Hasta La Ideas

Sunglasses by accessories designer Linda Farrow are presented on golden beams embedded into gravel mounds at this pop-up shop in New York by design studio Neiheiser & Valle (+ slideshow).

Neiheiser & Valle‘s installation inside a shipping container was created to display Linda Farrow‘s eyewear as part of the BOFFO Building Fashion series of pop-up shops. The container is filled with and surrounded by piles of stone chips, into which V-shaped beams are embedded horizontally.

Farrow’s sunglasses are displayed in rows along the length of the golden girders, which face both up and down so the eyewear is nestled within the V or balanced on top. “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport,” said Neiheiser & Valle.

The gravel mounds are piled up against mirrored walls, creating the illusion of infinite dunes. Gravel also surrounds the exterior of the shipping container, providing continuity between the small interior and the large warehouse in which it sits.

The installation opened last week at the SuperPier site, located on 15th Street at the Hudson River Park in New York City, and will continue until 24 December.

Piled up construction materials seem to be a popular choice for installations in the USA at the moment. The entrance to this year’s Design Miami exhibition last week was marked by a giant mound of sand.

Photographs are by Naho Kubota, unless otherwise stated.

More information from the designers follows:

Boffo Building Fashion 2013
Linda FarrowW + Neiheiser & Valle

Thursday, December 12th, 2013 the second installation in the AIA award winning BOFFO Building Fashion series opened with a three week fashion and architecture retail installation by Linda Farrow + Office of Neiheiser & Valle. A shipping container and surrounding warehouse space at the SuperPier at Hudson River Park (15th Street) in New York City, will be radically transformed, inviting visitors to a unique public art experience.

An endless landscape of stone and light by Neiheiser & Valle adjacent to the Hudson River provides the backdrop for more than just Linda Farrow’s collection of luxurious eyewear, but an experience that transforms the brand for its New York City fans.

This BOFFO Building Fashion project is designed to transport the visitor from the dark winter of New York City to an infinite landscape of stone and light. Neiheiser & Valle state, “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport.” For this installation, the architectural elements are minimised while the spatial qualities essential to both vision and illusion – deep space, radiance, and reflection – are maximised.

The only objects present are the Linda Farrow glasses, suspended against an undulating environment of rich material qualities – coarse piles of stone, gold displays, ethereal mirrors, polished marble, and crisp light. Parallel walls of mirrored reflection multiply the space in both directions, creating an infinite field that is both heavy and light, an expansive landscape paradoxically contained within the confines of a shipping container, an oasis of luxury and warmth unexpectedly discovered in a cold warehouse by the Hudson River.

The installation will offer a selection of eyewear from the Linda Farrow collection, as well as its celebrated international designer collaborations. Unveiling for the first time the SS14 collaboration collections with Suno and 3.1 Phillip Lim, as well as continuing collaborations with designers like Dries Van Noten, Jeremy Scott, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, and Prabal Gurung.

Alongside the eyewear collection, the installation will offer a capsule collection in celebration of the Linda Farrow tenth anniversary of the relaunch of the brand. Expanding into lifestyle for the first time, the capsule collection is a luxurious selection of collaborative projects created with leading designers including shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood, lingerie by Agent Provocateur, jewellery by Mawi and the first Linda Farrow handbag, among other items and will be the exclusive brick & mortar to carry the capsule in New York.

“2013 has been a milestone for Linda Farrow. To be able to celebrate a ten-year anniversary with such exciting projects like the capsule collection, and now partnering with a storied project such as BOFFO Building Fashion series, is incredible,” say Simon Jablon and Tracy Sedino of Linda Farrow.

Linda Farrow offers what most eyewear companies can no longer offer: “innovation” in the purest sense of the word. Established in 1970, the Linda Farrow brand of luxury eyewear rose quickly to acclaim amongst stylish Londoners and international jet set. Originally a fashion designer, Linda Farrow was one of the first to treat sunglasses as fashion, producing collection after cutting-edge collection.

A tireless experimenter, Farrow pioneered many of the shapes and styles that remain stylish today. Linda Farrow’s long tradition of originality has been kept current by the use of collaborating with the most exciting designers to date, who bring a new perspective, whilst respecting the values which have made Linda Farrow a by-word for style, exclusivity and excellence.

Linda Farrow has never lost sight of what its fundamental values are; to create innovative products at a luxury level. Today renowned for its collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed designers (Dries Van Noten, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, Matthew Williamson, Alexander Wang, Jeremy Scott, Kris van Assche among them). Its unprecedented range of vintage sunglasses (over 2000 original designs from the 70s and 80s), and its uncompromisingly luxurious 18K and Luxe lines, Linda Farrow has established itself as one of the most exciting brands in fashion today.

Neiheiser & Valle is a multidisciplinary design practice committed to both playful experimentation and serious research. Ryan Neiheiser and Giancarlo Valle see design as a conversation, a loose exchange of forms and ideas, an open dialogue with their histories and surroundings. They approach each project with an intellectual curiosity, an artistic rigor, and a strong commitment to realising their ideas in the world.

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News: the American Institute of Architects has named Californian architect Julia Morgan as the first female recipient of the AIA Gold Medal, 56 years after her death.

Julia Morgan (1872-1957), whose best-known buildings include the Hearst Castle mansion in San Simeon (main image) and St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, will posthumously becomes the first woman to receive the AIA‘s highest accolade in the 105-year history of the programme.

After being the first woman to study architecture at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Morgan became California’s first licensed female architect in 1904. She then went on to design over 700 buildings, including houses, museums, churches, hotels and offices, in a variety of different historical styles that included Tudor, Georgian and Spanish colonial.

“She designed buildings to fit her clients, blending design strategy with structural articulation in a way that was expressive and contextual, leaving us a legacy of treasures that were as revered when she created them as they are cherished today,” wrote architect Michael Graves in a recommendation letter.

The news comes just six months after the jury of the Pritzker Prize refused to retrospectively recognise Denise Scott Brown for the award her husband and partner Robert Venturi received in 1991, fuelling speculation that the choice of recipient is a direct response to this decision.

Architecture critic Alexandra Lange commented via Twitter: “There’s only one other case of awarding [the medal] to a long-dead person. Morgan, who is deserving, is an anodyne choice for the first woman to get the medal. She would not have been during her lifetime.”

However AIA board member Julia Donoho told Architect magazine that she began her search for “the first women to win the Gold Medal” when she joined the board a year ago. Donoho said she nominated Morgan because she felt that the organisation needed to go back in time and recognise female architects who “were overlooked”.

Scott Brown, who also recommended Morgan, said: “Her work mirrored the social and economic burgeoning of California and the changing roles of women. Now that we are taking off our blinders, we can see Morgan’s greatness. Including her now will help the profession diversify its offerings to include greater richness and creativity of expression.”

“Her story tells us not to look at her gender, but to look at her work,” added Frank Gehry in his own recommendation letter. “Her projects are personal, distinctive, and were built in a lasting and sustainable manner.”

Morgan is the 70th recipient of the Gold Medal, which is awarded annually by the AIA in recognition of a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Other recent recipients of the award include Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects and New York architect Steven Holl.

From next year, the criteria for the award will be altered to include two people working together, providing that their collaborative efforts are recognised as having created a singular body of architectural work. This paves the way for partners, such as Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, to collectively receive the medal in future years.

Here’s the full announcement from the AIA:

Early 20th-century architect becomes the first female to receive the Gold Medal

The Board of Directors of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted today to posthumously award the 2014 AIA Gold Medal to Julia Morgan, FAIA, whose extensive body of work has served as an inspiration to several generations of architects.

The AIA Gold Medal, voted on annually, is considered to be the profession’s highest honor that an individual can receive. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Morgan’s legacy will be honored at the AIA 2014 National Convention and Design Exposition in Chicago.

Morgan, who died in 1957, won a litany of firsts she used to establish a new precedent for greatness. A building technology expert that was professionally adopted by some of the most powerful post-Gilded age patrons imaginable, Morgan practiced for nearly 50 years and designed more than 700 buildings of almost every type, including houses, churches, hotels, commercial buildings, and museums. The first woman admitted to the prestigious architecture school at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Morgan designed comfortably in a wide range of historic styles.

“Julia Morgan is unquestionably among the greatest American architects of all time and a true California gem,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in her recommendation letter. “Morgan’s legacy has only grown over the years. She was an architect of remarkable breadth, depth, and consistency of exceptional work, and she is widely known by the quality of her work by those who practice, teach, and appreciate architecture.”

Born in 1872, Morgan grew up in Oakland, Calif. Exceptionally bright from a young age, she was one of the first women to study civil engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, where she caught the eye of AIA Gold Medalist Bernard Maybeck, who taught there. He gave Morgan what he would give the best and brightest of any gender: a recommendation to apply for the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts, the most prominent architecture school of its day. But there were two problems: She was a foreigner, and subject to unstated, but strict quotas, and a woman. No female had ever been admitted. She failed the first entrance exam; her second exam was discounted for no other reason than her gender. She was finally admitted after her third try. She completed the entire program in 1902.

Back in Berkeley, Morgan went to work for architect John Galen Howard, designing buildings for her undergraduate alma mater. In 1904, she became the first women licensed to practice architecture in California, and opened her own firm.

An early project was an open air Classical Greek theater; the first such structure in the nation. After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, much of the city was leveled, but her greek theater survived, providing her with a level of unprecedented credibility. In addition to this project solidifying her reputation, the project also brought her closer into the orbit of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a university booster and mother to publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Word of Morgan’s skill with reinforced concrete spread across California. She began to take advantage of the material’s groundbreaking plasticity and flexibility in imaginative, new ways, savoring opportunities to clamber through scaffolding at buildings sites to inspect the work.

What stands out most is the vast array of architectural styles she employed: Tudor and Georgian houses, Romanesque Revival churches, and Spanish Colonial country estates with an Islamic tinge. Her late-period Beaux-Arts education gave her the ability to design in these historicist styles, gathering up motifs and methods from all of Western architectural history to select the approach most appropriate for each unique site and context.

“She designed buildings to fit her clients, blending design strategy with structural articulation in a way that was expressive and contextual, leaving us a legacy of treasures that were as revered when she created them as they are cherished today,” wrote AIA Gold Medalist Michael Graves, FAIA, in a recommendation letter.

Some of Morgan’s most notable projects include:

St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, an excellent example of First Bay architecture. An intimately scaled church, its interior is entirely clad in redwood, including open cross-strut beams that create a sense of humble grace and wonderment.

Asilomar YWCA in Pacific Grove, Calif., this YWCA conference center (Morgan designed approximately 30 YWCAs) is perhaps the largest Arts and Crafts campus complex anywhere, according to Sara Holmes Boutelle’s book Julia Morgan Architect. Its palette of rich natural materials and fluid mix of indoor and outdoor spaces suits its pleasant Northern California climate.

The Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Calif., William Randolph Hearts’ seaside retreat, 165 rooms across 250,000 acres, all dripping with detailing that’s opulent bordering on delirious. The style is generally Spanish Colonial, but the estate seems to compress Morgan’s skill at operating in different design languages: Gothic, Neoclassical, as well as Spanish Colonial, all into one commission.

Morgan joined the AIA in 1921 as only the seventh female member. She is the 70th AIA Gold Medalist and joins the ranks of such visionaries as Thomas Jefferson (1993), Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Louis Sullivan (1944), Le Corbusier (1961), Louis I. Kahn (1971), I.M. Pei (1979), Santiago Calatrava (2005), Glenn Murcutt (2009), and Thom Mayne (2013). In recognition of her legacy to architecture, her name will be chiseled into the granite Wall of Honor in the lobby of the AIA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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to receive AIA Gold Medal appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese architect Tomohiro Hata planned this suburban house in Hyogo Prefecture as a cluster of three buildings around a courtyard, based on the traditional city residences of farmers, artisans and merchants.

Named House N, the family residence was designed by Tomohiro Hata to reference Japanese minka, a typical vernacular home from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that is often made up of several structures. These can include a main building, a separate cottage, a warehouse and a chicken coop.

“Following the form of traditional Japanese private houses, we considered an arrangement that can let all rooms open to the garden,” said Hata.

The three buildings fold around the generously sized courtyard, but also lead out to two smaller gardens at the corners of the site, which are enclosed behind a high perimeter wall.

“The building and the wall are integrated, so that the arrangement [of the plan] can be designed as freely as possible,” added Hata.

All three buildings have separate entrances, but are connected to one another by glazed corridors that allow views between the three outdoor spaces.

The largest of the three buildings is a two-storey structure with a dining room and kitchen on the lower level and a childrens’ room above.

Another two-storey block contains a multi-purpose room and the master bedroom, while the smallest building houses the family living room.

Large windows direct views towards the courtyard, which is made up of wooden platforms at different heights to one another.

The site slopes down at the rear, so the architect has slotted a single-car garage underneath the house.

Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.

Here’s a project description from Tomohiro Hata:

House N

Housing that takes advantage of the richness of a private house in the city.

It is found that an architectural form as a main building, a separated cottage, and a warehouse: kura are built within a site surrounded softly by a wall at the suburbs of Sasayama city and Tamba city in Hyogo prefecture where many traditional houses remain.

Surrounding the area softly with walls, each of the rooms faces to the inner courtyard produced by the external space between each building. It is a very simple and rich living space as you can keep it open with feeling at ease.

By focusing on the characteristics of the house that site area is limited at suburbs in the complicated city described above, we aimed to create the environment protected as a residence with opening to the outside of the house.

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Bands of light shine through the perforated metal facade of this sports hall by French studio Ateliers O-S Architectes in north-west Paris (+ slideshow).

Located beside a railway embankment in Asnières-sur-Seine, the Gymnase Curie provides a flexible games hall for a nearby school and was designed by Ateliers O-S Architectes to be “visually homogeneous” to its surroundings.

The facade is glazed at street level to reveal the building’s activities to pedestrians walking by, while the remaining sections of the walls are uniformly clad with the perforated metal panels.

Fluorescent tubes are arranged vertically behind the panels to create the illuminated stripes, allowing the building to glow after dark.

“Emerging from the railway embankment as a rock with straight edges, the gymnasium manifests itself through its massive aspect, leaning over an illuminated rift that shows the interior activities,” explained the architects.

Behind the facade, the building has a timber roof structure that is exposed across the ceiling of the hall.

Clerestory windows bring daylight in from the east, reducing the need for artificial lighting.

Changing rooms, storage areas and bathrooms wrap the south and east sides of the building, while a small public square frames the main entrance.

Photography is by Cecile Septet.

Here’s more information from Ateliers O-S Architectes:

Gymnse Scolaire Zac Bords de Seine

The site is characterised by three special features that led our intentions:
» Its dimension: a narrow piece of land, 30m width and 250m long, along a railway embankment
» Its orientation: the site opens to the south on the river La Seine
» A breach generated by the western entrance of the new district under the embankment

The urban challenge was to develop a coherent project on the site scale that uses these features. The breach becomes a unifying square, a strong link between the gymnasium and the outdoor playgrounds. The length of the site is organised by a sequence of wooden planted wall.

Emerging from the railway embankment as a rock with straight edges, the gymnasium manifests itself through its massive aspect leaning over an illuminated rift that shows the interior activities.

The sports hall, that we wanted visually homogeneous, is located along the street, creating a strong visual link between the city and the gymnasium. Around are organised the changing rooms, the facilities and other additional rooms.

An opening on the roof brings diffuse light, completing the light coming from the wide windows on the facades.

The street facades are composed by two levels: a glassed low level that brings life to the street at pedestrian scale, and a high massive level composed of metallic punched panels that highlight the building with vertical lights.

The structure is made of a wooden framework leaning over a concrete basement along the railway. The high laminated timber beams appears on the roof, giving rhythm and depth. This project is a simple answer to sustainable development concerns and to a particular urban context.

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with bands of light on its walls appeared first on Dezeen.

Researchers at Italian design centre Fabrica have created accessories that would deceive neuroimaging devices by diverting thoughts using electric shocks and flashing lights (+ slideshow).

Lisa Kori Chung and Caitlin Morris from Fabrica designed the anti-NIS (neuroimaging surveillance) pieces to detect when surveillance technology linked to CCTV cameras is trying to read the wearer’s brainwaves. It would then focus their thoughts to something inconsequential to help maintain privacy.

They say neuroimaging technology is currently being researched and developed to read and record the thoughts of the public, with the aim to detect ill intentions before they are carried out.

However this raises issues of privacy, so Kori Chung and Morris are proposing to mask thoughts using a range of wearable devices.

Each faceted piece covered with decorative patterns is designed to detect when the wearer is being scanned and provides a distraction to change their thought pattern.

“Rather than simply blocking access to the brain, which would require unsubtle and complex equipment, each piece proposes a method of momentary cognitive diversion,” said the designers.

“When a scan is detected, the accessories provoke a sensory reaction that will demand the wearer’s attention, changing their current brain activity patterns and affording a moment of privacy through camouflage.”

The hat transmits sound pulses through the skull to the ear, the collar gives a gentle electric shock and the mask emits light flashes into the wearer’s eyes.

This means that at the moment of the scan, the wearer’s thoughts are more likely to be read as “this light is too bright” or “that’s a strange sound” rather than what their mind might have been preoccupied with otherwise.

Even though the implementation of neuroimaging technology is still science fiction, the project aims to raise awareness of other surveillance techniques currently used in conjunction with CCTV such as facial recognition, motion detection and voice analysis.

The project was designed for the Futures 10 exhibition of wearable technology, displayed last night as part of the Wearable Futures conference at Ravensbourne in London.

On the same theme of masking surveillance, Adam Harvery created a range of anti-drone clothing to hide the wearer from heat detection technologies.

Photographs are by Marco Zanin.

Here’s some information the designers sent to us:

Wearables to thwart neuroimaging surveillance by Lisa Kori Chung and Caitlin Morris

The paradigm of clothing as protector and concealer is slowly shifting: increasingly, our bodies are becoming more and more public (though security practices as well as fashion choices), while new forms of neuro-imaging technology are developing that may one day allow for surveillance and interception of the contents of our minds. Anti-NIS Accessories is a series of proposed objects designed as a form of clothing that maintains privacy of thought and action.

Rather than simply blocking access to the brain, which would require unsubtle and complex equipment, each piece proposes a method of momentary cognitive diversion. When a scan is detected, the accessories provoke a sensory reaction that will demand the wearer’s attention, changing their current brain activity patterns and affording a moment of privacy through camouflage. The objects include a hat that transmits sound pulses through bone conduction, a collar that gives a gentle electric shock and a mask that distracts the user with flashing lights.

Can the purpose of clothing be expanded to serve a hybrid purpose: acting as an expressive covering of the body, and also maintaining privacy of things like emotions, intelligence, and even more specific “brain data”?

These are the wider questions we asked:

Today, closed-circuit video surveillance has become commonplace. Concurrent with its rise in ubiquity, new techniques are being developed for analysing the massive amounts of information generated. Biometric identification techniques such as FRT (facial recognition technology), gait analysis, and voice analysis are often used after an incident has taken place to try to determine the identities of the parties involved. However, now various companies are working on algorithms to detect persons acting “suspiciously” (perhaps based on activities such as running, loitering and carrying packages). We are entering a new period of algorithmic guessing of intention based on external behaviours, before an incident takes place.

What if brain-scanning could be periodically deployed in a widespread and stealthy manner in urban environments, similar to CCTV now? Already our notions of civil liberties and bodily privacy are being challenged on an everyday basis, how should they be defined in the future in terms of the mind?

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