Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen Screen: in this interview filmed for our micro-exhibition Dezeen Platform, Polish studio mode:lina describe their Audiochmura, a soundscape of London that is played through a cloud of tangled corrugated pipes. Watch the movie »

Dezeen in Israel: designer Chanan de Lange exhibits two circular library bookshelves made from recycled school desks at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Around 20,000 books can be stored on the wooden shelves, which are fixed at different angles onto supporting metal columns.

Books can only fit onto the structure face down, so that the text on each spine is correctly orientated.

The library installation is on show inside the museum’s new wing, the Herta and Paul Amir Building, which we featured on Dezeen last week – see our earlier story here.

You can also find out more about design from Israel in our special feature.

Photography is by Ariel Caine.

Here’s some more text from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art:

Chanan de Lange: Ex Libris

“Ex Libris” is a library composed of two rounded objects, capable of storing 20,000 books.

The work raises questions about the manner and “ease” of a book’s placement on a shelf and about the visitor/user’s progress through the space defined by the library.

The book accompanying the exhibition presents numerous libraries designed by De Lange throughout the years – private and public libraries, some of which are functional and some display objects – and points out the material, formal and technological connections between them.

Agnes and Beny Steinmetz Wing for Architecture and Design, Gallery 1, the Herta and Paul Amir Building

Curated by Maya Vinitsky (book)

Landscape designers Earthscape have opened up their studio in Beppu, Japan, to present their experiments with growing native plants in water from local hot springs.

Earthscape hope the On-iku experiment will confirm their suspicions that water from the hot springs has some sort of power that helps plants and animals grow stronger.

Their studio in an apartment block remains open to the public until 4 November.

See all our stories about plants here.

All photographs are by Yusuke Komatsu/Earthscape.

Here are some more details from Earthscape Open Lab:

EXHIBITION
Earthscape Open Lab
“On-iku”

Humanity, and the environment that surrounds it, face many contradictions, and the foundation that supports these things has become unstable. When thinking about the future of this planet, we need a deep understanding of the characteristics of both our natural environment and our communities. Earthscape has rented an old wooden apartment in Beppu since 2010, and has used this Earthscape Lab to study the relationship between people and the environment, through research on the vegetation, history, and origin of the 2.7 x 3.6 m space itself. Deepening our understanding of the environment around us provides a departure for addressing environmental problems of a global scale. Since when has Beppu had this landscape? Learning the answers to the secrets hidden here might help us discover a new way of relating to the natural world.

At Earthscape Lab, we conduct research that will (possibly) help to improve the human imagination, through experiments on the environmental compatibility of plants and animals, researching of artifacts, and geological surveys. During Beppu Art Month, we make special arrangements to lift the veil and open Earthscape’s research and development workplace to the general public, as the Earthscape Open Lab.

“On-iku” (‘Hot Spring Growing’)

Beppu has the largest number of onsen (hot springs) in Japan. People who live in the area and use onsen everyday claim that, “the water itself makes all the difference.” We use the largest collection of onsen water in Japan to grow plants native to Beppu. An environmental compatibility experiment conducted by growing plants collected from different parts of Beppu City in the onsen water occurring naturally in the region.

Eiki Danzuka from Earthscape:

“Our original inspiration for the ‘on-iku’ project came relatively intuitively. I had always thought that the plants in Beppu seemed strong somehow. And I had a feeling it was either the power from Beppu’s geological treasure, the onsen, or the power from some unique ingredient found in the onsen water. I thought that by researching living creatures and people here, we could also research the ‘future beyond.’ This is how we arrived at this installation.

I have a hunch that the research and experiments we’re doing will help us perceive information around us that is often easy to overlook. Who knows? A clue to help us understand the origin of our lives and the future of the world could be hidden in the stones we kick around on the street, or in the weeds on the roadside.

We try to examine history and ecology in a manner similar to the quadrat method in a room in the Kiyoshima Apartments, specifically a small area 2.7 x 3.6 m separated from the city of Beppu. Studying the various aspects of the history of the city, ‘Beppu,’ that we live in, might provide us with glimpse of the future, or show us how we can forge better relationships between people, nature, and the city going forward.

I feel that the only way to know the future is to first know the past, and then to know the present. It’s called kougengaku (‘the study of modern social phenomena’) in Japanese. I believe that carrying on our research in a small room in the Kiyoshima Apartments will lead us to answers about Beppu, Oita, and the world. This is why I believe in our continued research.”

Earthscape’s concept in the Kiyoshima Apartments “Earthscape Lab” is to unravel the land and research the relationship between people, nature, and the city in a 2.7 x 3.6 m space. In Beppu Art Month in 2010, Earthscape conducted a project entitled “Dissecting Beppu,” where it performed an excavation survey to unravel the history and origin of the 2.7 x 3.6 m space, and presented its results as an installation. In Beppu Art Month 2011, it will present the actual process of its vegetation survey as an exhibit.

Installation Information:

Beppu Art Month 2011Exhibition Program Earthscape Open Lab “On-iku”
1 November – 4 December, 2011 at Earthscape Lab/Kiyoshima Apartment#1 2-27 Suehirochou Beppu city, Oita, Japan

About Earthscape

Landscape design studio founded by Eiki Danzuka. Considering the devices that create connections between humans and nature as design, Earthscape enact design works that become a platform for experience.

“Earthscape” refers to the blue, round shape of the earth as seen from outer space. With landscape design as their primary axis, Earthscape is involved in a wide array of activities, including the MHCP(www.mhcp.jp), that seek to contribute to society through design. Their major works are landscapes of the huge complex, public facilities and residential.

Designers Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara of Kollectiv Stadtpark have been touring Austria, making friends with locals in the street at their mobile kitchen table.

The Mobile Gastfreundschaft (mobile hospitality) comprises a kitchen unit with sink and gas hob, a separate sideboard and a long table with stools.

They’re made from standard sections of timber and each structure has a wheel at one end like a wheelbarrow.

Other outdoor kitchens on Dezeen include a cooking trolley by Studiomama and stall for cooking and selling pigs heads by Studio Swine.

The sharing of food, ritual dining and the communal kitchen were key themes in our acclaimed report on Food and Design – read it here.

Here are some more details from Kollectiv Stadtpark:

Mobile Gastfreundschaft (mobile hospitality)

The project mobile hospitality pays attention to an important aspect of the design work of collective stadtpark – the responsibility and the self-initiative in public space. The city, as space that does not belong to anyone, but at the same time to all. It is merely used by us actively, as it used to be in former times. It has decreased to the background of our everyday activities. Responsibility for the outdoor space, for most of the inhabitants stops at their garden fence. The project mobile hospitality starts just here.

Designers Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara drive with a wheelbarrow kitchen, table and ten folding stools from place to place to sit and eat in public space with spontaneously joining passers-by. At this big table, design meets delight and discussion and is a very good opportunity to get to know each other.

The project took place in Vaduz, Dornbirn, Bregenz and Feldkirch in summer and autumn 2011 and was initiated and supported by Art Design Feldkirch and Tschabrun Wood.

designers: kollectiv stadtpark (Anna Rosinke, Maciej Chmara)
links: www.stadtpark.org , www.kollectivstadtpark.blogspot.com
location: Vorarlberg, Austria

A seasonal gastronomic event celebrates delicious art and beautiful food

The cliché of the artist so wrapped up in his work that he routinely forgets to eat is a familiar one. Even those fiercely dedicated to their creativity can go beyond the practicality of eating to reap the true benefits of enjoying a meal. “Something I Ate,” a seasonal event series based in NYC, brings together a diverse group of artists to explore the purpose of food as more than just fuel. “From food, we derive pleasure and inspiration,” says co-founder Kat Popiel. “And these elements ignite our creative fires.”

Now in its third iteration, Something I Ate was founded by Popiel—who also launched the food magazine On Plate, Still Hungry—and Sam Kim of SkimKim Foods. The two set out to facilitate artists’ interpretations of the connections that exist between food and art, while also fostering a sense of community around the shared experience of food, drink and creative work. In the weeks prior to the event, participating artists are asked to keep a food diary and track the meals they consume over the course of seven days. These food diaries become the foundation for both the menu that is served at the event and the creative work unveiled, with each artist displaying a piece inspired by their documented eating habits.

“We refer to Something I Ate as a ‘happening’, we’re not art curators. We’ve simply approached creative folks from our community to become involved with the project,” says Popiel. Past works have included a video installation by Duffy Higgins, a wall of lollipops by Gastronomista and a sculpture inspired by Brian Hubble‘s weight gain after the completion of his food diary. “We want this to be an unusual playground for artists to explore their creativity outside their usual mediums,” she adds.

The latest edition of Something I Ate takes over Acme Studios in Williamsburg for a feast loosely themed around the atmosphere of a fall carnival. Cool Hunting favorite Kristen Wentrcek of Wintercheck Factory will present her Turkey Leg Pretzelbread Sammies with an updated ball-toss game and photographer Sidney Lo debuts his new series entitled “Sometimes When We Eat, We Eat Alone,” along with plentiful servings of deconstructed Orange-Ginger Pork Dumpling.

Something I Ate Fall 2011 takes place on 18 November 2011 in NYC. Tickets are available online for $30 ($15 for past Something I ate artists).