Hasta La Ideas

News: architecture firm dRMM will install 20 interlocking wooden staircases outside St Paul’s Cathedral for the London Design Festival in September.

Unveiled this morning at the London Design Festival 2013 press preview, the design comprises a complex configuration of steps to be made from 44 cubic metres of tulipwood. Visitors will be invited to climb the structure and use it as a viewpoint towards the River Thames, Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern.

“Endless Stair is a three-dimensional exercise in composition, structure and scale,” said dRMM co-founder Alex de Rijke. “The Escher-like game of perception and circulation in timber playfully contrasts with the religious and corporate environment of stone and glass in the city.”

The structure will be made of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, which are usually created by layering up softwoods to form cheap and stable panels for fast construction. This installation will instead use a sustainable hardwood – tulipwood – to form lighter and stronger hardwood CLT panels for the first time.

The Endless Stair will be created in association with the American Hardwood Export Council and engineered by Arup. A lighting scheme for the spot will be developed by London studio Seam Design using products from LED company Lumenpulse.

The same team delivered Amanda Levete’s Timber Wave installation outside the V&A museum for the 2011 London Design Festival. The American Hardwood Export Council worked with Royal College of Art students on twelve wooden chairs at last year’s festival.

Alex de Rijke is dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. Previous architecture projects by dRMM include a golden wedding chapel by the seaside and a house with mobile walls and roof.

The London Design Festival 2013 takes place from 14 to 22 September. See more design events taking place throughout the year on our World Design Guide.

See more unusual staircases »
See more projects by dRMM »

dRMM’s Sliding House features in the Dezeen Book of Ideas. Special offer: buy the book now for just £10 »

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German artist Tobias Rehberger has created a temporary replica of his favourite Frankfurt bar in a New York hotel and covered the entire thing in bold geometric stripes (+ slideshow).

New York Bar Oppenheimer has exactly the same size and proportions of the original Bar Oppenheimer, a regular hangout for the artistic community in Frankfurt. It contains the same furniture and details, from the lighting fixtures to the tall radiators.

Unlike the original, Rehberger has decorated every surface of the replica bar with black and white stripes, which zigzag in every direction and are interspersed with flashes of red and orange.

The patterns are based on the concept of “dazzle camouflage”, a tactic employed during World War I to make it difficult for soldiers to pinpoint a target.

New York Bar Oppenheimer opened last week at Hôtel Americano, coinciding with the annual Frieze New York art fair. Functioning as both an installation and a working bar, it will remain in place until 14 July.

“The way I look at it is like a suitcase,” Rehberger told Wallpaper magazine. “I’m going to be in New York for a bit so I’m able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. And because I’m there for the art fair, the bar has to come dressed as a work of art.”

Other monochrome interiors featured on Dezeen include a house-shaped cultural centre and a series of fashion boutiques designed by Zaha Hadid. See more black and white interiors.

See more bars on Dezeen, including one made from scrap materials.

Here’s some more information from the exhibition organisers:

Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer

Pilar Corrias, London and Hôtel Americano are pleased to announce a new sculptural artwork, Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer by the German artist Tobias Rehberger. Presented from 11 May until 14 July 2013, the piece opened to coincide with Frieze New York and is on view at Hôtel Americano.

Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar. It is in this spirit that Rehberger has created a ‘second edition’ of Bar Oppenheimer, the Frankfurt late-night hangout he frequents and which is at the heart of the city’s artistic community. The work is a sculpture and, at the same time, a fully functioning bar. Rehberger remains faithful to the essence of the original bar: dimensions of space and objects are replicated and re-imagined to produce a familiar yet unfamiliar environment. Vodka Steins, Rehberger’s own favourite drink, are seconded to New York, transporting the artist’s own Frankfurt Oppenheimer Bar experience to Hôtel Americano for two months only.

A place where creatives and thinkers meet to form, discuss, argue, and pursue ideas and follies late into the night, Bar Oppenheimer acts as a catalyst for change. Repatriated in New York as Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer, the artist is curious as to the effect that its influence will have on a new audience.

11 May – 14 July 2013
Tues – Sat 5pm – midnight
Hôtel Americano, 518 W. 27th Street, New York

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by Tobias Rehberger appeared first on Dezeen.

An exhibition showcasing 15 years of design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec has opened at Les Arts Décoratifs museum in Paris.

Called Momentané, the show looks back at the Bouroullec brothers’ career so far and features furniture, lighting, spatial designs, drawings, videos and photographs.

The largest room is dominated by a 12-metre-high textile installation and a series of partitions designed by the brothers.

Objects such as the brothers’ Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo are displayed on podiums covered with their Pico tiles for Mutina.

In one of the side aisles is a collection of their office furniture, including the Copenhagen furniture designed for the Danish city’s university and produced by Hay, and the Ready Made Curtain system for Kvadrat.

Six alcoves contain objects designed for domestic spaces, such as the Alcove sofa for Vitra and the Cloud modular shelving system for Cappellini, as well as drawings and photographs exploring the brothers’ creative process.

The Momentané exhibition continues at Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, until 1 September 2013.

Recent work by the Bouroullecs includes a courtyard installation of rotating cork platforms in Milan last month and an aluminium chair and sideboard for Magis – see all design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Here’s more information from Les Arts Décoratifs:

From 25 April to 1 September 2013, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are revisiting fifteen years of creation in the Arts Décoratifs nave. Conceived as a gigantic installation combining the spectacular and the intimate, the 1,000 square-metre exhibition covers their entire career, highlighting every facet of their production: their objects and spatial designs, their limited editions and industrially produced pieces, their furniture for public spaces and the home, and their drawings, videos and photographs.

The Bouroullec brothers are focussing on three approaches to their work in the nave and its two side-aisles: in the nave in an installation in a vast architectural space; on the Tuileries side, with their reflection on the office and workspace, and on the Rivoli side with a more intimist approach highlighting their creative process.

Beneath a 12 metre-high textile vault in the nave, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec have created an abstract landscape structured by their partition designs (Algues, North Tiles, Twigs, Clouds), which divide the space and guide visitors through the exhibition. On entering this monumental, surprising universe one is immediately immersed in its singular atmosphere. Like an openwork screen, the polystyrene Nuages opens the exhibition, then one is led by the partitions through a series of their creations displayed on podiums covered with the Pico tiles produced by Mutina, including the Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and the Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo. These confrontations play on changes in scale and highlight their delicate, sensual aspects. Through the Algues screen one has a view of the Textile Field, originally created in 2011 for the Raphael Cartoons room in the Victoria & Albert museum.

In the Tuileries aisle, the Bouroullec brothers are focussing on their reflection on the workspace, which began with the Joyn desks for Vitra, a collaboration they are pursuing with their most recent creations, Workbay and Corktable. The Copenhagen furniture, produced by Hay, was specially designed and created for the new university of Copenhagen. Their designs for the office environment are pragmatic responses to the most recent evolutions in working practices: alone or with others and therefore requiring either intimate spaces conducive to concentration or, on the contrary, collective work areas. Visitors will be able to test the ergonomics and use of these pieces by trying out the furniture themselves. Separate workspaces can also be created with the Ready Made Curtain, a new system of very light, ready-to-install curtains developed for Kvadrat. 300 abstract drawings, either free expressions or linked to a specific design project, are being shown on the walls of this gallery.

The six alcoves in the Rivoli aisle focus on objects designed for more domestic and intimate spaces. These pieces, chosen for the dialogue they create with one another, are contextualised by models and a constellation of images. Preparatory drawings and photographs of factory production and details show the processes of creation and production.

In only fifteen years of prolific creativity, the Bouroullec brothers have produced an impressive body of work – furniture, objects, partitions, etc. – in an always simple and functional style and providing new solutions to contemporary lifestyles. They are particularly interested in problems of space and modularity. They often work on a quasi-architectural scale: one of their first pieces, the Lit Clos bed, created in 2000 for the Milan Furniture Fair, was designed for people living in a single room, and the Alcove Sofa (Vitra, 2007) can be transformed into a sofa or partition. The Cloud modular system (Cappellini) combines shelfs and partitions, the Algues (Vitra) and Twigs (Vitra) modular systems are assembled to create openwork screens, and the North Tiles (Kvadrat) and Clouds (Kvadrat) partitions are designed for acoustic comfort.

Fifteen years of creation

Ronan Bouroullec studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and began his career working alone, immediately showing his originality in the Torique collection of combinatory vases and ceramics he produced at Vallauris in 1997. In 1999, Ronan was joined by his brother Erwan, who trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Paris- Cergy. Their continual creative dialogue and prolific output was concretised by their collaborations with major design publishers. The first of these, Giulio Cappellini, enabled them to rapidly assimilate industrial production methods in creations such as the Hole collection in 1999 and the Spring Chair in 2000. They then began their close creative relationship with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, which produced many of their projects, including the Joyn modular desks (2002), the Algues modular partition system (2004) and more classical types of objects such as the Slow Chair (2007) and Vegetal Chair (2009).

The brothers also produced designs for other design manufacturers in Italy such as Magis (the Striped and Steelwood furniture) and Kartell (the Papyrus chair) and in England such as Established & Sons (the Quilt sofa and Lighthouse lamp). In France, they developed several pieces for Ligne Roset, a manufacturer specialised in seating, including the Outdoor chair, the origami-inspired Facett sofa and armchair collection and the Ploum sofa, whose exceptional comfort is the result of intensive research.

Their collaboration with Galerie Kreo from 2000 onwards enabled them to develop more experimental designs and explore themes dear to them, particularly the frontier between furniture and architecture, in pieces such as Cabane and Brick. Kreo provided them with a free environment in which they could propose projects unaffected by habitual industrial constraints: the Bells lamps, the Rizière table and the Lianes lights.

In parallel, the Bouroullec brothers have also designed exhibitions and interiors, including Issey Miyake’s first A-POC shop in Paris in 2000, the Maison Flottante for the Centre National de l’Estampe et de l’Art imprimé at Chatou, and more recently the Camper shops. The design of the showrooms of the textile brand Kvadrat in Stockholm was an opportunity for them to develop the Tiles and Clouds modular textiles partitions. From 2010 to 2013 they began new collaborations and widened their fields of activity. They designed a complete bathroom range for Axor (Hansgrohe group), the Piani and Aim lamps for Flos, the Losanges rug for Nanimarquina, the Ovale table service for Alessi, the Pico ceramic tiles collection for Mutina and university furniture for Hay. Their creations are now in numerous museums, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée National d’Art Moderne–Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Design Museum in London and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Publication

To coincide with this exhibition, DRAWING, a book of 800 drawings dating from 2004 to 2012, is being published by JRP Ringier. Drawing is their main day-to-day activity and the pencil the principal tool in their creative process and means of concretising their emotions, both as part of specific research in a project’s development or as a means of free personal expression.

The Arts Décoratifs Museums
107 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
Open Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm (late opening Thursday until 9pm: Temporary exhibitions and jewellery gallery only)

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Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec appeared first on Dezeen.

by Andrea DiCenzo Seductively simple and impishly clever, Richard Woods’ signature exaggerated wood grain takes new shape in a site-specific show at London’s ); return…

Continue Reading…

UK studio Universal Everything motion-captured a dancer to make this animation, which is projected onto the world’s highest-resolution screen (+ movie).

“We choreographed a contemporary dancer in a motion capture studio,” Universal Everything founder Matt Pyke told Dezeen. “We then transformed the motion capture data into a digital sculpture, formed from the trails of human movement.”

The hundreds of white light points that form the dancing figure become strands that glow yellow, then red, before solidifying into blue as the dancer moves across the screen.

Universal Everything produced animations at a highly detailed 16K resolution for the 25-metre-wide by four-metre-high screen in the Hyundai Vision Hall, located at the South Korean motor group’s Seoul campus.

“The film was produced at such a high resolution to achieve a life-sized dancer moving through the space,” said Pyke.

The studio and various collaborators created 18 short films for the hall to turn it into “a space that inspires leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers to learn, rethink, and collaborate.”

More digital installations on Dezeen include Arik Levy’s interactive screen that uses visitors’ movements to mutate computer-generated crystals and a wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery.

See all our stories about installations »

Universal Everything sent us the following information:

Hyundai Vision Hall

Euisun Chung, Vice Chairman of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), has a vision for the company that he leads. His aim is to align HMG with the best contemporary art, sculpture and digital design in the world. Artistic invention and innovation will be at the heart of both Hyundai and Kia’s future vision.

“The Vision Hall at Hyundai Motor Group’s Mabuk Campus is a symbolic space for presenting employees with Hyundai Motor Group’s values, providing them with a sense of pride, and sharing with them its dreams. The media wall, the central focus of the Hall, screens three video artworks that convey the vision and core values of the group.

An interactive artwork ‘Who Am We’ by world-renowned artist Do-Ho Suh was designed to develop pride and solidarity among the group’s employees and was produced through the participation of employees throughout the world. A metaphorical film series ‘Mobius Loop’ by Universal Everything expresses the group’s vision, management philosophy and core values. The third film, ‘Documentary’ depicts the last 10 years of Hyundai Motor Group’s history.

The Vision Hall – through continuous development of diverse creative content in collaboration with the group’s employees is a digital media archive that conveys and communicates the vision of Hyundai Motor Group” – Euisun Chung

To date HMG have collaborated with leading exponent and practitioner of Korean art Do Ho Suh, architect Elho Suh, and Peter Schreyer – Chief Design Officer for KIA, one of the world’s leading automotive designers (and a fine artist in his own right). The latest talent to be invited on-board are Universal Everything (UE) – an internationally acclaimed, UK based multidisciplinary studio working at the crossover of digital art and design.

The HMG Vision Hall

The Vision Hall is the first physical manifestation of E.S. Chung’s thinking. A contemplative and Zen like space at the entrance to Hyundai’s Mabuk University Campus – Elho Suh’s minimalist masterpiece that sits high in the verdant hills outside Seoul. Measuring around 900sqm the Hall is stripped of superfluous decoration, allowing visitors to appreciate its rich palette of materials and more importantly to concentrate the eye on its focal point and crowning glory – a 25m wide, 4m tall, 44k resolution screen seamlessly constructed from 720 micro tiles.

This is a space that will greet the majority of HMG’s 80,000 worldwide employees over the coming months – a space that will allow leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers alike to learn, rethink, collaborate and be inspired.

Universal Everything’s brief

Universal Everything were commissioned to fill the world’s highest resolution screen with content that would simply ‘inspire’. Such creative freedom is indeed rare. Matt Pyke, UE’s founder and Creative Director, was specifically asked not to include any brand related slogans or logos – furthermore he was requested not to feature Hyundai or Kia cars currently in production.

The sole ‘commercial’ request was to nod at the ‘mobius loop’ concept that underpins HMG’s whole ethos and production process. This loop symbolizes the infinite cycle of resource circulation and serves to connect all the innovative, creative activities and events of the Group into an organic whole. As an illustration HMG make steel to make cars, and then the cars are recycled to make more steel.

“The sheer scale of the vision hall, and the freedom that the HMG granted us gave us the power to create powerful, immersive audio-visual experiences which had never been seen or heard before. The commission allowed us to push our ambitions, transforming familiar subjects and materials into hyper real beautiful abstract expressions” – Matt Pyke

The intention is to allow Hyundai and KIA’s staff to digest the work openly and personally – to allow a deeper connection and to arrive at their own interpretations of the artworks – possibly seeing the familiar in the unfamiliar. The shear scale and resolution of the onscreen content combined with an immersive sound system would instill HMG’s staff with a sense of shared pride and solidarity – making them realize that they are indeed an integral part of the ‘bigger picture’.

Why ask UE?

UE were asked on board at the inception of the Vision Hall project as HMG’s ‘digital artists in residence’. The invitation came on the back of artistically pioneering and challenging work created for (amongst others) La Gaite Lyrique – Paris’ brand new Digital Art Museum, Deutsche Bank’s Hong Kong HQ and Coldplay’s sell out world tour of 2012.

UE’s response

The project has been the studio’s most ambitious project to date – requiring the core staff of 4 to swell to over 30 for the duration of the project. Matt Pyke and long term collaborator, director Dylan Griffith’s response to the challenging brief has yielded 18 films in total, ranging in duration from 00’40” to 02’45”. Created exclusively for their architectural context, the films allow the giant screen to become a ‘stage’ – a performance space that is often filled with life size humans and abstracted production processes.

The films mix a myriad of animation styles and live action – building upon UE’s trademark ethos of ‘maximum innovation’. Abstraction is pitted against familiarity to engage all types of viewer – whilst themes such as nature, technology and mans relationship with them feature heavily. All areas of HMG’s activity are explored with hyper real vision and audio – from steel creation to architecture, construction, future technologies, the corporation’s diverse multi-talented workforce to car design and production.

GGI studios in London, sound engineers in Germany and the UK, Korean programmers, an Italian Director of Photography and Film Directors from Amsterdam and Hong Kong were choreographed from UE’s home base of Sheffield, UK.

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by Universal Everything appeared first on Dezeen.