Hasta La Ideas

James Rosenquist’s “The Richest Person Gazing at the Universe Through a Hubcap” (2011), one of 26 works donated to the Artists for Haiti auction (Photo: David Zwirner)

Earlier this year, actor Ben Stiller and gallerist extraordinaire David Zwirner teamed up to organize Artists for Haiti, an art auction to benefit huminatiarian efforts in the wake of the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake that took 230,000 lives. Months of work on the project have paid off in the form of a jaw-dropping selection of 26 pieces—most created specifically for the sale—that will go on the block at Christie’s on the evening of Thursday, September 22, in New York. Artists including Jasper Johns, Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Cecily Brown, and Raymond Pettibon have donated works, and they’re not standard benefit-auction fare. Mamma Andersson has contributed a haunting oil called “Night Train” (2011), and Neo Rauch is represented by a breathtaking new canvas of alienated souls poised to break into song in a technicolored forest. In “Le juif errant” (2011), Francis Alÿs depicts a figure traversing a map while carrying the built world on his shoulders. The canvas could function as a new identity for Architecture for Humanity, one of several nonprofits and NGOs that all of the proceeds from the Artists for Haiti auction will support. Learn more about the auction and check out all of the works in person at David Zwirner (September 6-14) or at Christie’s (September 17-20). Click here to watch Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, who has written a text in the Artists for Haiti auction catalogue, discuss the situation in Haiti during his recent appearance on Charlie Rose.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Boston studio Ruhl Walker Architects have completed a wildlife recovery centre in Hawaii.

The centre provides a facility for the treatment of native wildlife, as well as rooms for research, training and education.

The walls of the building are covered with fibre-cement panels and transparent corrugated polycarbonate.

A sheltered terrace separates the education room from the main building and leads out to a garden where native plants are grown.

Large openings in the walls also open the education room out to the garden, while narrow slits create a large louvered window in the fibre-cement facade.

Another building from the Dezeen archive to house animals is a giraffe enclosure at a Rotterdam zoo – see the story here.

Photography is by William Ruhl.

Here are some more details from Ruhl Walker Architects:

The Hawai’i Wildlife CenterHalaula, Hawai’ianticipated completion, November 2011

The Hawai’i Wildlife Center is a non-profit conservation organization which will operate Hawai’i’s first wildlife recovery center when this building is completed in late 2011. Located in Halaula, North Kohala, on the Big Island of Hawai’i, the HWC is dedicated to the conservation and recovery of Hawai’i’s vulnerable, too often endangered native wildlife through hands-on treatment, research, training, science education, and cultural programs. The new complex will consist of three integrated and sustainably designed components: a wildlife care and response facility, an interpretive and outreach lanai and native species garden, and an open-air education pavilion.

The design of the HWC is an abstraction of the archetypal Hawaiian commercial architecture of the nearby towns of Hawi and Kapa’au, with a planar front facade concealing conventional (affordable) shed and gable-roofed forms behind. The front facade of the HWC is a collage of flush fiber cement lap siding and trim of varying dimensions held apart to enhance natural ventilation to the open air education pavilion, lanai, and staging porch. At the education pavilion, these fiber cement slats are modulated to create an oversized ‘window’ facing the street. Behind the main facade, the walls of the treatment facility are sheathed in locally fabricated corrugated steel, while the walls of the staging porch and education pavilion are sheathed in translucent corrugated polycarbonate. The HWC will be naturally ventilated and cooled by the dependable trade winds, its water will be stored in catchment tanks and solar heated, and its non-emergency electrical needs will be met by roof mounted photovoltaics.

Click above for larger image

Client: Hawai’i Wildlife Center
Architect: Ruhl Walker Architects
Associate Architect, Construction Administration: Rhoady Lee Architecture and Design
Landscape Architect: Umemoto Cassandro Design Corporation
General Contractor: Tinguely Development, Inc.
Construction Manager: Meridian Construction & Development
LEED Certification and Development: Ryan Associates General Contractors
Structural Engineer: William Blakeney Structural Engineers
Civil Engineer: Peter JK Dahlberg, PE, LLC
Mechanical Engineer: Mark Morrison And Associates
Electrical Engineer: Smithsonian / SAO
Wastewater system and solar photovoltaic engineering: Kohala Engineering
Land Survey: Pattison Land Surveying Inc.
Windows and doors: Coastal Windows
Plumbing Fixtures: Kohler

See also:

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Savannehuis by LAM Architects	Aviary by Group8 with Guscetti & Tournier	Elephant House by Foster + Partners

If it works as it’s intended to, designers will love it: Wacom’s upcoming Inkling device bridges the gap from analog to digital, allowing users to draw on anything and have those penstrokes saved as digital files.

The Inkling package consists of an actual pen filled with actual ink and a sensor that tracks the pen’s position, with a few limitations—it needs line-of-sight, the tracking area corresponds with A4-sized paper, and you can’t get too close to the sensor—but considering it promises to get your scribbles directly into Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketchbook Pro, that seems like a small price to pay.

Speaking of small prices, I actually thought this would retail for a lot more than the projected price of $199, which is what the Inkling’s going for when it hits store shelves next month. Video demo after the jump and join in on the discussion in the forums!

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There is this moment that all designers experience, this I must draw moment particular to those who make things for a living. In addition to experiencing it myself at least weekly, I saw it a lot when I first started interning at design firms. You know the deal, you’re sitting at a conference table or desk, talking, and then all of a sudden the designer’s head starts swiveling while s/he looks for the nearest writing utensil and paperlike surface. They grab whatever’s on hand—pen, pencil, lipstick, doesn’t matter—and start banging out a sketch on paper, paper towel, back of a takeout menu, doesn’t matter.

“Doesn’t matter” being the operative words, as designers can and do draw on anything, giving us the trope of the brilliant napkin sketch. So I’m always a little skeptical when I see sketchbooks dedicated to a particular type of drawing, since all we really need is blank paper. But perhaps the I DRAW CARS Sketchbook & Reference Guide, above, is different by virtue of the “Reference Guide” part? It aims to increase its utility to automotive designers by…

…pairing commonly used industry reference materials with a ubiquitous and iconic moleskine sketchbook form. Contents include global automotive brands, global design schools, global auto show dates and locations, reference materials in both print and web format, commonly used proportions and packages, and 100+ pages of templates to practice with.

Useful, or gimmick? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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