Hasta La Ideas

Portugese designer Miguel Vieira Baptista came up with a set of measuring tools for a hypothetical reconstruction of a castle by estimating lengths with his hands.

Units for Reconstruction was made by Miguel Vieira Baptista as part of The Castle in Three Acts, an exhibition in Guimarães Castle inviting artists, architects and designers to explore the themes of construction, destruction and reconstruction.

“After my first visit to the castle I started to work in the office without a measuring tape,” explained the designer. “I just stretched my arms, pointed out dimensions on the wall and defined thickness using my hand.”

He then developed a series of cylinders, blocks and planks that echo some of the proportions of the tenth-century castle.

The approximate sizes and the human scale of the objects allude to the absence of a rigid system of measurement when the castle was built.

One of the cylinders is cut into wedges to act as an angle ruler, while two planks join at a right angle to form a set square.

The objects are made from MDF and painted white, and were arranged inside the castle as though they’d been left behind by a carpenter or stonemason.

Above: Guimarães Castle

The exhibition was held last summer as part of Guimarães’ year as a European Capital of Culture, which also included a tower of straw bales and a tiny cinema where audience members had to crawl like a centipede to get inside – see all installations from Guimarães.

Photographs are by André Cepeda.

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Here’s some more information from the designer:

Units for Reconstruction

During 2012 the Portuguese city of Guimarães hosted a great number of events as part of the programming for the European Capital of Culture. One of these events was the exhibition “The Castle in 3 Acts” where several artists, architects and designers were commissioned to develop work under the idea of construction, destruction and reconstruction.

Above: the designer demonstrates human-scale measurements

Miguel Vieira Baptista’s site-specific work was the towers of the city’s iconic castle, often described as the place where Portugal’s birth took place around the year 1128. A castle by definition is an architectural piece that runs through the endless sequence of the exhibition’s themes.

Miguel Vieira Baptista approached the challenge from a designer’s point of view and developed a series of measuring elements to be used on a hypothetical reconstruction of the castle. The piece consists of large-scale rulers along with several plates and blocks of varying sizes that relate strongly with the existing building.

“After my first visit to the castle I started to work in the office without a measuring tape. I just stretched my arms, pointed dimensions on the wall and defined thickness using my hand.” His collaborators translated these imprecise measures in to technical drawings. The process sounds unusual, but designers often use this approach in the creative process. The metric system can hinder the flow of the design process. He wanted to allude to the nonexistence of a metric logic when the castle was built by accentuating the site, the materials, construction techniques and the human scale.

Above: diagram of installation inside the castle

Miguel Vieira Baptista’s installation explored the idea of tooling for the reconstruction phase. Upon arriving at the 2nd floor of the castle tower, the visitor was left with the impression of entering a carpenter or stonemason’s workshop with all these site-specific units of measure lying on the floor.

Units for Reconstruction
2012
Painted MDF, various dimensions

The Castle in 3 Acts exhibition, Guimarães European Capital of Culture
Collaborators – Pedro Almeida, Rui Lopes, Vanessa Domingues

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Playing on these swings outside an arts centre in Guimarães, Portugal, generates electricity to power lighting under the floor (+ movie).

Oporto- and Berlin-based collective Moradavaga built the installation, titled Swing, outside the brass walls of the International Centre for the Arts Jose de Guimarães, which we reported on following its completion this summer.

Above: movie is by Manfred Eccli and Pedro Cavaco Leitão of Moradavaga

As each swing moves back and forth, a bicycle chain attached to it turns a wheel which then turns a dynamo to activate the light below. The swings are built on a base of wooden pallets, which also hides the mechanical parts.

“Based on the principle of swinging to produce electricity, Swing is also an ode to the rich industrial heritage of Guimarães, reflected in its mechanical devices and sounds evocative of the ones once produced in the factories of the city,” say the designers.

“Traditional hemp rope, wooden beams, bicycle chains, wheels, dynamos and lights complete the material palette used in the installation giving it an old-style look and a low-tech kind of feel,” they add.

Created for the Pop Up Culture programme in Guimarães, which is the European Capital of Culture for 2012, the swings will remain outside the arts centre until 16th November.

Previously on Dezeen we’ve featured a swing attached to the underside of a dramatically cantilevered house and a pair of swings fixed to a raised billboard frame.

We’ve featured a few other installations from Guimarães this year, such as a cinema with upright viewing pods that visitors have to crawl inside and a project that invited locals to lounge on garden furniture in the city’s fountains.

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Photographs are by Moradavaga.

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Portugese studio LIKEarchitects and fashion designer Ricardo Dourado have used beach loungers, garden furniture and toys to get the people of Guimarães in Portugal paddling in the city’s fountains (+ slideshow).

Yellow loungers are lined up inside one narrow fountain, while a deeper fountain can now be accessed by sets of swimming pool stairs.

A wide but shallow fountain is filled with stripy parasols, as well as plastic tables and chairs.

The ‘Olympic pool’ contains inflatable rings and the ‘playland pool’ is full of colourful plastic balls.

Named Fountain Hacks, the temporary installations have won the Performance Architecture prize for urban interventions as part of Guimarães’ year as a European Capital of Culture.

Another ‘urban hack’ we’ve featured on Dezeen is a project by lighting designers Luzinterruptus to stick 400 illuminated silicone nipples onto statues in Madrid.

Photography is by Dinis Sottomayor, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Concept: Located in the interior of Portugal, Guimarães presents a high number of fountains with the quest to reduce somehow the summertime heat. Our proposal, to be implemented during the hottest months, is to intervene on these fountains, enhancing their use by creating a new (water)land of urban opportunities.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Unexpected pertinence: Extending the current notions of public space, the inhabitants of Guimarães are invited to take the maximum profit of these (waterful) mo(nu)ments. The concept is to promote an occupation of the water public spaces by redefining city’s physical limits and deleting the social predefined boundaries. This project is not about beauty, but reinvention – it is about fountain-use upgrade design.

Urban plug-in: Fountain Hacks is an interventive system that takes advantage of the dichotomy between traditional and new – adding new elements to valorise the pre-existence. (Re)Using standard pool stairs, typical waterslides or domestic showers, Fountain Hacks is far away of being an average place.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Social happening: Like Anita Ekberg’s scene at Fontana di Trevi in Federico Fellini’s ‘Dolce Vita’, Guimarães inhabitants will be free to experience the city fountains in a real, uninhibited, way. Taking advantage of the fountains centrality in public spaces, this project seeks to promote these daily actions as a freshly (!) social happening – fountains will become the stage where citizens and tourists are the real-time actors.

Low-tech, maximum effect: Quick and simple to implement, low-tech urban hacks shows city-users they must be part of the city urban planning, calling for a use of public space where hacking becomes an energetic, optimistic design approach. Fountain Hacks promotes places to enjoy and refresh: put your feet into the water as you have always wished; try on the social shower and invite your neighbour to join you; make part of the city users! Bathing suits, towels and changing rooms will, of course, be available for the unprepared adventurers.

Unusual place: Fountain Hacks is a bizarre strategy for extraordinary gathering that goes beyond the long-time established, surprising people with the unexpected and inviting to unforeseen actions. Calling for the contribution of passers-by, Fountain Hacks (re)creates the contemporary use of the public space in a constant dynamic of surprise.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Playful masterplan: Bringing joy to the city, this playful strategy is a Masterplan for a city whose inhabitants will become happier – bathing in fountains is a public demonstration of happiness, only seen when the city’s soccer club achieves something remarkable. Fountain Hacks is about the urban renewal based on the idea that the key to evolve into a pulsating city is to promote the active inhabitancy by the community.

Collective outcome: Fountain Hacks is not a static architecture. It’s a developing system on taking advantage of urban equipments and extending its fields of action. It’s a win-win situation, an urban symbiosis, able to adapt to new contexts and therefore replicable in the essence. It explores the potential of using a traditional monument as platform for a new urban space and questions the social barriers that forbid us to fully enjoy the common space.

Fountain Hacks is a project by a team formed by the architects Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto (LIKEarchitects) with the fashion designer Ricardo Dourado.

Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto are architects formed by FAUP, in 2008. In 2010, upon completion of their course and internship, they founded LIKEarchitects, a studio devoted to the design of ephemeral architectures and intervention in public space. Being of an experimental, provocative and innovative nature, the LIKEarchitects collective is now formed by the young Portuguese architects Diogo Aguiar, João Jesus and Teresa Otto, seeks to combine their basilar architectural knowledge acquired in the renowned Faculty of Architecture of Oporto with other more radical architectural experiences they have had in worldwide reference studios such as UNStudio and OMA in The Netherlands and RCR Arquitectes, in Spain.

The proposed temporary structures, which are attentive to the current socio-economic scenario, aim to boost places and involve the community in a critical participation of urban space, having Installation, Happening and Urban Art as references. LIKEarchitects’ work has been awarded several prizes and been published both in national and international specialized magazines and books.

Ricardo Dourado is a young fashion designer formed in CITEX, in 2003. Upon completion of his course he was invited to present his collection at ModaLisboa in 2004, maintaining its presence in this important Portuguese fashion event since then. In parallel, Ricardo Dourado is also part of the design team of the company Polopique, with studios in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Its recent, but already vast, resume stands out from the nomination for the “Golden Globes” as Best Stylist 2010, the teaching of “streetwear design” in CITEX (2004-2009) as well as its presence with the collection SS10 in the “Wonder Room” of Selfrigdes in London.

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and Ricardo Dourado appeared first on Dezeen.