Hasta La Ideas

How can design schools going online-only to avoid COVID replace that in-studio instructional feel? There are no widely-accepted answers yet, but the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which begins its online-only courses next week, is experimenting with ways to provide remote hands-on learning as well as take advantage of students being out in the world rather than in a classroom.

For the first initiative: “In order to move students away from screens and give them an opportunity to use tactile objects in their studies,” the school writes, “the GSD’s Fabrication Lab has designed, fabricated, and shipped readymade toolkits for a series of core-curriculum courses so students can get designing from day one.”

“For example, students enrolled in the first-term core studio in landscape architecture were shipped kits that include laser-cut parts with which to assemble models, large-scale plots and prints for mapping, and an elm tree leaf plucked from Harvard Yard.”

“For Martin Bechtold’s Structural Design II class, he has asked students to use glue and dry spaghetti to create models, noting that the material is democratic, accessible, and students can easily source spaghetti themselves. The spaghetti’s weakness reinforces the need for precision in work.”

I think the spaghetti’s a good choice, though it is funny to consider some of the students there must’ve clocked macaroni experience in Kindergarten as well. Pasta is a multitalented gift from Italy.

As far as being out in the world, the GSD is pushing remote site visits. “Design students typically rely on site visits and engagement with the local community for their graduate projects, followed by weeks of research back at the school,” they explain. “This process has now been inverted: students will begin by researching their sites of investigation and then use videographer-produced video tours of given sites and connect virtually with local experts throughout the term.”

“For example: in Rahul Mehrotra’s course ‘Extreme Urbanism,’ focused on a stretch of rural Afghanistan, GSD students will partner with NGOs and stakeholders working on the ground, as well as students at Kabul University and other local organizations, to gain as comprehensive an understanding of the site as possible while remote.”

“Interim Urban Planning and Design chair Alex Krieger is filming and producing his traditional walking tour of Boston for an Urban Planning and Design core studio.”

Topping it all off, of course, will be the de rigueur Zoom reviews and collaborative critiques, some of them with “up to 400 viewers from around the world.” And you thought your design school crits were nerve-wracking.

Speaking of your design schools, for those of you in them: What steps are they taking to buttress their online courses with hands-on stuff?

Muzen Audio is a new company (founded 2018) that makes cutesy, retro, SMEG-aesthetic portable speakers like this:

They are, however, preparing to launch a “rugged wireless speaker for outdoor adventurers:”

At first glance I dug the aesthetic: It looks like a WWII radio cobbled out of jeep parts. The variety of knob shapes and orientations, and particularly the large knurled one, drew my eye.

However, the more I look at this, the more I’m thinking: If it’s meant to be ruggedized, oughtn’t each of the knobs–presumably the weak points–be designed with better drop protection? All four of them seem exposed and likely to contact the ground during a drop.

I was searching through the product copy for some description of the protection offered, or any claims about the robustness of the design beyond the fact that it’s called a “rugged wireless speaker,” but could find none. I did, however, find this statement:

“Nature-inspired speaker to highlight real men’s love of outdoor and adventures with all-metal design and military grade quality.”

Designing a product for “real men” sounds curiously un-woke for 2020. That and this caption…

“The unique design of the attractive metal volume knob brings you to the wonderful mechanical world”

…make me wonder where their copywriters are based. In this economy, couldn’t they at least hire an English major or marketing intern to tighten up the copy? (Sorry, pet peeve.)

In any case, the Muzen Wild Mini is due to be Kickstarted soon, and hopefully we’ll see some explanatory details in the campaign.

What do you think, would you take this on a camping trip, or leave it safe in the Subaru?

Armenian architectural studio SNKH has created a pop-up cinema informed by Bedouin tents outside the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow.

Named the Garage Screen, the pop-up cinema was built in Garage Square of Moscow’s Gorky Park, directly opposite the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art which was designed by Dutch studio OMA.

SNKH‘s temporary structure will host a programme of Russian and international films. The studio’s design, which was selected from 136 submissions in an open competition, directly references the building’s temporary nature.

“Temporary architecture is pretty much close to nomad architecture,” said SNKH co-founder Armine Snkhchyan.

“We wanted to highlight its temporary, ephemeral nature,” she told Dezeen. “From day one, we knew that it should be light and should seem kind of fragile, with no walls or hard barriers as constructive elements.”

The studio described the structure as an “inverted Bedouin tent”, with the cinema enclosed within a PVC membrane hung from an external steel frame.

The building, which has the majority of its structure placed on the outside, also references the high-tech architecture of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano.

“In our work, we use multiple references,” explained Snkhchyan. “From Bedouin tents as an example of traditional nomad architecture to works of Russian constructivists, early works of Renzo Piano and many others.”

“Those references may not be clearly recognisable at first sight, but they’ve heavily influenced our work,” she continued. “We’ve envisioned a light external bearing structure that works on its limit and used a PVC membrane as a cover.”

SNKH also aimed to ensure that the temporary building would not fight for attention with the OMA-designed museum it stands near.

“As it is a temporary structure we thought that we could deal with the location in an easier manner,” said Snkhchyan.

“The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is very dominant on the square. We knew that our project should not be ‘noisy’, but at the same time, it should be bold. We hope we’ve managed to achieve that effect.”

While the building is not directly recognisable as a cinema, the studio created a series of hints to its function.

“We tried to highlight its function by showing the contour of the amphitheatre on the facades and the ceiling membrane goes up, towards the screen inside creating a recognizable silhouette,” said Snkhchyan.

“Maybe it is not immediately recognisable as a cinema, but its spatial solutions should give a hint that there’s some kind of auditorium inside.”

Within the cinema, the auditorium has faceted red walls with the roof structure visible and supporting sound baffles. Visitors will be seated on individual chairs.

The number of chairs within the cinema was almost halved to meet social distancing rules imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Fortunately, our design had very useful advantages in these circumstances: the pavilion has four entrances which allows us to organise the flow of people, and due to structural peculiarities and the tension of the membrane, the pavilion has natural ventilation,” explained Snkhchyan.

“The only thing that has changed was the number of the seats. The auditorium was meant for 450 visitors – now its capacity is 225 for social distancing reasons.”

Other recently completed cinemas include a colonnaded movie theatre by Tracks Architectes, which occupies a former French convent.

Design agency Layer has also designed a seat for social distancing in cinemas called Sequel that is knitted from antibacterial copper threads.

Photography courtesy of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

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FKA twigs is well known for her creative and experimental approach to her self-directed music videos, but she has also attracted the attention of a number of high profile collaborators over the years, from Andrew Thomas Huang on recent video Cellophane to Spike Jonze for Apple’s 2018 Homepod ad.

The musician’s latest collaboration is with director Hiro Murai, best known for his work with Donald Glover on TV series Atlanta and Childish Gambino music video This is America.

The pair co-conceived the video for Sad Day, taken from twigs’ sophomore album Magdalene, after she underwent three years of training in a Chinese martial art called Wushu under the guidance of Master Wu, the highest ranking Wushu master in the west.

Filmed in London pre-lockdown, the video stars twigs alongside actor Teake and sees the musician transform into the hero she always wanted to watch in mainstream cinema while growing up – putting her skills with a sword to good to use in the process.

It’s not the first time that twigs has introduced experimental forms of movement into her practice; the video for Cellophane took a year’s worth of gruelling pole-performance training to realise, after she decided that she needed to be able to pole dance in order to bring her idea for the visual narrative to life.

“I just think that if I’m going to put my name to something, then I want to be proud of all of it, and if I’m going to be proud of all of it, then I need to be involved in all of it. I like the whole complete vision,” she told CR in a recent interview.

Read the full interview with FKA twigs from CR’s 40th anniversary issue here; fkatwi.gs hiromurai.com

The post FKA twigs and Hiro Murai team up on martial arts epic for Sad Day video appeared first on Creative Review.

Newtab-22 has used waste seashells salvaged from the seafood and aquaculture industries to develop a sustainable material that resembles concrete.

Named Sea Stone, the material is made by grinding down shells that are destined for landfill before combining them with natural, non-toxic binders. This grants the Sea Stone a terrazzo-like aesthetic.

According to Newtab-22, Sea Stone could become a sustainable alternative to concrete in the design of small-scale products, as the two materials share similar properties. This is because seashells are rich in calcium carbonate, otherwise known as limestone, which is used to make cement – a key ingredient of concrete.

Sea Stone evolved from Newtab-22’s ambition to help alleviate the issue of waste in the seafood industry, which it claims results in seven million tonnes of seashells discarded every year. The majority of this waste ends up in landfills or is dumped on beaches.

“Even though some of the seashells have been recycled and used as fertilisers, the majority of them are being thrown into landfills or by the seaside,” explained Newtab-22.

“The discarded seashells, which are uncleaned or rotten, have not been cleared away at all and they have been piling up near the beach for a long time, thus causing odour pollution and polluting the surrounding land in the long run,” the studio continued.

“Sea Stone proposes the use of discarded seashells to create environmentally and economically sustainable material rather than contributing to the world’s rubbish problem.”

The process of making Sea Stone involves grinding down the shells and mixing them with natural binders. They are then added to a mould and left to solidify into concrete-like pieces.

This method is currently carried out manually to avoid the use of heat, electricity and chemical treatments and ensure the process is as sustainable and affordable as possible.

It results in variations in the sizes, textures and colours of the shell fragments and means that each piece of Sea Stone unique. Differences can also occur by altering the quantities of shells and binders, or by adding coloured dyes.

Newtab-22 has experimented with an array of natural binders in the development of Sea Stone, including sugar and agar. It is now reliant on two undisclosed and patent-pending sources.

The material is currently being developed for commercial purposes and has so far been used to make products such as decorative tiles, tabletops, plinths and vases. 

However, it will not be available as a concrete alternative for large-scale or structural projects.

While the properties of the concrete and Sea Stone are similar, to truly replicate the strength of traditional concrete required in large-scale projects like buildings, an energy-intensive heating process would be required.

This would be comparable to the method used to make cement, which accounts for half of all the CO2 emissions that result from using concrete.

“The power of the material is different,” explained Hyein Choi, co-founder of Newtab-22, told Dezeen. “We do not want to harm the environment in the process or the outcome.”

“If you put high energy and cost, it is highly possible to use Sea Stone as real cement. It is paradoxical and controversial, we think, as this leads to secondary pollution,” she added.

Newtab-22’s interest in using discarded materials developed while its founders, Choi and Jihee Moon, were enrolled on the Royal College of Art‘s Design Products course.

The pair have now moved to Seoul, South Korea, to continue developing the project as they claim the issue of seafood waste is rife in the country.

“We started the project while in London and then we came to Seoul, South Korea,” said Choi.

“This transition allows us to collect discarded seashells in a much bigger scale than what we would accomplish in the UK as the south of South Korea is suffering from the removal of tons of discarded seashells, and the aquafarm and the seafood industry is huge.”

Sea Stone has been longlisted for the Dezeen Awards 2020 in the Sustainable design category. The project also featured at the Virtual Design Festival as part of the Ventura Projects collaboration. 

Other new and unusual materials featured on Dezeen that are made from discarded shells are the Tômtex leather alternative and the recyclable bioplastic called Shellworks.

The post Sea Stone is a concrete-like material made from shells appeared first on Dezeen.