Herzog & de Meuron’s nearly completed Pérez Art Museum Miami leads this week’s Dezeen Mail newsletter, which also features the latest news, jobs and reader comments from Dezeen.
Read Dezeen Mail issue 181 | Subscribe to Dezeen Mail
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Opinion: Kieran Long argues that while it’s fun to be cynical about pop cultural artefacts like Katy Perry Lashes, a recent expose on the conditions in which they’re made proves that it’s vital for design criticism to move beyond semiotics.
I’ve always felt, in that completely unfair way we tend to judge big stars, that Katy Perry was the most cynical and dead inside of all the questionable female role models in the pop cultural landscape. The Popchips poster campaign she fronted earlier this year is burned into my retina. I saw her every morning at South Kensington Tube station, looking over the top of her sunglasses in a sarcastic gesture of astonishment at just how extraordinary a bag of crisps can be. Her fingernails were like talons and her steel grey eyes were framed in false eyelashes.
“All Katy Perry lashes by Eylure are handmade, 100% natural and each style is reusable,” reads the description on the box of fake eyelashes that sits on my desk as I write. This comes just before “Katy’s top tips”, the instructions, in the voice of the gazillion-selling pop star, about how to wear the lashes to their best effect.
There may be no more emblematic product of contemporary capitalism than Katy Perry Lashes, the false eyelashes endorsed by the megastar singer. They are made of real hair and the Cool Kitty style (one of three different designs available) of lash has an undulating profile, with longer and shorter hairs alternating and creating an effect that Katy Perry herself models in a photo on the front of the box.
Perry has a self-consciously plasticky, robot-from-the-1950s aesthetic that is always accessorised with false lashes, nail varnish and a comicbook hairdo. With this Stepford/Bladerunner thing, she seems to invite identification. Something about her plain, cybergirl-next-door look makes young women feel that they somehow should be her, or be like her. It’s no coincidence that most of her merchandise is products for the body: perfumes (a whole range of them), body lotion, makeup. By buying these objects, you are somehow transforming your physical substance into Perry’s. The lashes allow young people to get inside Perry’s body, to look out at the world through her eyes. This out-of-body experience is available for the reasonable price of £5.95 in high street pharmacies.
When her partnership with Covergirl cosmetics was announced, Perry was quoted as saying: “In addition to music, I’ve always considered makeup to be a powerful creative avenue of self-expression.” In Perry’s world, you have to design yourself, to draw a new you on your own skin: she’s the perfect articulation of how contemporary pop culture raises narcissism to an art form.
In the end, this is the psychological game for which the fake eyelashes are designed as a prop. In themselves they may not seem like interesting design objects: they derive their fascination for many of us from this pop cultural framing. The material things are simply two rows of hairs, each hair tied by hand and one-by-one onto a tiny piece of string. These are then trimmed and affixed to a small strip that can hold a latex-based glue. The glue fixes the row of hairs to the Perry wannabe’s own eyelid.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed these ephemeral bits of sub fashion design at all before I met Gethin Chamberlain, the journalist responsible for the remarkable expose of the manufacturing story behind the false lash industry, published in UK tabloid newspaper The Sun on Sunday 20 October. Chamberlain participated in a debate at the V&A museum about ethical manufacturing in the fashion industry, but just a few days before the event he published the story of the false eyelash industry. In it, Chamberlain traces Eylure’s production to small villages in Indonesia, where women weave the tiny lashes and earn as little as 20p per day for doing so. He describes how many workers in the lash industry (which is worth £110 million in Britain alone) do earn the legal minimum wage for that region (£50 per month) but that some factories outsource the work to homeworkers in more remote locations: many of these earn less than half that paltry wage.
As designers and critics, we can always enjoy being cynical about pop cultural artefacts like these lashes and idly patronise the industry around figures like Perry. I guess there’s a whole office devoted to selling Perry’s name, plastering it over merchandise from body lotion to perfume to iPhone covers to T-shirts. There’s even something reassuring for prospective businesspeople that it’s still possible to make money in this day and age selling fridge magnets with pictures of Katy Perry in the buff on them. If capitalism is that easy, I wonder why we aren’t all making more money.
But the story of these objects and their making is a sleight of hand, a trick that consumerism plays on us. So remote are we from manufacturing today that a company can celebrate the making of these objects as a positive marketing story (“handmade, 100% natural”), while indirectly employing workers in exploitative conditions. Thanks to journalists like Chamberlain we are all aware of this. If we are serious about design in the expanded field, we have to inquire after not just the semiotic resonances of these objects, but the human costs too.
Kieran Long is Senior Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He presents Restoration Home and the series The £100,000 House for the BBC, and is currently the architecture critic for the Evening Standard newspaper.
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not just their semiotic resonances” appeared first on Dezeen.
News: in this movie interview filmed for a documentary about Rem Koolhaas, rapper Kanye West talks about working with the architect’s firm OMA on a seven-screen cinema to show his first film and reveals that he’s working on a second movie.
In the interview conducted by Koolhaas’ son Tomas, director of the documentary, West also talks about ambitions for his design company DONDA and says that “music has really been a Trojan Horse to create art again”.
“I love Rem’s work,” said West while talking about how much he enjoyed working with the architect’s company OMA in 2012. “I just like that fact that I was able to take my position as a musician, as a rapper and as a celebrity, and be able to invest in a project with a company of that level.”
OMA’s pavilion design for West was a shaped like a pyramid and erected for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and during the interview the rapper revealed that he has been producing a new film that builds on the immersive experience for the past year and a half: “I’m working on a film and I’ve created a seamless version. There were seven screens and they were separated, and the new one is seamless.”
“When it happens and people see it, I think people will understand a bit better what I’m talking about or why I’m so frustrated,” he added.
West also discussed his creative company DONDA, which he set up last year. At the moment he initiates and funds all the projects himself, but the 36-year-old hopes that this will shift so his company is commissioned to create for others within the next four years.
“I’m paying for a lot of the projects that I wanna work on, but it’s like my own home [designed by Claudio Silvestrin], or a store design, or [the] pavilion I did with OMA,” he said. “I believe, just to will this into fruition, that when I’m 40 [DONDA] will have to turn down projects.”
“I’ve done basically everything I can do with the amount of finances I have,” West continued. “If I go and think about a new form of film making and I go through the entire process, I end up funding the entire thing myself because it’s too abstract of a concept for people to put a finger on.”
During the interview filmed in October he repeated the declaration of his design ambitions, which he first expressed during a rant about the subject while speaking on BBC Radio 1 in September.
“I went to college on an arts scholarship, I was the number one you know so music has really been a Trojan Horse to really create art again,” he declared. “What do you think I spend the most time on when I’m creating a tour? The visuals. I am more of a visual artist and a product person.”
“DONDA, with my company, we like to collaborate with firms,” West added. “We like to go and ask questions and say ‘for this job, who would be great to work on this?'” In addition to his collaboration with OMA, he is also working on a visual identity for his brand with graphic designer Peter Saville.
Since this interview took place, West addressed students at Harvard University about architecture and design last month. The negative response to the rapper’s design ambitions was declared “racist” by an African-American student activist from the institution.
Tomas Koolhaas is currently aiming to raise funds to complete his REM documentary on Kickstarter. The feature-length documentary will focus on how the architect’s buildings are used by people and will “comprehensively explore the human conditions in and around Rem Koolhaas’ buildings from a ground level perspective”. Watch the trailer below:
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about working with Rem Koolhaas appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen promotion: the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam is accepting applications to study on its Master of Interior Architecture & Retail Design (MIARD) course.
The Piet Zwart Institute’s two-year MIARD postgraduate course is set up to provide Bachelor students with a further course in interior architecture.
Enrolled students will undertake four thematic design projects as well as work on their self-directed graduation project during their second year of study.
Work by current students and alumni has been presented at international design and architecture events such as Dutch Design Week and Tent London.
A group of students showed a collection of kitchen products that included patterned rolling pins to make edible plates and a meat grinder that squeezes out biodegradable bowls during Milan design week earlier this year.
The institute is part of the Willem de Kooning Academy, based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Applications will be considered from Bachelor students with a degree in Interior Architecture, Interior Design, Spatial Design or Architecture.
The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2014. Visit the Piet Zwart Institute website to find the application documents and for more details about how to apply.
Keep reading for more information from the Piet Zwart Institute:
Piet Zwart Institute – Master of Interior Architecture & Retail Design [MIARD]
Open for Applications: Deadline 31 January 2014
Welcome to the Master of Interior Architecture & Retail Design [MIARD] at the Piet Zwart Institute – an international postgraduate programme that is part of the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University, located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The accredited small-scale programme is full-time and structured over two years.
At MIARD, we view the production of the interior as a multidisciplinary practice. Our programme is motivated by a design-research methodology that views interior architecture as an applied synthesis – integrating critical design practice, history, theory and technical skills through both digital and analogue means, specialised modules and self-directed research on the basis of a bottom-up strategy towards learning and innovation. We investigate making as a research and design process by mixing parameters, such as strategies and systems, techniques and tools, materials and technology, as well as other relevant and unexpected programmatic and cultural issues. As the practice of interior architecture continues to mature, we examine its performance and potential in the built environment at various scales and conditions to shape and advance the future of cities, neighbourhoods, buildings and their spaces, and for the communities and people that live in them.
Our students are trained to excel as a new generation of designers. Projects are researched in a dynamic atelier setting with highly equipped facilities working together with a diverse faculty of established architects, interior architects, designers, scholars and other specialists. Entrepreneurial practice and networking is encouraged throughout the programme to support and launch a student’s design career. Intrinsic to this Masters is a specialisation in Retail Design.
Based in Rotterdam, a dynamic European capital of architecture and design, we plan projects directly with and for the city and local affiliations, as well as actively participate at well-known international design platforms. We offer public events in the form of lectures, exhibitions, field excursions, and interdisciplinary workshops. Our students have access to extensive university and outside resources, fostering collaborative opportunities with specialists from peripheral disciplines.
Programme approach
MIARD situates itself firmly in applied-research, critical reflection and the professional field of interior architecture. It operates from the point of view that an educational master’s program must be adaptable to a variety of external forces and should resist institutional idleness.
We aim to foster graduates who are experts in the field of interiors and to excel as designers. A designer whose practice can modify to cultural, technological and industry changes and set precedents for new and innovative methods of operating. We work with the reality that the profession of the interior architect is a young practice, historically framed between the disciplines of architecture and product/furniture design. As our discipline matures, the programme plan is to contribute to its emerging identity as a relevant and necessary profession with its own theoretical, historical and research policies.
Making further defines the MIARD design approach. It is rooted in the position that interior architecture is about making places in the material-physical world and that interiors and its constituents (analogue or digital) play a significant role in forming the identity and logics of the built environment. We investigate making as a bottom-up approach to the creative process and material innovation. This approach allows students to acquire a diversity of essential, advanced and inventive skills as designers.
We stay involved and contribute to the professional field by working with noted and award-winning international staff and guest tutors. The program participates at national and international design events, conferences, competitions, and we host an active public lecture series throughout the academic year. Current students’ and alumni’s work have been presented at international design and architecture platforms, such as Milan Design Week, Dutch Design Week, Sunlab, TENTLondon, and their design projects have received extensive international press recognition with publications in Domus, Frame, Dezeen, and Designboom, among others.
Consequently, the interior architect needs to be someone who shapes, informs and advances the discipline and it’s meaning through critical and meticulous analysis of the role of the interior and its conditions in contemporary society, and furthermore he or she needs to understands the scope and potential of the interior’s role in a larger social, political and historical context.
Core teaching staff, visiting tutors and guest lecturers
Ruth Baumeister, Bart de Beer, Herman van Bergeijk , Jan Boelen, Sander Boer, Silvio Carta, Amélia Desnoyers, Bob Dinwiddy, Gabriella Fiorentini, Nuno Fontarra, Ulf Hackauf, Deborah Hauptman, Kai van Hasselt, Lisa Hassanzade, MarkDavid Hosale, Jos de Krieger, Maartje Lammers, Edwin Larkens, Sang Lee, Marta Male-Alemany, Michiel van Malenstein, Ilaria Mazzoleni, Lutz Mürau, Cristina Murphy, Yukiko Nezu, Mauro Parravicini, Brian Peters, Frank Schoeman, Gerrit Schilder, Tanja Smeets, Catherine Somze, Alex Suarez, Eline Strijkers, Aynav Ziv, Cristina Murphy, Mauro Parravicini, Frank Schoeman, Eline Strijkers, Robert Thiemann, Füsun Türetken, UXUS, Thomas Vailly, Dries Verbruggen, Francesco Veenstra, Robbert de Vrieze, Petar Zaklanovic.
Thematic design projects
Over the course of two years, students will take four Thematic Design Projects that are the core of the curriculum. These projects explore and open-up themes relevant to the field of interior architecture and other related and contemporary forms of design practice. One of four of these main design projects will be dedicated to the specialisation of Retail Design.
Thematic Design Projects are lead by either a core tutor, a team of core tutors, and/or guest tutors, who come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Whether an architect, designer, interior designer, artist or retail expert these specialists offer advanced insights into contemporary design practices and issues relevant to the professional field.
The Thematic Design Project structure offers students a framework for reflection, discussion, joint research and production. In other words, the particular selected theme serves as a matrix for exploring and scrutinising specific interior and built environment practices and broader design challenges. This module aims to develop the students’ understanding of their work in relation to others in the professional field and to help them define their design practice/profile within a broader cultural, technical and social context.
Complementary courses, public events, excursions and guest lectures are integrated with the design projects each trimester to provide historical, theoretical, technical, material and industry knowledge, skills and expertise.
If you have questions about the programme and application process please feel contact us at:
Piet Zwart Institute
Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design
P.O. Box 1272
3000 BG Rotterdam
The Netherlands
E-mail: pzwart-info@hr.nl
Facebook: www.facebook.com/PZIMIARD
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the Piet Zwart Institute appeared first on Dezeen.
News: architect Norman Foster has presented plans to add a row of stone pavilions to the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as part of a major overhaul that will double the building’s gallery space.
Unveiled yesterday during the opening of the Art Basel and Design Miami fairs, the Foster + Partners masterplan seeks to restore the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach to its original axial arrangement by relocating the entrance to the west side of the building.
Three double-height pavilions will be constructed along this facade to accommodate a new auditorium, events room and grand hall, and will be sheltered beneath an overhanging metal roof that tapers gently upwards to reduce its visual impact.
Based on the concept of a “museum in a garden”, the renovated building will be fronted by a pool of water, while a new museum shop and restaurant will open out to a sculpture lawn on the south side of the building.
“Our approach is a celebration of the local landscape and architecture,” said Foster. “The gardens will be planted with native trees and flowers and the masterplan strengthens the elegant formation of the original museum, redefining its relationship with the city with a welcoming new street frontage.”
New buildings will be built from white stone to match the art deco-inspired architecture of the original building, which was designed by architect Marion Sims Wyeth and first opened in the 1940s.
“The project combines old and new and continues our explorations into the museum in a garden setting, which began with the Sainsbury Centre and has more recently embraced the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” added Foster.
Public facilities will be able to function independently, creating opportunities for evening events outside of gallery opening times.
The architects have also developed a long-term masterplan for the site, which includes the possibility of adding two new gallery wings in the future.
Here’s a more detailed description from Foster + Partners:
Lord Foster presents plans for the transformation of the Norton Museum of Art
Three bold new pavilions, unified beneath a shimmering roof, herald the transformation of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach – host to the most important art collection in Florida. The masterplan, unveiled by Norman Foster in Miami today, allows the museum to almost double its gallery space and lays the foundations for future growth to become Florida’s leading cultural institution.
The first stage of Foster + Partners’ masterplan will establish its key principles: the sympathetic setting of a ‘museum in a garden’, with the original axial arrangement re-established to unify the visitor experience, and the creation of new public facilities. The museum will become a focus for the community with event spaces separate from the Art Museum, strengthening its role as a cultural destination for Florida.
The Norton Museum was founded in 1941 by Ralph Hubbard Norton and his wife Elizabeth Calhoun Norton and was laid out by the architect Marion Sims Wyeth as an elegant series of Art Deco inspired single-storey pavilions around a central courtyard. Subsequent expansion has broken the symmetry of the original east-west axial arrangement, and the creation of an additional car park to the south of the museum has led to the relocation of the main entrance to the side of the building. The new masterplan restores the clarity of Wyeth’s plan by reinstating the main entrance on a new street frontage on South Dixie Highway to the west – visitors will once again be able to see through the entire building via a new, transparent grand hall and refurbished glass and iron courtyard doors.
The new entrance is signalled by three new double-height pavilions, unified with the re-worked existing wing by a shared palette of white stone. The pavilions house a state-of-the-art auditorium, event space and a ‘grand hall’ – the social hub of the museum. The design also includes a new museum shop and a new restaurant with al-fresco garden seating which, like the new pavilion spaces, can operate independently of the museum to activate the campus throughout the day and at night.
A metal roof canopy floats above the pavilions and projects to shade the entrance plaza. The structure is gently tapered to visually reduce its profile, while providing stability to withstand hurricane winds. The canopy’s gentle lustre is designed to cast diffuse patterns of light in an abstracted reflection of people and flowing water below. Linear pools create a tranquil setting for the entrance plaza, masking the sound of traffic, which is visually set apart by a hedge. A curved opening in the roof accommodates the branches of a mature ficus tree and a further light well above the lobby illuminates and defines the new entrance.
The overall proposals reinforce the concept of the museum within a garden. Taking advantage of the Florida climate, the landscaping of the gardens and central courtyard incorporates native trees and flowers to provide shaded walkways, and the former parking lot is transformed into a new sculpture lawn. The borders of the museum’s expanded grounds are defined and integrate a row of houses at the perimeter of the site as an artist’s residence and studio, guest house and research facilities. The new sculpture lawn will provide an open-air venue for ‘Art After Dark’, the Norton’s popular programme of film screenings and events, and is bordered by a glass circulation gallery, connecting the interior with the lush green setting.
The masterplan enables the development of the Norton to be implemented over time, beginning with the reconfiguration and extension of the existing museum to create the landmark Dixie Drive pavilions and the new public amenities within a lush garden setting. This will include two new galleries with state-of-the-art environmental systems, a sculpture gallery and a new education centre. S
Subsequently, it will be possible to build two new wings for galleries to the east as part of the long-term masterplan.
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Florida’s Norton Museum of Art appeared first on Dezeen.
A bridge over a stream connects the two sides of this concrete house in India by Mumbai firm Architecture Brio (+ slideshow).
House on a Stream was designed by Architecture Brio as a weekend retreat near the town of Alibag, on a site with a stream meandering through it.
The architects chose to separate the master bedroom from the main part of the house containing the kitchen, dining room, living room and guest bedroom by arranging them on either side of the stream.
Monolithic concrete boxes containing the various rooms rest on the uneven ground and cantilever over the water, while trees grow in the gaps between.
“Like an organism trying to make most use of its resources and surroundings, the house with its several limbs reaches out into the landscape, making full use of the views within the site and dramatises special moments: a beautiful tree, a view of the mountains beyond or the cascading stream during the monsoon rains,” said the architects.
A walkway covered by a pergola links the bridge with the entrance to the larger part of the house. Next to it, a narrow swimming pool follows the course of the stream and adjoins a sheltered verandah that becomes an extension of the dining room when sliding doors are pulled back.
The living room and both bedrooms also feature doors that can be slid or folded back to open these spaces onto outdoor decks that bring the occupants closer to the surrounding nature.
The kitchen is located at the centre of the house, with a high ceiling containing a skylight contributing to the bright space, around which the other rooms are arranged.
By offsetting these surrounding rooms and raising the level of the living area, the architects intended to give each space a sense of autonomy, while strategically positioned windows create views from one part of the building to another.
Concrete cast against wooden planks gives the building’s exterior a textured finish, which will be enhanced as it gains additional patina over time. The natural aesthetic is enhanced by timber screens that cast delicate shadows on the floors and walls.
Photography is by Sebastian Zachariah.
The following project description is from the architects:
House on a stream
Landscape
With a stream running through the house, this retreat in Alibag is delicately woven into the landscape, alternately opening up and closing itself to the different characteristics of the site.
A multitude of medicinal and fruit bearing trees provide for an intimate ambiance and comfortable microclimate. Though seasonal, the stream bed allows for an interesting landscape feature throughout the year. The house is placed on the banks of the stream where it makes a sudden S-curve. A short walk along the stream before entering the house builds up an element of anticipation.
Like an organism trying to make most use of its resources and surroundings, the house with its several limbs reaches out into the landscape making full use of the views within the site and dramatises special moments: a beautiful tree, a view of the mountains beyond or the cascading stream during the monsoon rains. What started out as a Cartesian response to the site became deformed, stretched and pushed in.
Program
The house consists of two parts: the day areas of the house such as the dining/kitchen, the living room and entrance verandah are separated from the master bedroom by a bridge that spans across the stream.
Since the owners are passionate about cooking, the kitchen is made the heart and centre of the house, a large, inviting volume with a high ceiling and a skylight that floods the space with light.
This space forms the anchor of the house from where its various limbs branch out into the landscape around existing components of the site. The living room on the left is lifted off the ground to have a panoramic view of the mountain range in the distance. The guest room embraces an existing tree to create a courtyard and just peeks across the dining room to have a view over the length of the stream. The pool is aligned along the stream acting as a celebration of it during the monsoons, and a memory of it during the dry season.
Orientation
The orientation of the program is based on climatic considerations. The bedrooms are mostly west facing with large verandahs and get the evening sun.
The living rooms faces east once again with a large verandah. The kitchen, dining, and pool areas all look towards the north and are shaded by large trees. The south façade of the house is predominately closed and more solid with the exception of a picture window that frames the view out from the pantry to the fields beyond.
Monolithic character
While the external structural concrete shell contracts and expands in plan in section it does so as well. The external form of the house responds to site and its orientation and flows from high to low in accordance with the monolithic fluidity of its form. Internally, however, it responds to the creation of space, and directs the eye to frame a particular view.
The outside and inside are therefore apart and internal spaces are defined with volumes created by the changing thickness of the internal ceiling.
The heaviness of this mass however is reversed by the lightness of the white washed walls and ceilings. A central skylight and large sliding doors, which span from floor to ceiling and wall to wall bring in the outside into the interiors. The cantilevered ‘limbs’ of the living room and two bedrooms defy the heaviness of the concrete volumes. By not resting it on the ground the relationship with the landscape paradoxically is strengthened.
Internal relationships
A series of asymmetrical axis create a path of discovery through the house. The arrival path is aligned with the axis of the pergola, which embracing the pool enters the dining room on the left side. One corner of the dining room overlaps with the conically shaped volume of the kitchen. By shifting the axis of the dining room off the axis of the kitchen and raising the level of the living room, this becomes a more secluded space.
Furthermore it allows a glazed door in the kitchen to open up to the outside and view along the external living room wall. At strategic positions in the house steel framed box windows protrude through the concrete walls. Placed symmetrically on the interior walls they highlight specific elements of the site, such as the bark of a tree, or peek from the master pavilion to the main house.
Materialisation
The house is cast in plank-finished concrete with a vertical grain. The homogenous materialisation emphasises the sculptural quality of the house that is moulding itself about the site. Concrete being left exposed in the humid Indian climate, attracts a patina that becomes more rich and alive over time. More so the grey textured surface provides a muted surface against the vibrant green surrounding.
Elegant timber screens further soften the greyness of the con- crete. They not only form a buffer between the interior space and the exteriors, but also create an intensive play of shadow and light on the floors and walls.
Description: Weekend house
Location: Jirad, Alibaug, Mumbai, India
Size: 300 m2
Design: Architecture BRIO, Robert Verrijt + Shefali Balwani
Structural design: Vijay K. Patil & Associates
Realisation: September 2013
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that straddles a stream in India appeared first on Dezeen.
Eindhoven designer Erez Nevi Pana has developed a dough made from soil and fungus that can be baked in an oven to create stools and chairs strong enough to sit on.
Influenced by childhood memories of playing in his parents’ greenhouse, Erez Nevi Pana began experimenting with soil as an accessible material for producing affordable, environmentally-friendly products during his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven.
By combining it with fungi and other natural materials, the designer developed a mixture that rises like a dough due to a biochemical reaction and can then be shaped using plaster or wooden moulds.
The resulting objects are baked so that the mixture hardens, becoming robust enough to carry the weight of a person or to be sanded, sawn and drilled.
“At first, I started with a flat surfaces, just as an experiment to test the strength and durability of the material,” the designer told Dezeen. “I was curious to know how strong is it? Can the mixture hold human weight?”
Following a process of refinement involving trialling different amounts of the various ingredients in his kitchen, a suitable combination was identified and a series of simply moulded items of furniture were produced.
“There is a fine line between the state where the mixture is strong or delicate – either not baked enough or burned,” explained the designer. “So the baking time has to be strict and every chair has its own period of time that it is baked in an oven.”
As well as furniture, Nevi Pana has experimented with moulding cups using the material, which he claimed was capable of holding the water but gave it an unwanted flavour.
“The recipe is not perfect – there’s some things that I still need to understand but I feel I am on the right track,” added the designer. “If the material is impermeable, many choices are possible and it opens the gate for many routes in which I design any object I desire.”
The project is on show at an exhibition called Biodesign at The New Institute in Rotterdam, alongside plants that could grow lace from their roots and tiles made from snail poo, which runs until 5 January 2014.
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like bread by Erez Nevi Pana appeared first on Dezeen.
Behind our fifth advent calendar window is Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, who was awarded the 2011 Pritzker Prize and designed the red concrete museum dedicated to artist Paula Rego (pictured) in his home country.
See more architecture by Eduardo Souto de Moura »
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Eduardo Souto de Moura appeared first on Dezeen.
News: students from the Bartlett School of Architecture have cleaned up at the RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards this evening, with winning projects including a floating community centre for the Helsinki archipelago and a proposal to rebuild 250 Russian churches.
The medals, which are awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to three architecture graduates, have for the first time in the programme’s history been given to individuals who all studied at the same university – the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Ben Hayes received the Bronze Silver Medal for his project Kizhi Island, which proposes the reconstruction of 250 wooden Orthodox churches on a six-kilometre-wide isle in northern Russia.
The Part II graduate analysed the influence of romanticism on the ecclesiastical architecture of the former Soviet Union, before designing a museum and restoration centre to facilitate the dismantling and restoration of different kinds of churches.
The Silver Bronze Medal was awarded to Part I graduate Ness Lafoy for her design for a community hub serving the 50,000 residents of the archipelago surrounding Helsinki.
The conceptual Helsinki Archipelago Town Hall comprises a floating clubhouse and hotel to accommodate islanders travelling to the mainland. It would incorporate a postal service for remote islands, as well as a council meeting place for addressing transport issues.
The Dissertation Medal, which is awarded in recognition of a research project, was given to Tamsin Hanke for Magnitogorsk: Utopian vision of spatial socialism. This theoretical research explores how a socialist political ideology was developed in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk between 1930 and 1953.
Speaking about the winners, RIBA President Stephen Hodder said: “They overcame intense competition from the best students of architecture around the world and truly shined with their innovative, challenging and thought-provoking projects.”
“This is an unprecedented achievement,” said Bartlett director Marcos Cruz. “It’s due to the extraordinary talent and dedication of our students and staff. It is also a reflection of the school’s commitment to keeping our staff and students at the forefront of innovation, ideas, and excellence in architecture.”
The medal recipients were announced in a ceremony this evening at the RIBA headquarters in London.
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all go to one London school appeared first on Dezeen.
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