Curated by Bay Area designer and educator Jon Sueda, All Possible Futures features 37 projects from renowned designers Ed Fella, Experimental Jetset, Daniel Eatock, Martin Venezky, and many more. The idea for the exhibition originated from Sueda’s interest in showcasing the value of design projects that failed for any number of reasons, including being rejected by clients. The result is an exhibition of speculative design pieces that celebrate the questioning of boundaries regarding concepts, processes, technologies, and form.
Christine Todorovich / Design Mind: The title of the exhibit is “All Possible Futures”—it seems you’re implying something about the parallel lives these speculative projects lead? Can you talk more about the meaning behind the title?
Jon Sueda: Before All Possible Futures was an exhibition, it was actually a title to an article I wrote in 2007 for a publication called Task Newsletter. The original piece was a set of interviews with five graphic designers, and also the renowned critical design team Dunne & Raby, investigating speculative design projects. At that time, the criteria was clearly inspired by “visionary” or “paper” architecture… each project had to somehow distance itself from “real world” parameters, perhaps representing potential imaginings of the future. The final selection ended up being a set of project proposals that were either rejected by their client or critical provocations never intended to be produced. This exhibition is a build-out, or expansion, of these early ideas.
Your interpretation of the title is correct. In fact, I titled the adjunct program for the exhibition Parallel Universe?. In a sense, you could argue that all the work in the show is an example of a “parallel universe” of graphic design… this work operates on the margins of practice, created by designers who initiate their own investigations that exist outside or question the traditional commission structure.
A twisting chain-link and barbed-wire fence installed by French artist and architect Didier Faustino at an exhibition in Cincinnati determines the path taken by visitors through the gallery space.
Made from a material commonly used to define international borders and property limits within urban environments, the fence is edge with barbed wire to create a feeling of danger that evokes the risks involved in illegal immigration.
“When you cross borders there is always this feeling of guilt, where you feel afraid and in danger, and for me the idea of the piece is to recreate this feeling inside the gallery,” Faustino told Dezeen.
As it bisects the space the fence rotates 180 degrees and rises above the ground to define a passage that visitors follow to cross from the entrance to the exit.
The title of the work refers to the 1991 movie starring Patrick Swayze as an anarchic bank-robbing surfer.
The spiralling form of the fence resembles the tunnel created beneath a breaking wave.
The Point Break installation is an evolution of a previous work that Faustino created for experimental New York exhibition space Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2008.
Entrance to Faustino’s (G)host in the (S)hell exhibition in New York, 2008
The original version was called (G)host in the (S)hell and transformed the front of the urban gallery by weaving a fence through openings in the facade.
Interior of the (G)host in the (S)hell exhibition
Point Break is part of a group exhibition called Buildering: Misbehaving the City, which features work by 27 artists who explore the idea of creative misuse of buildings and urban spaces.
Faustino’s Home Suit Home installation at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center
In another gallery, Faustino has installed a version of his Home Suit Home artwork comprising a hollow suit made from standard carpet, which was previously exhibited at Galerie Michel Rein in Paris. For the Cincinnati exhibition, Faustino covered the gallery floor in carpet from which the net shape used to create the suit was cut in one piece and folded into shape.
“When carpet – this basic material of architecture – is transformed into the Home Suit Home it becomes a kind of protective element like a real home,” explained Faustino.
Both pieces are part of Fautino’s continuing experiments into the relationship between the body and architecture, which he says are “about experiencing fragility, provoking instability in space and showing how architecture creates a shelter that protects the body at its centre.”
Photography of the Point Break exhibition is by Kelly Barrie.
Here’s some more information from the artist:
Didier Faustino: “Buildering: Misbehaving the City” at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
At the heart of the exhibition ‘Buildering: Misbehaving the City’ at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, two of Didier Faustino’s works help to redefine urban and physical borders, to express his transgressive vision of architecture and the misuse of codes regarding housing, thus exploring limits to physical and psychological freedom.
Crossing the space diagonally, the Point Break installation reflects on the materiality of metal fencing and the use of it in towns and American suburbs. It provides a formal criticism, misappropriating this commonplace material to create a passage. The barriers refer to private property, fundamental in the USA, and the passage that they provide here remains extremely dangerous, requiring visitors to take a physical risk connecting them to illegal immigration and to the notion of border. Changing the exhibition space into an ambiguous territory, Point Break expands as if to delineate space, raising social, political as well as psychological questions.
With Home Suit Home, Didier Faustino invites us to enter a disturbing world, strangely resembling ours but haunted by another ‘us’ in customised armour in the most banal domestic material. The artwork draws on signs from our familiar environment but endeavours to turn it inside out, literally, like a glove, projecting the visitor into an unstable world. It plays with elements representing hindrance, displacement and inversion and takes on bodily characteristics consisting of poor materials from our standardized homes.
Unusually concerned in front of our apartments and offices that have suddenly become unwelcoming, we are drawn to think about the lives that animate our familiar environments and the fictional borders that claim to separate art from our lives, political decisions from our aesthetic models. Reversibility characterises this installation, where the home is in turns designated like a compartment to be occupied and an impossible destination, where the anthropomorphic figure forms an interior as well as an exterior, a container and contents.
Our housing models, our way of organising and accommodating our bodies, our spectacular buildings, the constraints opposing our flesh are in question here. Didier Faustino’s ploy radicalises the architectural intention, to the point of formulating a resolute criticism of future planning for households.
Exterior: Bruder Klaus Field Chapel by Peter Zumthor – photographed by Tim Van de Velde
Organised by architectural stock photography website Arcaid Images, the awards were divided into four categories – exterior, interior, sense of place and buildings in use – and the winning images were selected by a panel of judges including architects Zaha Hadid, Eva Jiřičná, and Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.
Winner: Trollstigen by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekten – photographed by Ken Schluchtmann
The overall winner was a shot of the viewing platform perched high above a fjord at the Trollstigen Tourist Route in Norway by Berlin photographer Ken Schluchtmann, who has a total of four images shortlisted.
Runner-up: Dalian International Conference Center by Coop Himmelb(l)au – photographed by Duccio Malagamba
Exterior: Reindeer Pavilion by Snøhetta – photographed by Ken Schluchtmann
The winners were first announced at the end of 2013 and a selection of nine will go on show inside a renovated factory at 7–9 Woodbridge Street, London, from 28 February to 25 April.
Exterior: Absolute Towers by MAD Architects – photographed by Large + Bounhar
Here’s some additional information from Arcaid:
The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards at Werkstatt
Sto presents Werkstatt – meaning workshop in German – a showcase for the whole Sto Group and a new East London cultural establishment with a lively program of exhibitions, talks, workshops and consultations. The inaugural exhibition is Building Images: The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards 2013 which shows the breadth and invention in both architecture and photography today.
Sense of place: Tungeneset by Code Arkitektur – photographed by Ken Schluchtmann
Arcaid Images is a photographic resource representing images from all aspects of the built world, ancient and modern, iconic and ordinary. The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards started in 2012. This year’s judges were: Zaha Hadid, Ivan Harbour, Catherine Slessor, Eva Jiricna and Graham Stirk.
Interior: Shanghai Museum of Glass by Coordination – photographed by Ken Schluchtmann
The exhibition will present nine shortlisted photographs including The Awards’ winner Ken Schluchtmann’s photograph of ‘Nasjonale Turistveger’ Trollstigen, Norway. A building suspended in clouds next to a waterfall, which highlights the magical nature of architecture and its power within a landscape.
Interior: Liverpool Central Library by Austin-Smith:Lord – photographed by Keith Hunter
Friederike Meyer: “Described as much more than mere reproductions, Schluchtmann’s images penetrate to the very essence of his subjects. They distil light and colour in a long process involving both analogue and digital techniques, imbuing photographs with an unusually sculptural depth. Some say they create incarnations of design in the way that other photographers create incarnations of fashion.”
Buildings in Use: Pátio des Escolas by José Barra and Gonçalo Byrne – photographed by Fernando Guerra
Other remarkable photographs being shown in large scale c-type prints beauty include Adam Mørk’s ‘exterior shortlisted’ photograph of The Blue Planet, Denmark and in ‘the buildings in use category’ Fernando Guerra’s striking image of Pátio des Escolas, Portugal.
Interior: Dalian Congress Centre by Coop Himmelb(l)au photographed by Duccio Malagamba
The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Award aims to put the focus on the skill and creativity of the photographer.
Interior: Citta del Sol by Labrics – photographed by Fernando Guerra
The judges and the viewers are asked to look beyond the architecture to the composition, light, scale, atmosphere, sense of place and understanding of the project.
The exhibition mirrors the innovation available in this three-storey renovated factory in the heart of Clerkenwell. A full range of Sto Group’s products are at Werkstatt for architects to play and create with, including glass and rendered rainscreen cladding, seamless acoustics, facade elements and photo catalytic interior paint coating.
Sense of place: exterior approach to the Shanghai South Railway Station – photographed by James Leynse
Werkstatt also extends out from its hub in Clerkenwell to offer connections to Sto’s international network of technical experts with local and global knowledge. Werkstatt is a workshop for international designers and architects to meet, hear, see, be inspired, photography in relaxed surroundings with a backdrop of Sto innovation.
Exterior: The Blue Planet by 3XN – photographed by Adam Mørk
It’s impossible to deny the importance of artist George Condo; with his engaging, visceral work spanning three decades across drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture. His first solo exhibitions took place in the emerging bustle of New…
François Halard, Robert Rauschenberg Portrait #2, 1998. (Image courtesy Demisch Danant)
The puckish Robert Rauschenberg at work and play in his studio in Captiva Island, Florida. Blurred geometry at Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre. The crumbling grandeur of the Villa Noailles. Pleated pottery arrayed in Cy Twombly’s bedroom. These are some of the dreamy spaces, people, and places captured over the past two decades by François Halard, the subject of a career-spanning exhibition that opens Saturday at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery. Many of the works in “François Halard: Architecture” have never before been published or exhibited—don’t miss the Polaroids, including the mind-blowing dolce vita view from Twombly’s studio in Southern Italy.
“Cartier: Style and History,” is a unique show currently on display at the newly renovated Salon d’Honneur within Paris’ Grand Palais, which tells the story of French luxury label Cartier (known as “jeweler to kings”). The…
Seattle studio Olson Kundig Architects has produced visualisations imagining the fictional scenes before and after a freight train carrying toxic chemicals haphazardly plunged into a lake where artist Jack Daws was building a house on stilts (+ slideshow).
As part of a project entitled The House That Jack Built, Olson Kundig‘s images accompany an account written by Jack Daws of an imaginary series of events whereby the artist tried to build an enticing retreat, but ended up with a refuge in a perilous environment.
The story tells of how Daws had become disillusioned by architects’ invasion of the art world and reacted by trying his hand at architecture.
Inspired by the houses of Seattle architect Tom Kundig, the artist planned a cabin at the centre of Walden Pond, Massachusetts, and built it on 24-metre stilts using tiles and rails pilfered from a local railway. This action destabilised the railway and led to the crash of the train.
Images and a model of the building are on show in the Mercer Gallery of Walden 3 in Seattle, presented as if the events genuinely took place.
“The installation is meant to be a starting point for self-reflection and a critical inquiry into contemporary society, engaging such topics as reincarnation, artistic attribution, admiration, false identity, thievery, tribute, injury and environmental degradation to ruin,” reads the exhibition text.
The fictional tale also extends to the exhibition opening, where architect Kundig is reported to have taken a punch at Daws over the attempt to rip off his style. This scene is also visualised in a rendering.
The House That Jack Built is the first project by Olson Kundig Outpost, the firm’s new visualisation studio, and forms part of the Itinerant Projects series of collaborations between the architects and various site-specific artists.
Here’s more information from Jack Daws and Olson Kundig Architects:
The House That Jack Built
Conceptual artist Jack Daws, in conjunction with Olson Kundig Outpost, present a new work entitled The House that Jack Built. The work will be featured at the Mercer Gallery at Walden Three from January 17 through March 16, 2014.
The House that Jack Built is based upon The Pond (a somewhat mystical account of my foray into architecture), Daws’ firsthand account of his efforts to build a cabin in the middle of Walden Pond only to have a freight train loaded with toxic chemicals plunge into its waters. The installation includes Daws’ story, a large-scale model of the cabin, and accompanying images depicting the pond before and after the environmental disaster. The installation is meant to be a starting point for self-reflection and a critical inquiry into contemporary society, engaging such topics as reincarnation, artistic attribution, admiration, false identity, thievery, tribute, injury and environmental degradation to ruin.
For Daws, and ultimately the subject of this exhibition, trouble began when he acted upon his growing irritation at architects for steadily eroding the boundaries of art and for taking art commissions he believes should be reserved for artists. His defiance led him to try his hand at architecture, and designing and building his own cabin – taking inspiration from the work of noted Seattle architect, Tom Kundig. Daws positioned his cabin, made from pilfered railroad ties and rails from a nearby railway, atop 80-foot steel rails in the middle of Walden Pond. Tragically, his theft of the rails led to the devastation of Walden Pond. In the post-accident image included in the exhibition, the wreckage of a freight train carrying toxic waste is shown spilling its contents into the idyllic setting.
Known to bend rules, Daws has made his mark challenging authority and tackling complex social issues. With The House that Jack Built, Daws threatens to challenge the boundaries of what an artist should be doing, and the territory they have no business meddling in. “I don’t care what my detractors think,” said Daws. “La historia me absolverá.” Greg Lundgren, executive director of Walden 3 adds, “Walden 3 prides itself on encouraging the artists it presents to take risks and challenge conventional wisdom. We do not censor their work or discourage their passions. But Jack took us to the absolute end on this one.”
Two new ventures for Olson Kundig Architects have supported this installation: Itinerant Projects is the firm’s new installation program which will locate four migratory collaborations in site-specific installations across the globe; and Olson Kundig Outpost, a new creative production studio that supported Mr. Daws with photography and visual effects.
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