News that Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp chapel has been vandalised and a concrete house cut into a rocky outcrop (pictured) lead this week’s issue of Dezeen Mail, which also features more news plus the latest jobs and reader comments from Dezeen.
Read Dezeen Mail issue 186 | Subscribe to Dezeen Mail
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Photo essay: British photographer Alastair Philip Wiper toured the interior of one of the largest slaughterhouses in the world to create this series of images documenting how pigs are turned into pork, sausages and bacon (+ slideshow).
Danish Crown is the world’s largest exporter of pork, killing approximately 100,000 pigs a week to cater to the growing global demand for meat. Alastair Philip Wiper visited the company’s abattoir in Horsens to capture a behind-the-scenes look at the entire process, starting at the pens where the pigs arrive and moving through the spaces where the animals are slaughtered, butchered and packaged for sale.
Wiper says he “finds it difficult to tolerate those who love eating meat, but cannot bear to think about, or look at, the slaughter and death of that animal”, so each image in the Danish Crown Slaughterhouse is intended to reveal the entire butchering process, made visible by the transparency and openness of the spaces.
I am not a squeamish person. I love food, I love meat, and I particularly love pork. In an ideal world, we would all get our meat from the guy in our village whose family has lovingly cared for their animals over generations, given the animals the best possible life, fed them only the best food, read them a bed-time story every night and given them kilometres of space to roam free in before being humanely and ceremoniously slaughtered by the patriarch of the family. Unfortunately most of us don’t live in that world, and while there is a strong case for a serious discussion about whether or not we really need to eat, or should be eating, as much meat as we do, that is a discussion for another day.
The reality is that the society we live in craves meat, on a massive scale. Where there is a demand there will be a supply, and finding out how that supply is met is something that all meat-eaters should be interested in. As a food lover, I am firmly of the belief that people should think about, understand and respect their food (that includes vegetables!) and part of that respect is rooted in where the meat on your plate comes from and how it died. I find it difficult to tolerate those who love eating meat, but cannot bear to think about, or look at, the slaughter and death of that animal. It seems disrespectful towards the animal, and if I wanted to get really eggy about it, I’m not sure if such people should be allowed to eat meat at all. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to my visit to the Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Horsens, touted as “the most modern slaughterhouse in the world”.
Danish Crown is the world’s largest exporter of pork, supplying pork to customers all over the world; 90 percent of the pork slaughtered in Denmark is exported, with the UK being the biggest market. Completed in 2004, the slaughterhouse at Horsens kills approximately 100,000 pigs per week, making it one of the largest in the world. There are 1,420 people employed there, and the slaughterhouse receives around 150 visitors per day.
The slaughterhouse has been designed with openness in mind; a viewing gallery follows every step of the production, from the pigs arriving, to the slaughter itself, to the butchering and packaging. I was genuinely surprised at the level of openness at the plant; Danish Crown wants to invite people in and say “look, this is how we do it”.
The first part of the process is called the “black” slaughter line, and is in stark contrast with the minimalist, office-like corridors that surround the slaughtering area. We started off in the space where the pigs arrive – holding pens where up to 3,800 pigs (3 and a half hours worth of slaughtering) will sit for 1-2 hours before they are slaughtered. “Listen to that” says my guide, Agnete Poulsen. “Listen to what?” I think. “There are thousands of pigs in here, and you can hardly hear a sound. Have you ever heard the noise that ten pigs can make? It’s incredible. These are very calm pigs, and that’s the way we want them to be. This room has been designed to calm the pigs down before they go into the slaughterhouse. If the pigs are stressed when they are killed, the quality of the meat will not be so good.”
From there, the pigs are gently herded in small groups by a series of moving walls into a gas chamber, where they are rendered unconscious by C02 gas. A minute later, they tumble out of the chamber on to a conveyor belt from where they are strung up by their legs before being stuck in the carotid artery and bleeding to death.
The pigs continue on their journey along a long line, strung up by their legs. They disappear into a cabinet, where an automatic saw chops their body in half. Then a series of workers remove different organs from each side of the body – one lucky guy’s job is to remove the brain, the next one the heart, and so on. Needless to say, there is a lot of blood. As I mentioned earlier, I believe it is important to understand how an animal is butchered, and even try it yourself; but, I think to myself, I couldn’t do this for a living. “Do you psychologically profile the guys who do these jobs? How do you know they won’t crack up after a couple of weeks?” I ask Agnete. “Not at all” she replies. “They get used to it very quickly. You would too. We don’t force people to do this, they are happy to do it. It’s an honest job.”
All of the organs collected in this process move on to different sections of the plant where they will be processed further – there is always a part of the world where something we don’t eat here is a delicacy. From the “black” slaughter line, the pigs are hung for 16 hours in a refrigerated room, before moving on to the next line for general butchering by hand, then packaging, before being loaded on to trucks and whizzed off to far-flung places. At each step of the process, different parts of the pig are stamped, scanned and recorded, so that each piece of meat in the supermarket can be traced right back to the farm that it came from and the time it was slaughtered.
The slaughterhouse at Horsens was truly one of the most fascinating places I have visited on my travels. It is an experience that will leave a mark on my daily life, and help me to understand, just a little, about another important aspect of my food. As you can probably tell, this is not an in-depth exposé of an industry, and my experience is not enough to knowledgeably critique the process of delivering Danish Crown bacon to your breakfast table; nor can I account for the processes of Danish Crown outside what I saw in Horsens. But I was pleasantly surprised by the openness of the plant about its operations and methods, and it is clear that when they designed the slaughterhouse they were thinking ahead in terms of what consumers will want to see from food producers: more transparency.
And while I can’t comment on the conditions of the lives of the pigs before they get to the slaughterhouse (the vast majority of which come from Denmark), I can only make an educated guess that, through my own experience as a resident of Denmark, the laws that govern the treatment of pigs would be about as strict or stricter as they would be anywhere else in the world. Anyone with any knowledge on that would be welcome to chip in. I am happy to admit that I finished my tour with a sausage in the canteen.
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The window of London department store Selfridges has been dressed with a selection of new inventions by British designer Dominic Wilcox, including a reverse listening device and binoculars for viewing the future (+ slideshow).
Dominic Wilcox chose ideas from his Variations on Normal collection of absurd but logical inventions for the window display, which is part of Selfridges’ Festival of Imagination.
“The theme I was working to was extremely broad, simply ‘Imagination’,” Wilcox told Dezeen. “I started adding ideas into my sketchbook one at a time and eventually filled a few pages with a rough outline of thoughts. Once I started selecting materials and making the ideas into real objects they naturally changed and developed.”
His handmade sparkling beard is made from 2000 crystals and a Wedgwood cup and saucer has been modified to include a fan for cooling a piping hot brew.
An umbrella with inbuilt flowers pots is designed so the user can water their plants and stay dry at the same time. The Reverse Listening Device – shown in the short movie above – allows the wearer to listen to sounds on their left side in their right ear and vice versa. “It was interesting to use the device and find out that it actually worked well,” said Wilcox.
He created a pair of binoculars through which the user could view the future and past, simply by inputting their chosen date and looking through the eyepieces.
An alarm clock with a brass bugle attached to the side is powered by mini compressor to create a noise loud enough to ensure you wake up.
Metal objects are given a punk makeover by covering them in spikes include a faucet, a teapot and a hip flask.
Wilcox proposes attaching small aeroplane wings to the sides of London’s black cabs to alleviate the city’s traffic congestion.
A suitcase with legs so it can walk on its own instead of being dragged along and toothbrushes with maracas on the bottom to make cleaning teeth more musical also feature in the display.
The items are suspended in the window beside bubbles of text to explain their functions.
Wilcox’s No Place Like Home GPS shoes are on display in Selfridges as part of the Imagine Shop curated by Dezeen, which also features an augmented reality watch store and giant yacht – watch our movie about the pop-up here.
Wilcox will give a talk about his creations and other work in the OMA-designed Imaginarium in Selfridges’ basement, at 12:30pm on 7 February.
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London studio Scott Architects has added a curvy timber extension to a terraced house in Hackney, featuring a bowed wall that cuts through the centre of a green roof.
De Beauvoir House is a nineteenth-century brick building that was originally the home of Scott Architects‘ directors Jez and Tonya Scott. The architects decided to renovate the house and add a larger kitchen and dining room, and an extra bedroom.
The residence is located within a conservation area, so the architects designed an extension with smooth oak surfaces and plant-covered rooftops to allow it to sit comfortably with its surroundings.
“The forms at the back of the building were designed to connect with the garden as much as possible,” Jez Scott told Dezeen.
The new ground-floor kitchen and dining room curves out around a decked terrace. Its sloping roof angles down to meet the garden and is blanketed by a surface of plants and wildflowers.
Inside, the kitchen is positioned beneath a long skylight, revealing how an internal partition is also an exterior wall.
“When you’re in the kitchen you can look up at the double-height timber and get a real feel for these gestural shapes,” said Scott.
Limestone was used as a flooring material, contrasting with the restored pine floorboards elsewhere in the house, and a stretch of glazing defines the junction between the new and old structures.
An added doorway leads through to the new bedroom from the house’s main staircase. The room also opens out to the rooftop garden.
Existing walls were stripped back to the brickwork in various rooms. The architects also reinstated decorative ceiling mouldings and added a new fireplace.
Photography is by Craig Sheppard .
Here’s a project description from Scott Architects:
De Beauvoir House
De Beauvoir House is a four-bedroom Victorian terraced house that has been sensitively refurbished and boldly extended as a sculptural form that draws in light from the sky and embraces views of its garden and surrounding trees.
Set within a Hackney conservation area, original period features have been reinstated using traditional methods while a rear extension of sweeping spaces gives new life to a house that was slowly being outgrown by its family’s modern requirements.
The form of the new extension has evolved from the language of the site: its gardens, its brickwork and its neighbouring buildings. Its curved forms are clad in solid oak boarding to add to a carefully selected palette of natural materials – limestone flooring, exposed brickwork walls and restored Baltic pine floorboards. The interiors are expressed as a series of fluid surfaces and flowing spaces that weave through the home, leading one towards a rear garden that gently extends over the dining room as a green roof of wildflowers.
Generously lit indoor family rooms open up and connect with west-facing outdoor spaces. Contemporary forms reveal and celebrate the character of the original house, allowing vertical pools of natural light to wash over exposed brickwork and cleanly composed surfaces. Oak boarding extends through to internal spaces to add texture and visual warmth.
The original building has been fully thermally insulated and includes low energy lighting, under floor heating from a highly efficient boiler and a sloping green roof.
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News: advertising festival Cannes Lions has added product design to the list of creative disciplines awarded at this year’s event.
The festival is introducing product design into its awards programme, the “Oscars of the advertising world” and taking place in the French Riviera this summer, to highlight how important the design of products themselves is to building a brand and promoting it through advertising.
“We are launching product design as a category at Cannes but because the festival is built around great brand communication traditions,” Cannes Lions CEO Phil Thomas told Dezeen. “Over the past few years we have seen a desire and a need from marketers to include product design in their brand communications.”
Thomas pointed to technology companies Apple and Samsung as examples of companies that use the design of their products as an integral part of their branding.
“Brands who are looking for creative communications solutions are no longer just looking for advertising, in fact they don’t even talk in those terms any more,” Thomas explained. “They are looking for the whole brand experience which does of course include design.”
Thomas told us that winning a Lion is considered a major accolade in the advertising world and although there’s no cash prize, he said that there is a lot to be gained from receiving one of the trophies.
“It is a bit like an Oscar,” said Thomas. “If you win an Oscar you are probably going to sell more bums on seats and it is basically a very similar dynamic. If I win a Lion I am going to get more work because I am going to be more famous. That is the fundamental dynamic.”
Thomas hopes that the design sector of the awards will grow to become just as beneficial for the winners in the new product design category.
“We know it will take time for it to build in the product design world,” he said, “We want to prove to people that what we offer is something really interesting for them and that they will join this adventure.”
Designers and agencies will be able to submit their work to be considered for the Cannes Lions awards in four subsections that fall within product design.
Consumer Goods focuses on the visual impact of a brand through design and will cover items such as electronics, lighting, furniture, homeware and fashion.
Wellbeing and Environmental Impact awards will be given to designs that solve problems, including products that benefit medical procedures and the natural world.
The Solution category is based on innovative designs that improve day-to-day life and finally Interface is about how the user interacts with the products and how information is conveyed.
“We are a very global festival so last year we had 35,000 entries into the festival from 94 countries,” said Thomas. “What we are hoping to see is the very best of design from all over the world.”
Cannes Lions began 60 years ago as a festival and awards scheme purely focussed on advertising, but has slowly added other creative fields as the profession has grown to encompass them. The Design section was added recently and already acknowledges graphics and packaging.
This year’s festival will take place from 15-21 June in Cannes, France. Entries will be accepted from 2pm today and the deadline to submit projects will be 28 March.
Here’s the full press release from Cannes Lions:
Cannes Lions now accepting entires – new Product Design category launches
The 61st Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, taking place from 15 to 21 June 2014, is now accepting entries across all categories. Entries will be judged by an outstanding mix of industry professionals who will come together in Cannes, France, in June to vote and deliberate on over 36,000 entries and ultimately award the best in global creative communications.
Entries can be submitted into 17 categories which are: Branded Content & Entertainment, Creative Effectiveness, Cyber, Design, Direct, Film, Film Craft, Innovation, Media, Mobile, Outdoor, PR, Press, Promo & Activation, Radio, Titanium and Integrated, and new for 2014, Product Design.
Product Design Lions will recognise the applied use of physical products in aiding the communication of a brand ethos as well as its use to have a positive impact on improving people’s lives. The category will be split into four main sub sections:
Consumer Goods
Focus will be placed on its visual impact as well as the use and experience of the brands values through design. Entries in the consumer goods categories will take the following elements into consideration: form, function, problem solving, innovation, production and research. The consumer goods category will include products from electronics, lighting, furniture, homeware and fashion & lifestyle.
Wellbeing and Environmental Impact
Entries will be judged on how effective the solution is in solving real life problems. This award is about making people’s lives better through design or the design process. The entries will not be judged on their results in marketing or sales.
Solution
Focus will be placed on the ergonomic functionality and day to day solutions provided through design. The jury will be looking for a solution which is new or improves something that
Interface
Focus will be placed on the user interfaces’ visual impact, as well as its ease of navigation and ability to convey information.
Commenting on the launch of Product Design, Terry Savage, Chairman of Lions Festivals says: “Brand communication has become such a part of product design that it’s important as a global Festival celebrating creative communications that we now recognise this. Including Product Design Lions as a stand-alone entry category in our awards line up, not only acknowledges this fast growing industry, but helps to set a global benchmark and precedent for the creativity within it.”
Terry continues: “As with all new launches we have taken time to consult with the industry, ensuring that the category meets with the needs and expectations of the sector.” Adding to this, Danish Designer Lars Larsen, founder and head of design at Kilo, says “A lot of communication today utilises product design. By understanding the core business of a brand we are able to follow through with a design. Awarding and encouraging this way of thinking brings the industry closer to clients and the possibility of designing the solutions of the future. Having a platform such as Cannes Lions makes that possible.”
Elsewhere at Cannes Lions, recognising overall performance, a number of Special Awards will be given throughout the Festival week. The Agency of the year, Creative Marketer of the Year, Grand Prix for Good, Holding Company of the Year, Independent Agency of the Year, Lion of St. Mark, Media Person of the Year, Network of the year and Palme d’Or will all be awarded and presented on stage during the four awards ceremonies.
Cannes Lions is now open for entries and submissions are being accepted through the website. As previously announced, the 2014 Festival will see a new-look Cyber Lions category with added Social, Branded Technology and Branded Games sub categories. Significant changes have been made to a number of sub categories, across all entry sections, most notably in PR, Branded Content and Entertainment, Film and Outdoor Lions. Further information on all of the categories, rules and fees can be found here. The deadline for entries is 28 March 2014.
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Shiny aluminium-clad walls allow this small house in Almere by Dutch studio MONO to reflect the colours of its setting (+ slideshow).
Named Rebel House, the single-storey residence was designed by MONO to be deliberately alien to the typical brick buildings of the local neighbourhood.
“The house looks like a spaceship which touched ground to mother earth,” said architects Gijs Baks, Jacco van Wengerden and Milda Grabauskaite. “It seems to want to leave any moment again.”
The house was constructed on a tight budget, so low-cost corrugated aluminium was used to clad all four walls. The same material also covers doors, allowing them to blend into the facade.
The interior surfaces of the walls are fronted with timber to give the appearance of warmth to the open-plan living spaces.
A grid of shelves stretches across one of these walls to accommodate a kitchen, storage areas and a large window seat.
The rest of the space is loosely divided up by the presence of a boxy bathroom that integrates extra storage areas and a sliding partition to screen off the bedroom.
Double doors open the house out to the garden, where the architects have added a triangular shed clad with the same aluminium panels.
Photography is by Yvonne Brandwijk.
Here’s a project description from MONO:
Rebel House in Almere
Rebel House liberates itself from existing prejudices, and appears radically unconventional for a house. The house looks like a spaceship which touched ground to mother earth. The corrugated aluminum sheeting reflect the sun and the surroundings, and create an extreme lightness. The house seems to want to leave any moment again.
Both this dream and the raw realities of site parameters and proximity to its boundaries, budget limitations and the desire for low maintenance were crucial in the design development of Rebel House.
In contrast to the exterior the interior is warm and convivial. The timbered walls integrate a kitchen, an open cupboard and a deep windowsill as a ‘hangout’. The detached box houses all services of the house. Living around it is a continuous experience. The hidden, double doors open the house to the garden. The triangular, aluminium shed in the garden seems to provide an anchor for the house and completes the composition.
Client: private
Architect: MONO (www.mono.eu)
Location: Almere – The Netherlands
Area: 77sqm
Team: Gijs Baks, Jacco van Wengerden, Milda Grabauskaite
Stuctural Engineer: On Man
Interior Fit Out: Thomas Meubels
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reflects the colours of its surroundings appeared first on Dezeen.
Interdisciplinary art collective BeAnotherLab has developed a virtual reality headset that allows users to experience what it would be like to live in the skin of someone from the opposite sex.
The Machine To Be Another (pictured above) was designed by BeAnotherLab as a low-budget experiment that examines how people with different social, theological or cultural backgrounds can experience life from another’s perspective.
One of the tests conducted using the technology is called the Gender Swap experiment and invites users to discover, “what would it be like to see through the eyes of the opposite sex?”
“Designed as an interactive performance installation, the Machine offers users the possibility of interacting with a piece of another person’s life story by seeing themselves in the body of this person and listening to his or her thoughts,” explained BeAnotherLab.
Users wear a pair of immersive goggles from virtual reality firm Oculus that display a video being transmitted in real time from a camera attached to another headset worn by a performer, who can be an actor or anyone interested in describing a particular aspect of their life.
The user and performer agree on a set of movements and actions and act them out at the same time in identical spaces, with the performer describing their thoughts or feelings about what they are doing and interacting with.
This audio description is picked up by a microphone worn by the performer and can be heard by the user through a set of earphones.
As well as enabling men and women to temporarily swap gender, performances have been arranged to allow people to gain insight into the bodies and minds of a wheelchair user and an immigrant in Spain. A mother and her teenage daughter have also tried out the headset.
“Our main interest through this approach is to use the Machine as a tool to help promote empathy among individuals of different social, cultural and ideological contexts,” said the designers. “However, we are also open to new points of views and interests that might be offered by the collaborators.”
BeAnotherLab used readily available technologies including webcams, mobile phones with built in digital compasses for tracking movement, and Arduino microcontrollers to create the low budget set up, which will be made available online as an open source initiative.
The project is based on a field of neuroscience called ’embodiment’ that examines how the form of the body affects the way we think and act. The designers explained that they are interested in developing the project with psychologists and neurologists working in fields such as rehabilitation, body perception and conflict resolution.
The Machine To Be Another project was initiated by BeAnotherLab with support from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and tested during a residency at L’estruch, a creative laboratory in Sabadell, Spain.
All images are courtesy of BeAnotherLab.
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British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have curated an exhibition at London’s Design Museum containing a selection of objects paused part-way through the manufacturing process, which they joked reveals their obsession with aluminium.
The 24 objects on show at Barber and Osgerby‘s In The Making exhibition have all been paused at a different stage of completion, chosen to demonstrate the way it’s made or to show it when its most visually interesting. “Some of the items are more beautiful and sculptural than the finished pieces,” said Barber during a tour of the exhibition.
At the entrance to the exhibition sits an aluminium section that would form the front of a London Underground train. The chunk of metal is instantly recognisable as belonging to a tube carriage even taken out of context.
Seeing the train front in isolation also allows visitors to gauge the scale of the piece and the qualities of the material, which is true of all the objects on display.
Other aluminium items include the flat perforated outer skin of the duo’s Olympic Torch before it has been joined into its 3D form, a drinks can without its top and the case of an Apple MacBook Pro.
“This could have be called the aluminium show,” said Osgerby. “There are a number of aluminium pieces in this exhibition, which I think demonstrates the importance of the material – not least in its recyclability but also its malleability.”
Arranged along two black corridors, the objects are presented under spotlights like sculpture or jewellery. “Each object has been lit in this way to really try to animate the design and give it an importance,” said Osgerby.
Some of the manufacturing techniques are easily recognisable in the objects, such as the creation of pencils, while other more abstract forms are harder difficult to guess, like the conical top of a silicon cylinder used to create semi-conductive chips for electronics.
A sheet of leftover lurid yellow felt with cut out strips used for tennis balls and the splayed upper of a Nike GS Football Boot were chosen for their graphic shapes.
“We were quite struck by the amazing graphic quality, which is something we’ve really paid attention to in our work,” said Barber.
Aside from the torch, Barber and Osgerby have also included their designs for a £2 coin to mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground and the injection-moulded Tip Ton chair for design brand Vitra.
Positioned at the ends of the displays are two larger items: a sofa by furniture brand B&B Italia that has been formed into shape with foam but not yet upholstered and a long cuboid of clay that would be sliced up into bricks.
Three screens are installed to show the manufacture of the items and visitors can take pamphlets containing more information about each object as they exit the exhibition space. These booklets were designed by London studio Build, which created all the graphics for the show.
In The Making runs until 4 May at the Design Museum in London. Photography is by Mirren Rosie, courtesy of the Design Museum, unless otherwise stated.
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“could almost be called the aluminium show” appeared first on Dezeen.
An events space designed by Rem Koolhaas’ OMA has opened in the basement of London department store Selfridges, featuring a circular amphitheatre, vivid green columns and a stripy monochrome floor (+ slideshow).
The Imaginarium was designed by OMA as “a school of imagination” and will be used to host a series of lectures, debates and activities as part of the Festival of Imagination taking place over the next six weeks.
The space centres around the semi-circular sections of the main amphitheatre, which were built on wheels so that they can be moved into different configurations. Pushed together, they form an intimate enclosure for up to 72 people, but can also be separated to surround a mobile stage.
The hollow structure of the seating is clad with translucent polycarbonate, allowing light to shine through from dozens of fluorescent lighting tubes installed within.
Elsewhere, cube-shaped stools are laid out in a grid to create another seating area, but can be moved into different layouts to suit various events and activities.
The floor of the space is painted with an Op Art-style pattern of black and white stripes that were applied using a road-painting machine.
Surrounding columns are painted in a shade of green often used to overlay a background in televised news and weather reports.
The perimeter walls are covered with mirrors that disguise the boundaries of the room.
The Koolhaas-designed auditorium is one of three Imaginariums installed at Selfridges‘ department stores across the UK. All three will host daily events during the Festival of Imagination, which is intended to “explore the power of the mind”.
The Oxford Street Selfridges also features the Imagine Shop, a pop-up store curated by Dezeen that contains an augmented reality watch store and a walk-around digital model model of a yacht designed by Zaha Hadid.
Photography is by Andrew Meredith.
Read on for more information from Selfridges:
Selfridges launches the Festival of Imagination, with the unveiling of the Imaginarium – the first school of imagination of its kind
Selfridges London previews its Festival of Imagination with novelist Lucy Hawking (daughter of scientist Stephen Hawking) and Selfridges’ Creative Director Alannah Weston in the Imaginarium, ahead of the official launch to the public, tomorrow, Friday 17 January.
Based on Harry Gordon Selfridge’s belief that imagination is the antidote to routine and the mother of originality, The Festival of Imagination is Selfridges’ new campaign to encourage people to explore the power of their own imagination with the help of some renowned personalities (the festival’s bright imagineers) who are helping to shape and inspire our future.
Following on from the resounding success of No Noise in 2013, Selfridges’ first wellbeing campaign, the Festival of Imagination continues to explore the power of the mind. This time, instead of celebrating silence, meditation and all things ‘less is more’, Selfridges focuses on what happens when our creativity is stimulated and imagination takes flight.
The line up of imagineers giving one of the 100-plus talks, lectures and discussions in Imaginariums in Selfridges stores in London, Manchester and Birmingham include Lucy Hawking, Jeanette Winterson, Carol Ann Duffy, and Nicola Formichetti.
The stunning London Imaginarium was designed by iconic Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, under whom Zaha Hadid, the world’s most famous female architect once studied and trained.
The Festival of Imagination officially launches on Friday 17 January and runs until 2 March. The Imaginariums’ schedules and all details about the festival are available at selfridges.com.
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News: Le Corbusier‘s Notre Dame du Haut chapel at Ronchamp has been vandalised, prompting calls for urgent security measures to prevent further damage to one of the Modernist architect’s finest works.
President of the Fondation Le Corbusier Antoine Picon spoke out after vandals broke into Le Corbusier’s chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, on Friday. He called for the implementation of “emergency [security] measures regarding the site and building”.
The vandals forced entry to the chapel, breaking a hand-painted, glass window signed by Le Corbusier. They then took a concrete collection box, which contained no money, and threw it outside.
Picon called on the Association Oeuvre Notre-Dame-du-Haut, which own the chapel, to “better protect the heritage of the twentieth century and that of Le Corbusier in particular.”
He also pointed to the church’s poor structural and cosmetic state, citing in particular “moisture problems, infiltration and poor preservation of masonry.”
Ronchamp was completed in 1955. Le Corbusier designed the chapel for the Catholic church on an existing place of pilgrimage.
Its thick masonry walls, irregular window placement and massive curved roof evoke a sculptural quality not previously associated with the sparse functionalism of Corbusier’s earlier buildings. Many critics consider the idiosyncratic chapel Le Corbusier’s finest work.
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