Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen in Israel: devices that spy, measure, dance and eavesdrop have been added to an exhibition of digital and interactive design that has travelled to the Design Museum Holon.

Top and above: the CUBES project by The Interaction Lab at HIT

Co-curated with digital arts organisation onedotzero, Decode: Digital Design Sensations debuted at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London but has been updated to include new exhibits by Israeli designers.

Above: the CUBES project by The Interaction Lab at HIT

Research group The Interaction Lab at HIT has produced twenty different mechanical cubes, including one that measures distances, another that moves erratically after being shaken and a pair that tap at each other.

Above: the CUBES project by The Interaction Lab at HIT

Next up, artists Amnon Dekel and David Opp present a device that listens to nearby conversations and presents similar topics as images and words on a flashing LED screen.

Above: DEVICEINTERFERENCE [0.3] by Amnon Dekel and David Opp

The third new project, by designer Mushon Zer Aviv, is a virtual confession booth that spys on websites to expose how they are sharing information about their visitors –  you can download this plugin for your web browser here.

Above: DEVICEINTERFERENCE [0.3] by Amnon Dekel and David Opp

The exhibition opened in November and continues until 10 March 2012.

Above: DEVICEINTERFERENCE [0.3] by Amnon Dekel and David Opp

You can read more about the original exhibition at the V&A in our earlier story here.

Above: Good Listeners by Mushon Zer Aviv

To see more images of the Design Museum Holon, which was designed by Ron Arad, click here.

Above: Good Listeners by Mushon Zer Aviv

Here’s some more text from Design Museum Holon:

Decode: Digital Design Sensations
Design Museum Holon, Israel
In partnership with V&A and onedotzero

Design Museum Holon and the V&A are pleased to announce details of specially commissioned works by Israeli artists and designers for the new exhibition Decode: Digital Design Sensations which have been generously supported by the Porter Foundation. The exhibition has been expanded to include Good Listeners by Mushon Zer Aviv, CUBES by The Interaction Lab and DEVICE INTERFERENCE [0.3] by Amnon Dekel and David Opp.

Curated by Louise Shannon, Deputy Head of Contemporary Programmes, V&A and Shane Walter, Director of digital arts organisation onedotzero, the exhibition shows the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small screen based graphics to large- scale installations.

Good Listeners by Mushon Zer Aviv is a browser plug-in that exposes the secret way in which our browsing habits are shared with and mined by third-party web services such as Google Analytics and Facebook ‘Like’ without users’ consent or knowledge. Every time a site exposes visitor data to a third party service, a confessional booth window opens in the Good Listeners sidebar. The priest in the window encourages the visitor to share more information by saying “Tell me more…”, “Let it all out…”, “I am always there…”, “You can trust me…”. Each third party service opens its own confessional window sized by the scope and depth of the data it accumulates, presenting a satirical visualisation of the vast data passively generated by us and aggressively collected and mined by mysterious but omnipresent forces of the web.

The CUBES project by The Interaction Lab at HIT deals with the basic idea inherent to interaction: that of action and reaction. The 20 cubes respond to stimuli from the viewer such as presence, light, motion and distance. In response the cubes expand, show movement patterns, emit soap bubbles, become illuminated and more, revealing their inner mechanisms and celebrating the beauty and complexity of the world of electronic components.

DEVICEINTERFERENCE [0.3] by Amnon Dekel and David Opp explores the way in which mobile phones broadcast information at all times. This information can be captured, deciphered and changed, making the fabric through which we communicate with others sensitive to attacks and manipulations. The exhibit ‘listens’ to people and their phones as they walk by, eavesdropping by the use of embedded surveillance microphones. At the same time electromagnetic radio waves emanating from nearby phones are also captured, measuring the frequency of the radio waves, the number of phones and their activity. The results are used to pull relevant information from the web via Google and meshed to create an audiovisual experience through the large LED display and speakers in the Museum space.

The exhibition explores three themes in digital and interactive design: Code, Interactivity and Network. Code presents pieces that use computer code to create new designs in the same way a sculptor works with materials such as clay or wood. This section looks at how code can be programmed to create constantly fluid and ever-changing objects.

Interactivity looks at designs that are directly influenced by the viewer; visitors will be invited to interact with and contribute to the development of the works, many of which show designers playing with the boundaries of design and performance.

The final theme, Network, focuses on works that comment on and utilise the digital traces left behind by everyday communications, from blogs in social media communities to mobile communications or satellite tracked GPS systems. This section explores how advanced technologies and the internet have enabled new types of social interaction and media for self expression. Designers reinterpret this information to create works that translate data into striking forms.

During the exhibition, 3rd year students of HIT, in their first semester, will also have the opportunity to practice their interaction design course in the Museum’s Design Lab.

Dezeen in Israel: here are some images of the recently opened new wing at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which has a dramatically faceted atrium piercing its centre.

Designed by American architect Preston Scott Cohen, the Herta and Paul Amir Building has a spiralling plan with two storeys above ground and three underground floors.

Galleries overlook the 26-metre-high atrium through long windows that slice through its angled walls.

Although the building has a triangular plan, these exhibition galleries are rectangular and display art, design, architecture and photography.

Walls fold around the entrances to these rooms and appear on approach to be wafer-thin.

The museum has a tessellated concrete exterior where windows match the shapes of the triangular and rectangular panels.

You can see more stories about Israeli architecture and interiors here, or if you’re interested in furniture and product design from Israel you can check out our special feature here.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s some more information from the museum:

Herta and Paul Amir Building
Tel Aviv Museum of Art

The design for the Amir Building arises directly from the challenge of providing several floors of large, neutral, rectangular galleries within a tight, idiosyncratic, triangular site. The solution is to “square the triangle” by constructing the levels on different axes, which deviate significantly from floor to floor. In essence, the building’s levels—two above grade and three below—are structurally independent plans stacked one on top of the other.

These levels are unified by the “Lightfall”: an 87-foot-high, spiraling, top-lit atrium, whose form is defined by subtly twisting surfaces that curve and veer up and down through the building. The complex geometry of the Lightfall’s surfaces (hyperbolic parabolas) connect the disparate angles of the galleries; the stairs and ramped promenades along them serve as the surprising, continually unfolding vertical circulation system; while the natural light from above is refracted into the deepest recesses of the half-buried building. Cantilevers accommodate the discrepancies between plans and provide overhangs at the perimeter.

In this way, the Amir Building combines two seemingly irreconcilable paradigms of the contemporary art museum: the museum of neutral white boxes, which provides optimal, flexible space for the exhibition of art, and the museum of spectacle, which moves visitors and offers a remarkable social experience. The Amir Building’s synthesis of radical and conventional geometries produces a new type of museum experience, one that is as rooted in the Baroque as it is in the Modern.

Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan and Yitzchak Yashar, architects). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City. The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.

Architect: Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen, principal in charge of design, Amit Nemlich, project architect; Tobias Nolte, Bohsung Kong, project assistants

Consultants:
Project Managers: CPM Construction Managment Ltd.
Structural Engineers: YSS Consulting Engineers Ltd., Dani Shacham
HVAC: M. Doron – I. Shahar & Co., Consulting Eng. Ltd.
Electrical: U. Brener – A. Fattal Electrical & Systems Engineering Ltd.
Lighting: Suzan Tillotson, New York
Safety: S. Netanel Engineers Ltd
Security: H.M.T
Elevators: ESL- Eng. S. Lustig – Consulting Engineers Ltd.
Acoustics: M.G. Acistical Consultants Ltd.
Traffic: Dagesh Engineering, Traffic & Road Design Ltd.
Sanitation: Gruber Art System Engineering Ltd.
Soil: David David
Survey: B. Gattenyu
Public Shelter: K.A.M.N
Waterproofing: Bittelman
Kitchen Design: Zonnenstein

Key Dates:
Architectural competition: 2003
Design development and construction documents: 2005-06
Groundbreaking: 2007
Opening: November 2, 2011

Size: 195,000 square feet (18,500 square meters), built on a triangular footprint of approximately 48,500 square feet (4,500 square meters)
Cost: $55 million (estimated)

Principal Spaces:
Israeli Art galleries: 18,500 square feet
Architecture and Design galleries: 7,200 square feet
Prints and Drawings galleries: 2,500 square feet
Temporary exhibitions gallery: 9,000 square feet
Photography study center and gallery: 3,700 square feet
Art library: 10,000 square feet
Auditorium: 7,000 square feet
Restaurant: 3,200 square feet
Offices: 2,700 square feet

Principal Materials: Pre-cast reinforced concrete (facades), cast-in-place concrete (Lightfall), glass, acoustical grooved maple (ceilings in lobby and library and auditorium walls) and steel (structural frame)

Wall coverings have been peeled away to reveal a vaulted stone ceiling that’s several hundred years old inside this refurbished apartment in Tel Aviv.

Israeli architects Pitsou Kedem removed walls between the sandstone brick columns to create an open plan living and dining room surrounded by arches.

An exterior wall was replaced by a thinly framed glass arch that now links the living room to a balcony overlooking the port of Old Jaffa.

The architects installed Corian shelving and surfaces to rooms, as well as a stainless steel kitchen.

A transparent glass cylinder surrounds a shower in the bedroom.

Framed glass doors provide access from this bedroom to a second outdoor terrace.

Other refurbished interiors featured on Dezeen include a Tokyo apartment with the appearance of an elegant building site and a former poet’s house converted into a writer’s retreat.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here are some more details from Pitsou Kedem:

Jaffa Flat

The language of minimalism imbedded in a historic residence in Old Jaffa.

The 100 square meter residential home is located in Old Jaffa. Its location is unique in that it is set above the harbor, facing west with all of its openings facing the majestic splendor of the Mediterranean Sea.

Whilst it is difficult to determine the buildings exact age, it is clear that it is hundreds of years old.

Over the years, it has undergone many changes and had many additions made that have damaged the original quality of the building and its spaces.

The central idea was to restore the structure’s original, characteristics, the stone walls, the segmented ceilings and the arches including the exposure of the original materials (a combination of pottery and beach sand).

The building has been cleaned of all of the extraneous elements, from newer wall coverings and has undergone a peeling process to expose its original state.

Surprisingly, modern, minimalistic construction styles remind us of and correspond with the ascetic style of the past, and this despite the vast time difference between them.

The central idea was to combine the old and the new whilst maintaining the qualities of each and to create new spaces that blend the styles together even intensify them because of the contrast and tension between the different periods.

The historical is expressed by preserving the textures and materials of the buildings outer shell and by respecting the building engineering accord.

The modern is expressed by the opening of spaces and by altering the internal flow to one more open and free and the creation of an urban loft environment along with the use of stainless steel, iron and Corian in the various partitions, in the openings and in the furniture.

The project succeeds in both honoring and preserving the historical and almost romantic values of the structure whilst creating a contemporary project, modern and suited to its period.

Despite the time differences, the tensions and the dichotomy between the periods exist in a surprisingly balanced and harmonic space.

Design team: Pitsou Kedem & Raz Melamed

See also:

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Messner Mountain Museum by EM2	Alemanys 5 by Anna Noguera	The Waterhouse by NHDRO

Stripes of paving, plants and lighting form the entrance to Ben- Gurion University campus in Be’er Sheba, Israel, designed by Israeli firm Chyutin Architects.

The landscaped garden sits in a sunken plaza with a long lawn area on one side.

Rectangular concrete plinths coming up from the ground serve as benches.

The square serves an an entrance area for the university and also for an art gallery, which is planned for the site.

Photographs are by Sharon Yeari.

More landscape architecture on Dezeen »
All our stories on Chyutin Architects »

Here’s some more information from the architects:

BGU University Entrance Square & Art Gallery

‏The Deichmann square and the Negev Gallery constitute a link between Ben-Gurion University campus and the city of Be’er Sheva. ‏The square serves as an entrance gate to the western side of the campus, surrounded by existing buildings and the future Negev Gallery. The square offers an outdoor space for cultural and social activities for students and for the city population.
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The square is bordered by the elongated structure of the gallery facing both the city and the campus. Towards the city, the gallery’s continuous façade (160 meter in length) unifies the heterogeneous appearance of the existing buildings behind the gallery into a cohesive urban unit. The city façade is accompanied by a sculpture garden creating a green edge to the campus. The two story high monolithic body of exposed concrete emerges from lawny topography of the northern part of the campus and hovers above an entrance courtyard in the southern part, where it appears to be leaping towards the urban space.

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The gallery hosts exhibition spaces, museology faculty, workshops and auditorium contributing to the outdoor activities on Deichmann Square. Since the square was designated to accommodate intensive congregation of youth and students, the preferred solution was to allocate limited areas for vegetation. The design of the square with various elements of exposed concrete connects the surrounding buildings both physically and visually, accentuating their common features.

Click for larger image

The square appears as a carpet of integrated strips of concrete paving, vegetation and lighting with concrete benches and trees scattered randomly. The strips of vegetation consist of lawn, Equisetopsida and seasonal plants. ‏The first phase to be realized was the Deichmann square to be followed by the Negev Gallery.

Project Name : BGU University Entrance Square & Art Gallery
Architects: Chyutin Architects Ltd.
Location: Beer sheba, Israel
Client: Ben-Gurion University
Deichmann square team: Bracha Chyutin, Michael Chyutin, Ethel Rosenhek, Joseph Perez
Art Gallery team: Bracha Chyutin, Michael Chyutin, Ethel Rosenhek, Joseph Perez, Jacques Dahan,
Gallery Area: 2500 Sq. M
Square Area: 4500 Sq. M
Project year gallery: 2008 –
Project year square: 2009 –

See also:

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The High Line by Diller Scofidio + Renfro	Nursing Home Garden by Estudio Caballero Colón	Medical Herbman Café Project by EARTHSCAPE

Karina Tollman and Philipp Thomanek of Israeli studio k1p3 have completed the interior for this fashion boutique in Tel Aviv, with a contiunous metal clothes rail dividing the store lengthways.

The shop’s window was narrowed leaving a horizontal strip of glass in the centre, while mannequins and displays inside are lined up to run parallel with the street.

Display stands and counters are made of MDF while horizontal lights hover over the central rail.

More retail interiors on Dezeen »

Photographs are by Daniel Sheriff.

The following information is from the architects:

k1p3 architects designed a new flagship store for the fashion label Rhus Ovata in Tel Aviv.

The premises are located on a busy fashion shopping street, the Rhus Ovata brand identifies itself as a subversive brand and therefore chose a shop set back from the sidewalk. The architects’ concept for the shop was born from this position, trying to accentuate the depth of the shop. Creating a horizontal layering parallel to the street.

The shop façade was redesigned, using steel to close the lower and upper parts of the vitrine and leaving a clear horizontal strip through which the shop shines and draws passers-by in. Openings were introduced in the back wall exposing a back garden.

The materiality was kept minimal and basic in its nature narrowed down to a rectangular steel profile and MDF, and the style draws references from contemporary art.

The shop displays both the Rhus Ovata collection and it’s ‘Borrowed’ vintage accessories collection. The collections were organized in the space according to the layers concept.

The majority of the fashion collection is hanging on a continues single axis across the entire width of the space with three passages crossing it where the steel profile is set into the floor. In the entrance the same steel profile suspends from the ceiling creating a topography within the space.

Along the backdrop of the shop, the ‘Borrowed’ collection is displayed in a library next to selected art books and alongside it is a wall installation of vintage scarves.

Special diamond shaped hangers were designed and hand made to present the bags on a single column.

A great emphasize was given to the design of custom made light bodies. The light bodies generate a dialogue with the floor plan highlighting its orientation and creating a hierarchy in the space.

Long horizontal lamps were designed emphasizing the long suspended rack creating a ‘highway’ of light in alternating positions above it. Vertical, mushroom like, lamps were designed to highlight particular points in the space.

And pink neon was used for the logo, casually leaning against a wall, repeating around the single column. The logo and packaging branding is by Koniak design.

See also:

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Ahoti by Studio Lama	Hila Gaon bridal store by k1p3	Fashion Studio by Irena Kilibarda