the colourful interiors include an exploratorium with a domed planetarium, play scapes with twisted slides and other interactive gadgetry that promotes play.

Vertical Thrills by Hongjia Zhou

Vertical Thrills transforms the historic building into an amusement park and tourist destination that could earn revenue. It involves opening the space up to install equipment for indoor skydiving, bungee jumping and a massive climbing wall.

In her drawings Hongjia Zhou has mimicked the style of the DC Superman comic strips in an homage to the building and its nickname.

Images courtesy Rhode Island School of Design.

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YouTuber and digital fabrication enthusiast Ivan Miranda has created a sort of roving plotter that “prints” on sand, using fifty talons. The effect is reminiscent of skywriting or dot matrix printing:

“I made a sand drawing robot with 50 miniature servos and a two half tanks,” Miranda writes. “I use an Arduino Mega 2560 to read, from an SD card, a text file with the desired image and send the servo position data to another two Arduino Mega units. That then sends the adequate signals to the servos. Five DC to DC converters connected to a 6S LiPo battery provide enough power to support the stalling current of all 50 servos at once.

“Two half tanks provide enough grip and torque to drag all the servos through the sand. The entire thing weighs around 14 kg in working order (with the batteries on) so I had to build a tailor-made trailer to carry the thing, as there’s quite a walking distance to the test field.”

Here’s how he made it:

VDF products fair: Slovenian brand Rex Kralj has reimagined the Mosquito Chair by mid-century designer and architect Niko Kralj as a wooden bar stool.

Mosquito Bar Stool is distinguished by the same plywood seat as the 1953 Mosquito Chair, which has a distinctive “winged form” that resembles the bodies of the flying insects.

The frames of the stools are made with the same plywood as the folded seat, available with either a natural or dark-stained finish, and teamed with a slender footrest made from stainless steel.

According to Rex Kralj, the Mosquito Bar Stool was developed by art director Bart Schilder “to fulfill the potential of Niko Kralj’s original designs”, and its launch coincides with the brand’s update and production of the Mosquito Chair.

“By virtue of the seat’s winged form, the Mosquito Chair is celebrated as one of Niko Kralj’s most inventive designs,” said the Ljubljana-based brand, which was founded in 2012 to honour the work of Kralj.

“Composed in 1953 by Niko Kralj, the Mosquito chair went into production only recently thanks to the efforts of Rex Kralj.”

Product: Mosquito Barstool
Brand: Rex Kralj

About VDF products fair: the VDF products fair offers an affordable launchpad for new products during Virtual Design Festival. For more details email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Sonia Boyce, Elvira Dyangani Ose, David Kohn and others will take part in a panel discussion about the role of art and culture in shaping the built environment, as part of Therme Art’s collaboration with Virtual Design Festival today. Tune in from 3:00pm UK time.

The talk is organised in partnership with the British Council and is the third instalment of Therme Art‘s new initiative, Wellbeing Culture Forum, which is a programme of online discussions that explore the role of culture and art during the coronavirus pandemic.

Therme Art is the creative arm of the Therme Group and provides artworks to its spas and resorts around the world.

Titled the Social Culture of Cities – Shaping a Participatory Reality, the third session of the series will explore the role of art and culture in shaping how we live in cities.

The panel will discuss the ways in which artists can contribute to the planning and design of urban architecture and whether art and architecture can come together in order to create urban spaces equipped for the challenges posed by climate change.

The panel will be co-moderated by the CEO and curator of Therme Art Mikolaj Sekutowicz, and director of the British Council’s visual arts programme Emma Dexter.

On the panel is London-based artist Sonia Boyce who has been chosen to create the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021, the first black woman to receive the commission. Boyce is also a professor of black art and design at the University of the Arts in London.

The panel will also feature Elvira Dyangani Ose, director and chief curator of London-based art space the Showroom and London-based architect David Kohn.

Also joining the panel is Cedar Lewishon, curator at the Southbank Centre in London, Gavin Wade, director of Birmingham-based artist-run gallery Eastside Projects and Suzy Wilson, artistic director of multi-disciplinary performing arts group Clod Ensemble.

The talk is the third in Virtual Design Festival’s partnership with Therme Art. The first panel discussion in the series, which featured Hans Ulrich Obrist, Frida Escobedo, Stefano Boeri and more, explored the relationship between art and architecture.

The second panel of the series featured a discussion about the value of live cultural events amidst global unrest with Es Devlin, Zoé Whitely and Marc Spiegler among others.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 10 July 2020. It brings the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

To find out what’s coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Alice Pegna est une architecte d’intérieur basée à Paris. Après ses études aux Ateliers de Sèvres et à l’école Camondo de Paris, elle s’est lancée dans l’architecture sans pour autant renoncer à ses projets artistiques personnels, toujours tournés vers l’études des structures qui composent la nature.

« Ex-Nihilo » est le projet que nous vous présentons ici : une série de structures en spaghetti qui enveloppent, telles des protections, des corps inertes, des silhouettes indéfinies. Cette armure viendrait alors former un exosquelette et orner ces corps tout en les enfermant.
Pour cette réalisation il fallait trouver un matériau léger, aérien et fragile, pouvant se briser à n’importe quel moment et évoquant subtilement l’aspect éphémère de la vie et du corps humain. Le spaghetti a été pour elle une évidence, il rassemblait l’ensemble de ces critères tout en étant une matière périssable.

Ces merveilleuses compositions sont ainsi aussi une réflexion sur la péremption des choses : « « Rien ne se perds, rien ne se créer, tout se transforme » disait Anaxagore. L’artiste n’est pas créateur, il façonne et nous procure des émotions et des ressentis au travers de ses oeuvres. L’art est avant tout un partage de sensations, il est libre dans son interprétation. Nous, artistes ne faisons que suggérer » nous explique-t-elle.