Hasta La Ideas

Croatian design studio Brigada was inspired by cigarettes and smoke rings to create glowing cylindrical rooms for an exhibition about the culture of smoking (+ movie).

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo took place at the Gliptoteka gallery in Zagreb and focussed on the role smoking has played in Croatian art, photography, graphic design and film over the last 150 years.

Brigada was interested in the idea of smoking as a social taboo. Although a ban on smoking in enclosed public places in Croatia was lifted in 2009, there are still strict regulations on the promotion of smoking in the country.

In response, the designers wanted to hide the paintings, photographs and artefacts on show. They created a series of glowing fabric cylinders, which they describe as “reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes”.

The interior of each space was lit from above to avoid any shadows, plus artworks and prints were hung from scaffolding structures, as they couldn’t be mounted onto the walls.

The walls of the surrounding gallery were painted black to contrast with the brightness of the white fabric. Curtains hung over the entrance to every room.

Past projects by Brigada include an installation for a book that can only be identified in the dark.

See more exhibition design on Dezeen, including an architecture exhibition with looping walls and a performance exhibition filled with concertinaed ribbons.

Photography is by Domagoj Kunić and Domagoj Blažević. The movie is by Red Studio.

Here’s some extra information from the designers:

The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo / exhibition design

Brief

Glypthoteque HAZU, an art institution in Zagreb, Croatia, wanted to explore the link between smoking, art, and the concept of taboo – a hazy relationship made even more complex by Croatia’s strict laws on the promotion of tobacco. The resulting exhibition, The Culture of Smoking: From Taboo to Taboo, ­focuses on the role smoking has played in artistic and popular culture by bringing together paintings, posters, photographs, films and ephemera created over the last 150 years.

Idea

Taking inspiration from the phenomenon of smoke, the main goal of the agency Brigada was to recreate its very essence in the gallery space itself by completely altering a well-known exhibition space. Playing with the idea of taboo, their intention was to design an anti-exhibition – a display that hides the exhibits even from the museum itself.

Execution

They decided to create a ‘nonspace’ that plays with perception on different levels. By transforming and concealing all the existing elements of the gallery and painting the entire area black, the conventional exhibition space disappeared. Inside of it they built a completely new space, one that has no walls or ceilings, only cylindrical display rooms reminiscent of smoke circles or oversized cigarettes.

Softly illuminated from within, their enticing glow invites visitors to come take a closer look. But only after stepping into the space are the objects of taboo revealed. With no walls to hang paintings on, they designed modern easels that hint at the moment of artistic creation – usually in a smoke-filled studio. A special system of freestanding display cases and slender cylindrical rods exhibits smaller objects.

Ceiling lights illuminate the exhibits without creating any shadows to provide a contrast between the outer (black) and inner (white) space without disrupting the ephemeral feeling of the whole exhibition.

The display rooms create an atmosphere charged with mystery, discovery, and sustained interest. Visitors excitedly move back and forth between display spaces, revisit their favorite rooms, and ultimately create their own path through the exhibition.

Design team:
Brigada – Damjan Geber (Creative Director), David Kabalin (Architect, Project Manager), Simon Morasi Piperčić (Product Designer), Marina Brletić (Architect), Kristina Jeren (Architect), Lorenzo Cetina (Assistant)
Bruketa&Žinić OM – Davor Bruketa, Nikola Žinić (Creative Directors), Zrinka Jugec (Account Director), Ana Baletić (Art Director), Branka Lovrić (Designer)

Curators: Igor Zidić, Feđa Vukić

The post The Culture of Smoking
by Brigada appeared first on Dezeen.

Concertinaed paper-like ribbons swoop through an exhibition about performance art and movement designed by London firm Amanda Levete Architects at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Called Move: Choreographing You, the exhibition charts the relationship between performance and visual art over the last 50 years and invites visitors to participate in the installations on show.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The translucent paper-like structures, made of Tyvek, create partitions and help to direct visitors around the exhibition.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

Taking inspiration from origami and kites, the structures were developed in collaboration with London studio Kite Related Design.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The exhibition continues until 9 January 2011.

Photographs are by Gidon Fuehrer unless stated otherwise.

See all our stories about Amanda Levete Architects »

The following information is from the architects:

Move: Choreographing You

Move: Choreographing you is an exhibition of visual and performance art curated and hosted by the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank. The theme of the exhibition focuses on sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer through interaction with performers, visitors, and the pieces themselves.

AL_A was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery to do the interior spatial design and planning of the exhibition, as well as develop a multi-media archive in collaboration with interactive designers Unit 9.

The exhibition design was driven by the relationships between choreography and geometry, movement and form. Inspired by the photographic motion studies of the human body of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, we have created a collection of spatial dividers which are defined by a serial transformation of a single material: a sequence of folded oscillations of Dupont Tyvek.

The resulting translucent paper-like fabric ribbons, a counterpoint to the brutality of the building, rise and fall with undulating folds which simultaneously define themselves as way finding devices, partitions, suspended ceilings, and portals. These fluid spatial and formal transformations choreograph the movement of the visitor through areas of sculpture, film, archive and performance.

Click for larger image

The spatial configurations defined by our dividers are intended to embody two types of performative experience: public and private. In the public experience, the ribbons frame views, carve space, and lead visitors to a fluid and communal experience of the interactive objects and installations of Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Franz West, Franz E. Walther, William Forsythe, Christian Jankowski, and others.

In the private experience, the ribbons are used to enclose and define smaller more intimate spaces for introspective and singular experiences with the works of Isaac Julien, Dan Graham, Simone Forti, Tanya Bruguera, Lygia Clark and others.

While the expressive form of the ribbons was conceived as a choreography of material inspired by origami, the structure and bespoke detailing of the paper-like ribbons was inspired by those found in kites and was developed in close collaboration with fabricators Kite Related Design.

Click for larger image

Status: 2010
Client: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Location: London UK
Programme: Exhibition design for Move: Choreographing You, an exhibition of visual and performance art sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer.
AL_A Team: Amanda Levete, Alvin Huang, Tanya Rainsley, Gemma Douglas

See also:

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