Hasta La Ideas

Portugese studio LIKEarchitects and fashion designer Ricardo Dourado have used beach loungers, garden furniture and toys to get the people of Guimarães in Portugal paddling in the city’s fountains (+ slideshow).

Yellow loungers are lined up inside one narrow fountain, while a deeper fountain can now be accessed by sets of swimming pool stairs.

A wide but shallow fountain is filled with stripy parasols, as well as plastic tables and chairs.

The ‘Olympic pool’ contains inflatable rings and the ‘playland pool’ is full of colourful plastic balls.

Named Fountain Hacks, the temporary installations have won the Performance Architecture prize for urban interventions as part of Guimarães’ year as a European Capital of Culture.

Another ‘urban hack’ we’ve featured on Dezeen is a project by lighting designers Luzinterruptus to stick 400 illuminated silicone nipples onto statues in Madrid.

Photography is by Dinis Sottomayor, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Concept: Located in the interior of Portugal, Guimarães presents a high number of fountains with the quest to reduce somehow the summertime heat. Our proposal, to be implemented during the hottest months, is to intervene on these fountains, enhancing their use by creating a new (water)land of urban opportunities.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Unexpected pertinence: Extending the current notions of public space, the inhabitants of Guimarães are invited to take the maximum profit of these (waterful) mo(nu)ments. The concept is to promote an occupation of the water public spaces by redefining city’s physical limits and deleting the social predefined boundaries. This project is not about beauty, but reinvention – it is about fountain-use upgrade design.

Urban plug-in: Fountain Hacks is an interventive system that takes advantage of the dichotomy between traditional and new – adding new elements to valorise the pre-existence. (Re)Using standard pool stairs, typical waterslides or domestic showers, Fountain Hacks is far away of being an average place.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Social happening: Like Anita Ekberg’s scene at Fontana di Trevi in Federico Fellini’s ‘Dolce Vita’, Guimarães inhabitants will be free to experience the city fountains in a real, uninhibited, way. Taking advantage of the fountains centrality in public spaces, this project seeks to promote these daily actions as a freshly (!) social happening – fountains will become the stage where citizens and tourists are the real-time actors.

Low-tech, maximum effect: Quick and simple to implement, low-tech urban hacks shows city-users they must be part of the city urban planning, calling for a use of public space where hacking becomes an energetic, optimistic design approach. Fountain Hacks promotes places to enjoy and refresh: put your feet into the water as you have always wished; try on the social shower and invite your neighbour to join you; make part of the city users! Bathing suits, towels and changing rooms will, of course, be available for the unprepared adventurers.

Unusual place: Fountain Hacks is a bizarre strategy for extraordinary gathering that goes beyond the long-time established, surprising people with the unexpected and inviting to unforeseen actions. Calling for the contribution of passers-by, Fountain Hacks (re)creates the contemporary use of the public space in a constant dynamic of surprise.

Above image is by Francisca Sottomayor

Playful masterplan: Bringing joy to the city, this playful strategy is a Masterplan for a city whose inhabitants will become happier – bathing in fountains is a public demonstration of happiness, only seen when the city’s soccer club achieves something remarkable. Fountain Hacks is about the urban renewal based on the idea that the key to evolve into a pulsating city is to promote the active inhabitancy by the community.

Collective outcome: Fountain Hacks is not a static architecture. It’s a developing system on taking advantage of urban equipments and extending its fields of action. It’s a win-win situation, an urban symbiosis, able to adapt to new contexts and therefore replicable in the essence. It explores the potential of using a traditional monument as platform for a new urban space and questions the social barriers that forbid us to fully enjoy the common space.

Fountain Hacks is a project by a team formed by the architects Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto (LIKEarchitects) with the fashion designer Ricardo Dourado.

Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto are architects formed by FAUP, in 2008. In 2010, upon completion of their course and internship, they founded LIKEarchitects, a studio devoted to the design of ephemeral architectures and intervention in public space. Being of an experimental, provocative and innovative nature, the LIKEarchitects collective is now formed by the young Portuguese architects Diogo Aguiar, João Jesus and Teresa Otto, seeks to combine their basilar architectural knowledge acquired in the renowned Faculty of Architecture of Oporto with other more radical architectural experiences they have had in worldwide reference studios such as UNStudio and OMA in The Netherlands and RCR Arquitectes, in Spain.

The proposed temporary structures, which are attentive to the current socio-economic scenario, aim to boost places and involve the community in a critical participation of urban space, having Installation, Happening and Urban Art as references. LIKEarchitects’ work has been awarded several prizes and been published both in national and international specialized magazines and books.

Ricardo Dourado is a young fashion designer formed in CITEX, in 2003. Upon completion of his course he was invited to present his collection at ModaLisboa in 2004, maintaining its presence in this important Portuguese fashion event since then. In parallel, Ricardo Dourado is also part of the design team of the company Polopique, with studios in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Its recent, but already vast, resume stands out from the nomination for the “Golden Globes” as Best Stylist 2010, the teaching of “streetwear design” in CITEX (2004-2009) as well as its presence with the collection SS10 in the “Wonder Room” of Selfrigdes in London.

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and Ricardo Dourado appeared first on Dezeen.

Brazilian studio 20.87 has used plastic panels and LED lighting to transform an old house in São Paulo into a giant lamp (+ slideshow).

The translucent corrugated panels were screwed to a wooden frame placed around the building, allowing the lighting mounted around the edges of the facade to diffuse through.

The former house is located beside design store MiCasa and is used as a gallery for design exhibitions.

A previous installation we’ve featured at the building consisted of metal tubing and lamps wrapped around the inside and outside – see it here.

See more projects in Brazil.

Read more details from the designers below:

The project was developed as a request of design store MiCasa. It consists of the scenographic customization of the adjacent building to the store, in order to host an art exhibition in its interior.

After the concept was defined, the construction lasted approximately four weeks. To start with, we decided where the LED tapes would be placed.

Simultaneously, we constructed a wood structure to receive the tile covering.

With the conclusion of the installation of the lighting, the structure was fixated on the walls of the house at a distance of 20 centimeters from the original construction in order to leave a space between the wall and the tiles, making the lighting more subtle and correcting any sort of irregularities that could be present in the surface of the walls.

The tiles were custom made for the project and fixated with screws.

The permanence of the installation is of approximately 6 to 10 months, for a new building will be constructed in the same ground afterwards.

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by 20.87 appeared first on Dezeen.

German design collective ART+COM have installed over a thousand rising and falling metal raindrops in Singapore’s Changi Airport (+ movie).

Kinetic Rain was commissioned as a calming centrepiece for the airport’s departure hall.

Suspended by steel wires, the raindrops are computer-controlled to move up and down in choreographed patterns.

The dancing installation is in two parts, each comprising 608 copper-covered aluminium raindrops.

We’ve featured a few designs inspired by meteorology recently, including a light installation that displays yesterday’s weather and a poster celebrating London’s rainy summer, which is available at the Dezeen Super Store in Covent Garden.

Photographs are by ART+COM.

Here’s some more from ART+COM:

In the course of refurbishment works ART+COM was commissioned by Changi Airport Group, Singapore, to create a signature art installation for the Departure Check-in hall of Terminal 1. The sculpture aims to be a source of identity for its location, and provides a moment for passengers to contemplate and reflect despite the busy travelling atmosphere.

Kinetic Rain is composed of two parts, each consisting of 608 rain droplets made of lightweight aluminum covered with copper. Suspended from thin steel ropes above the two opposing escalators, each droplet is moved precisely by a computer-controlled motor hidden in the hall’s ceiling. The entire installation spans an area of more than 75 square metres and spreads over 7.3 metres in height.

Kinetic Rain follows a 15-minute computationally designed choreography where the two parts move together in unison, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes responding to each other. In addition, several spotlight sources mounted below the installation create a play of shadows on the terminal’s ceiling as they illuminate the movement of the rain droplets. German media technology firm MKT did the mechatronic implementation of Kinetic Rain.

Client: Changi Airport Group, Singapore
Number of droplets: 1216
Number of motors: 1216
Material of droplet: aluminum covered with copper
Weight of droplet: 180 grams
Weight of overall installation: 2.4 tons
Droplets travel distance from ceiling to lowest point: 7.3 metres
Size: Each part covers 9.80 x 4 metres
Project duration: 20 months, from August 2010 till April 2012
Technology used: Custom industrial mechanical engineering parts and custom code, combined with a lot of creativity

About ART+COM
ART+COM was founded in 1988 in Berlin by a group of artists, designers and developers who were sparked by the belief that the computer was more than a tool. Back then they realised the technology’s potential to become a universal communication medium. The group set out to practically explore its artistic, scientific and technological aspects and to put these aspects to use. Their spectrum of works ranges from artistic and design projects through to technological innovations and inventions, which have as a whole pioneered media-based spatial communication design and art in the last 25 years.

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by ART+COM appeared first on Dezeen.

London design studio Troika have been poking fun at the British obsession with the weather with their lighting installation in an east London park.

The LED lights on the five-metre-high installation change throughout the day to depict conditions from the same time the previous day, so passers-by can see whether the weather is better or worse.

Classic forecasting icons show whether it was sunny, rainy or cloudy, and a numerical display shows the temperature.

Custom-made software and a wireless connection enable weather data to be updated automatically.

The installation opened in east London’s Hoxton Square last weekend as part of the London Festival of Architecture, and it will remain there until 9th September 2012.

During the festival, the square was also home to a handful of cloud-like parasols designed by London-based architectural practice Harry Dobbs Design.

Photographs are by Troika.

See all our stories about weather »
See all our stories about Troika »

Here’s some more information from Troika and the London Festival of Architecture:

The Weather Yesterday takes our obsession with progress ad absurdum by sardonically changing our focus from ‘forecast’ to the ‘past’. The five metre-high sculpture celebrates the weather as a predominant topic of discussion in British culture while offering a spin on the urgency with which we are using our mobile devices, forecasting and interactive technology.

The London Festival of Architecture (23 June – 8 July 2012) with its theme of ‘The Playful City’ brings architects and communities together across the capital.

RIBA London is partnering with the London Borough of Hackney and consulting engineers Ramboll to transform Hoxton Square with the ‘Weather – It’s Raining or Not’ installation by architect Harry Dobbs, including ‘The Weather Yesterday’ by creative practice Troika.

An interactive light installation, ‘The Weather Yesterday’ will playfully highlight Britain’s obsession with the weather, with the square set to feature a collection of parasol-shaped structures around a central five-metre-tall visual creation displaying the previous day’s weather conditions using classic forecasting iconography.

Parasol-shaped structures from architects Harry Dobbs, playfully dotted around the square, offer social meeting places for rest, play and discovery under their cloudy canopies. Chameleon-like, they will respond to the visitor, at one moment creating a cosy space protected from the elements, or next opening up to support the wider shared experience of the square.

Exhibition on display 7 July – 9 Sept 2012
Hoxton Square
London

The Weather Yesterday
LEDs, aluminium, custom electronics
2,20 m (H) x 2,20 m (W) x 10 cm (D)

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by Troika appeared first on Dezeen.

Designer Marguerite Humeau has reconstructed the vocal tracts of prehistoric creatures to capture the shrieks and grunts they might have made (+ slideshow + movie).

Vocal tracts are made from soft tissue so they do not fossilise, meaning that Humeau had to speculate on what the surrounding tissue would have been like by analysing bones from the head, neck and chest areas of fossilised animals.

Scans of elephants, wild boars, dolphins and porpoises – the closest living relatives to the three extinct species Humeau chose to recreate – also helped to map the probable shape of the vocal tracts.

Humeau contacted dozens of experts, including palaeontologists, zoologists, veterinarians, engineers, explorers, surgeons, ear and throat specialists and radiologists, to help her work out the designs.

She produced models of each extinct animal’s likely resonance cavities, larynx, vocal cords and windpipe, and recorded the sounds that each animal might have made.

The first version of the project was presented for her graduation from London’s Royal College of Art last year.

The initial project recreated the sounds of the extinct Imperial Mammoth, and was then expanded to include Ambulocetus, known as the prehistoric ‘walking whale’, and Entelodont, known as the ‘terminator pig’.

The models have now been presented as part of an installation and performance at the Politique Fiction exhibition at Cité du Design in Saint-Étienne, France.

The movie is by Ben Penna and sound is by Association Phonotonic. Photographs are by Felipe Ribon.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Proposal for Resuscitating Prehistoric Creatures sets up the rebirth of cloned creatures, their wandering and their sound epic. They are seeking to evolve in our contemporary era.

The designer, who became the heroine of a quasi-mystic epic journey, aims to resuscitate the sound of prehistoric creatures by reconstructing their vocal tracts. This is problematic from the scientific point of view: since the vocal tract is made of soft tissue, it does not fossilise. The only things that have been preserved through time are the surrounding bones. The inner parts have to be redesigned.

Humeau had to overcome the difficulty of telling history and prehistory, and also to create a work from non-existent, inaccessible or lost data. Design, fiction, science, speculations and phantasms serve the project ambition. Advice from experts as well as predictions were used to craft the roars of the new creatures. The epic, as real as fantasised, gives birth to three semi-real roaring creatures: a Mammoth Imperator, an Entelodont aka Terminator Pig, and an Ambulocetus “walking whale”.

From the exhibition curator Alexandra Midal:

Marguerite Humeau graduated from the interactive design department of the Royal College of Art in London in 2011. She resurrects the sounds made by prehistoric animals by reconstructing their vocal chords. This task is not easy when you realise that no fossils of these non-bone parts exist. For months, she conducted a dialogue with palaeontologists, zoologists, veterinary experts, engineers, explorers, surgeons, doctors and radiologists. Far from being a backward looking and romantic work, on the contrary she is carried along by the desire to feel the physical presence of these animals from another time.

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by Marguerite Humeau appeared first on Dezeen.