Retour sur le travail de James Boast, un illustrateur talentueux vivant à Londres. Avec un style très simple et des jeux de couleurs très bien pensés, ce dernier parvient à nous plonger au coeur de ses créations artistiques. Plus d’images dans la suite de l’article.
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British architect John Pawson has installed the largest lens ever made by crystal brand Swarovski in the southwest tower of St Paul’s Cathedral for the London Design Festival, which starts on Saturday.
Called Perspectives, the installation comprises a spherical mirror suspended at the top of the 23-metre tower, mirrored in a hemisphere below the lens at the foot of the staircase to create a composite image of the whole tower for visitors gathered at ground level.
The spiralling Geometric Staircase connects the Dean’s door to the upper levels of the cathedral and is normally closed to the public.
Pawson’s installation marks the 300th anniversary of the cathedral’s completion and remains open to the public until January 2012.
See all our stories about the London Design Festival in our special category.
Photographs are by Gilbert McCarragher.
The information below is from Swarovski Crystal Palace:
John Pawson installs Perspectives, a new work for Swarovski Crystal Palace, in partnership with the London Design Festival, within St Paul’s Cathedral, marking the 300th anniversary of the completion of Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece.
The UK’s leading minimalist, John Pawson, and Swarovski Crystal Palace have created a spectacular installation in the Geometric Staircase of St Paul’s Cathedral to reveal a new perspective of this architectural masterpiece and the genius of Sir Christopher Wren.
Entitled ‘Perspectives’, this experiential work will be unveiled during the London Design Festival, 17th to 25th September, and will remain open to the public until January 2012.
Reflecting Wren’s desire that his buildings should incorporate scientific elements, ‘Perspectives’ uses the largest Swarovski lens ever manufactured to create a dramatic optical experience which depends on scientific subtlety, material simplicity and a complex combination of light, space and proportion to reflect an environment rich in history and beauty.
At the foot of Wren’s elegant spiralling Geometric Staircase a concave Swarovski crystal meniscus will sit on a much larger reflective hemisphere, with a spherical convex mirror suspended 23m above in the tower’s cupola. Together, these optical elements will create an extraordinary composite image of the view up through the tower for visitors gathered round the hemisphere at the base, allowing them, as Pawson says, “to see beyond the level of the naked eye” and gain a perspective never before seen of one of Britain’s most iconic buildings.
John Pawson explains: “St Paul’s is one of the most recognisable buildings in the country. Inevitably it’s the grand architectural moves which everyone knows – the west elevation, the nave and the dome. In collaboration with Swarovski, I have been given the chance to turn the focus on a less familiar element – the Geometric Staircase – which is a detail, but also a complete architectural moment in its own right. The cathedral is an immensely complex work of architecture and the temptation when you visit is to try to take in everything. This is about offering a spatial experience based around a single, sharply honed perspective. The form this experience takes is shaped by Wren’s own interest in creating scientific instruments out of buildings.”
For Swarovski, the collaboration marks a high point of its Crystal Palace project, an experimental design platform developed by Nadja Swarovski which allows world class designers to develop extraordinary work using the medium of crystal. In the past ten years, collaborations with the likes of Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid, Tom Dixon, Ross Lovegrove, Tord Boontje, Arik Levy and Yves Behar have resulted in a spectacular body of work which provides a snapshot of the most exciting and creative minds of the 21st century.
Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Executive Board, Swarovski, commented: “It has been an inspirational and rewarding experience to work with John Pawson on such an illuminating project. A true visionary like Wren, John continuously pushes the boundaries of traditional architecture. His new and innovative use of crystal within this modest but magical design reflects Swarovski Crystal Palace’s mission continually to evolve and to contribute to culture and design.”
The work is a fitting climax to a year of tercentennial celebrations for St Paul’s, which was declared complete by Parliament exactly 300 years ago. The Reverend Canon Mark Oakley, Treasurer of St Paul’s Cathedral, said: “John Pawson invites us in this installation to observe the Geometric Staircase of the cathedral with a deepened focus. Like the spiritual life itself, here we are invited to look within in order to see out with greater clarity and wonder. We are delighted that Swarovski and the London Design Festival bring this meditative meniscus into St Paul’s to enrich our understanding of Wren’s work and to alert us to the fact that transformations often occur when we become more visually literate.”
Now in its ninth year, the London Design Festival is established as the preeminent creative festival in the world. This year’s Festival will be the largest and most significant yet, with an expected 180 partners and almost 300 events celebrating the world’s creative capital and offering a range of projects across the city from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Ben Evans, Director of the London Design Festival said: “The London Design Festival works in the greatest quality spaces London has to offer and you can’t get greater than St Paul’s Cathedral. The installation we have there by John Pawson complements and contrasts with the stunningly beautiful space that we’re using. It’s very special – unmissable from my point of view.”
Swarovski will also sponsor the fifth presentation of the London Design Medal Dinner, which will be held on Monday 19th September in the Crypt of St Paul’s. Previous winners of the medal include Zaha Hadid (2007), Marc Newson (2008), Sir Paul Smith (2009), and Thomas Heatherwick (2010).
Visiting hours during London Design Festival
Monday 19th September – Friday 23rd September, 10am- 6pm, visitors will be able to access ‘Perspectives’ through the Dean’s Door .This entrance is in the South Churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Visiting hours after the London Design Festival
Saturday 24th September – mid January 2012 (closed Sundays) regular guided access throughout the day will be available to visitors during sightseeing hours. Requests outside these hours by prior arrangement only.
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| Ribbons for Japan by John Pawson | John Pawson: Plain Space at the Design Museum | Dezeen podcast: John Pawson at the Design Museum |
One half of an extension to a house in north London is surrounded by frameless glass, whilst the other half is encased in slatted timber.
Designed by local studio DOSarchitects, the extension provides a new bedroom, kitchen and living room at the rear of the listed terrace in Islington.
The ridged iroko wood creates chunky pilasters around the bedroom, while the open-plan kitchen and living area is separated from the garden by nothing but glass.
Glass doors open both rooms out to the garden beyond.
This is the second timber and glass extension to an Islington house recently featured on Dezeen – click here to see our earlier story about a larch-clad extension with a flower-covered roof.
Photography is by Carlo Carossio.
Here’s a project description from DOSarchitects:
Duncan Terrace. Islington, London.
Our clients’ brief for this project was to add a modern ground floor extension to their Grade II listed Georgian terraced house in Duncan Terrace, Islington. More specifically, they wanted this extension to contain an extra bedroom, a kitchen and a living space which would act as a connection between the house and the garden whilst also respecting the existing Georgian Architecture.
Our response, which obtained full conservation and planning approval, was to create a split volume that, on one hand wouldn’t compete with the existing Architecture and on the other offered a direct link to the house’s surrounding:
The first and more solid volume takes the form of a wooden box which, like a piece of Japanese origami, envelops the bedroom and literally brings a natural element (Iroko wood) from the outside world to the inside.
The second volume, entire in glass, brings natural light into the new living space and acts as a visual link between the Georgian house, the wooden box and the garden. The high tech structural glass used for this volume, moreover, acts as a contrast to the beautifully handcrafted timber slatted detail which envelops the adjacent volume.
Together they sit, comfortably, solid, transparent, old and new.
Approached by a private client, whose requirements were to have one extra bedroom, to be protected from the elements and at the same time to be connected with the external natural land space: we responded with this little gem.
Here, the more private space, the newly added bedroom, which is the protected part, is to merge and become part of the existing vegetation by joining the trees and plants. Whereas the more public part, is to still have a connection with the exterior landscape, but in a more public and exposed way, having a direct link, visual and physical.
Wood was the natural choice for the cladding of the volume, as it relates directly with its live surroundings and vegetation. Details such as the Olive tree, of the same age of the house, 150 years old, are only one of the connections between the interior and exterior.
Project credits
Architect: DOSarchitects
Engineer: Fluid Structures
Joinery and Cladding: Holloways of Ludlow
Project Manager: Alex Bardi
Building Contractor : Federico Amorosi & Bros
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| The Jewel Box by Fraher Architects | Folly by Baumhauer | Roman Road conversion by Anarchitect |
The U.S. Open of art: Rauschenberg’s 1966 performance pairing tennis and technology
Think branded interdisciplinary content is a recent phenomenon? In 1966 a unique project was hatched when conceptual artists and Bell Labs engineers collaborated on a series of live installations inside a National Guard Armory in New York City. One of those, “Open Score” by Robert Rauschenberg, pitted artists—including minimalist painter Frank Stella—against each other in a live game of tennis with rackets wired to switch the stage lights on and off and produce an aural musical score. Their movements were projected on large screens by infrared camera, giving the performers and the assembled crowd of 300 a ghoulish glow inside the cavernous armory
By all accounts electrifying, now 45 years later an exhibit at Seventeen gallery in London will showcase Swedish documentary maker Barbro Schultz Lundestam’s reexamination of the seminal moment in conceptual art history. She takes the audience back to those evenings in NYC with the principles involved explaining how they pulled it off and the effect they had on the actors and spectators. Check out a trailer for the 34-minute film here.
The 1997 documentary is also available for sale on DVD, but for those near London, the installation runs through 8 October 2011.
Competition: we’ve teamed up with Max Fraser, author of the London Design Guide, to give away five signed copies of the brand-new 2012-2013 edition.
The 208 page paperback features 140 design retailers, galleries and museums across London plus a further 100 bars, restaurants and cafes, all categorised according to neighbourhood and accompanied by detailed maps.
The guide also includes walking tours by local design figures including Sheridan Coakley, Tom Dixon and Kit Kemp, plus short essays by Naomi Cleaver, Hugh Pearman, Libby Sellers and more.
This is the second edition of the London Design Guide (see last year’s edition here) published by Spotlight Press, which also publishes our own Dezeen Book of Ideas.
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “London Design Guide” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers.
Read our privacy policy here.
Competition closes 4 October 2011. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.
Here are some more details from Spotlight Press:
London Design Guide 2012-2013 edition
Edited by Max Fraser
Following the success of the first edition, London’s only comprehensive design guide returns with a totally updated and rewritten second edition.
London Design Guide 2012-2013 gives a fresh insight into the city’s contemporary and vintage retailers, as well as design galleries, museums and bookshops. All 140 new and established hotspots are compiled and reviewed by design commentator Max Fraser.
Shops are categorised by neighbourhood and accompanied by detailed maps – plus walking tours written by local tastemakers including Sheridan Coakley, Tom Dixon and Kit Kemp – to help navigate the best that the city has to offer. You’ll find restaurant, bar and café recommendations, selected as much for their design credentials as for the quality of food and service. And we’ve commissioned 10 short essays by local experts including Naomi Cleaver, Hugh Pearman and Libby Sellers, each discussing an aspect of the industry, be it producing, selling, communicating, collecting, even discarding design.
The 2012-2013 edition also introduces 4×4, a new 16-page supplement featuring the top furniture, lighting and accessories designs in store. The survey does your homework for you, evaluating the designs based on quality and longevity.
The 208-page LONDON DESIGN GUIDE is a snapshot of the design scene today, a celebration of creativity and a practical tool for Londoners and tourists alike. There’s no better incentive for exploring the wealth of design in the capital.
About the Editor
Max Fraser is a design commentator, author and publisher whose work broadens the conversation around contemporary design. He has authored several design books, including Deign UK and Designers on Design (co-written by Sir Terence Conran). Fraser is the founder of Spotlight Press, an independent imprint that publishes London Design Guide and Dezeen Book of Ideas, both out this year.
specification:
Retail price: £12
Publication date: 15 September 2011
Publisher: Spotlight Press
Pagination: 208 pp
Format: 208 x 135mm portrait
Binding: paperback, thread-sewn
Availability: worldwide
ISBN: 978-0-9563098-1-5
Une vidéo et un concept original par le réalisateur Moritz Oberholzer avec le projet “London Bus Tour” présentant la ville et les rues de Londres depuis un bus. Des effets de slow-motion sur une bande son de Ratatat – Loud Pipes. A découvrir en vidéo HD dans la suite de l’article.
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Travelex’s chip-based card allows U.S. travelers greater freedom abroad
Since borrowing a London-based friend’s credit card in order to use the communal bike system in Paris a couple summers back, I’ve been curious about less-complicated solutions to the lack of “chip and PIN” credit card technology available in the States. Designed specifically for traveling Yankees, I recently started using the Cash Passport that Travelex launched late last year. The smart card not only gives users access to chip-enabled services (using it currently in the U.K. made buying Heathrow Express and tube tickets a cinch), but generally eases the woes of carrying personal credit cards.
Pre-paid with Euros or British Pounds, you don’t have to worry about daily exchange-rate fluctuations, incompatible ATMs and the threat of identity theft—unlike normal plastic, the Passport isn’t loaded with any personal information. (One of the biggest implications of these types of cards is cutting down on fraud globally.)
All this safety does have a downside. Travelex’s advanced security checks makes refilling online more difficult than it should be. Though their free emergency assistance is available 24/7, it’s the kind of process you’ll only want to go through if your card is lost or stolen. Load enough money to last the duration of your trip to avoid any hiccups or time-wasting phone calls.
On the upside, consider that Travelex doesn’t charge for balance inquires, ATM withdrawals or for receiving cash back from in-store purchases. When you get home, simply unload remaining balances—you can even transfer what’s left directly to your personal bank account or get a personal check. To learn more about how to feel like a savvy traveler rather than a stupid American, head to Travelex online.
Students at the Architectural Association in London have constructed leaf-like sculptures that curl down from a fourth-floor roof terrace to a ground level courtyard.
Top: photograph by Valerie Bennett
Strips of plywood from recycled exhibition panels were twisted into pairs and fastened together using cable-ties to create the three separate parts of the 3013 installation.
The suspended sculptures are draped over the brick walls of the AA building at Bedford Square.
Led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya and architect Jesse Randzio, students designed and fabricated the installation for a unit on the summer programme.
Temporary timber pavilions constructed outside the AA in the past have resembled logs, mushrooms and shells – see more stories about AA projects here.
Photography is by the unit, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here are some more details from the AA:
3013 Installation at the Architectural Association
In a thousand years, London will be saturated. Constrained by the green belt around it and freed from restrictions on building skyscrapers, the city will grow inwards and upwards. Within this scenario of extreme density, students at this AA Summer School unit led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya, and architect Jesse Randzio imagined how public space could evolve and adapt to smaller, vertical sites.
The unit developed a sequence of three skins to connect the upper terrace and lower courtyard at the AA in Bedford Square. The surfaces were formed from pairs of twisted plywood strips cut from salvaged exhibition panels. These were joined together at their edges to form flexible skins tailored to the site. The upper skins were suspended from above, lightly touching the existing brick walls for support; the fabric-like behaviour of the surfaces allowed their final form to be determined by how they rest naturally under gravity.
This installation revealed the hidden relationships between different levels of the building, creating temporary shelters and flexible gathering points that address how the city might be occupied today and in the future.
Students: Agni Kadi, Ehsan Ehsari, Frances Liu, Galo Carbajo Garcia, Hande Oney, Harsh Vernaya, I Ching Chu, Joaquin Del Rio, Julia Kubisty, Leonardo Olavarrieta, Marina Olivi, Masayo Velasco, Paco Alonso, Pedro Domingues, Summer Lin, Tess Zhang
The project was one of five units at the AA’s Summer School 2011 programme.
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| Grompies at the AA | Driftwood pavilion by AA Unit 2 | Swoosh Pavilion at the AA |
Milanese collective Carnovsky have decked out east London bar and gallery DreamBags-JaguarShoes in their wallpaper that changes under different lighting conditions.
Called RGB, the papers are printed in red, green, blue and yellow to reveal different layers of imagery when viewed with coloured lighting.
Big game emerge from the undergrowth in red lighting, monkeys in blue lighting and a jungle of plants in green lighting.
A series of limited edition prints is also on show.
DreamBags-JaguarShoes is named after the two shops that occupied the space in the 1980s. The same signs still hang on the shop front.
The exhibition continues until 21 September.
Here are some more details from Carnovsky:
RGB by Carnovsky at DreamBags-JaguarShoes
RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”.
RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus.
RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color.
The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting.
The colors mix up, the lines and shapes entwine becoming oneiric and not completely clear.
Through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) it is possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed.
The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three levels.
In each image three layers live together, three worlds that could belong to a specific animal kingdom or to an anatomical part, but at the same time connect to a different psychological or emotional status that passes from the clear to the hidden, from the light to the darkness, from the awakeness to the dream in something that could be a sort of exploration of the surface’s deepness.
We have always wanted to explore the concept of “Jungle” or really tangled, intricate and dense tropical forest, and for the exhibition at DreamBags-JaguarShoes we have created some new pieces, new wallpapers and new limited edition prints about this idea.
The jungle subject, with its exuberant, twisted and redundant vegetation that hides bizarre creatures, lends us to the exploration of another theme: the night.
For the first time in fact we are presenting some pieces from a new series that represents an evolution of our RGB project: RGB – The black series.
They follow the same original RGB principles but inverted, so it works over a black background and, looking through the filters, lights or transparent materials in the three colors, the worlds appear on negative.
The space at DreamBags-JaguarShoes that was already divided in two, gave us the idea to divide the installation in two parts, one white and one black, as if they were the day and the night.
Through a green filter or light it is possible to see the jungle clearly, and through a red all the jungle animals appear, well, not all of them, the blue filter makes an entire guffawing monkey’s tribe emerge embroiling with the other creatures behind the dense vegetation.
Carnovsky is a Milan based artist/designer duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla
28th July – 21st September 2011
DreamBags-JaguarShoes
32-34 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch,
London E2 8DA
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| D’espresso by Nemaworkshop | Mocha Mojo by Mancini Enterprises | Restaurant at the Royal Academy by Tom Dixon |
London-based Fraher Architects have completed a house extension in Islington that is wrapped in larch batons and has a flower-covered roof.
Adjoining the rear of the listed house, the timber-clad extension contains a study and a dining room with an oversized glass door to the garden.
Benches and fences lining this garden terrace are made of the same timber.
A serpent-like lamp illuminates the terrace at night, while matching orange lamps light up the new dining room beneath a rectangular skylight.
The roof over the dining room is split into two halves, which pitch in different directions and enable rainwater collection.
Modest residential extensions are common in London neighbourhoods – see our earlier stories about a house extended by just a metre and a zinc-clad extension squeezed into a wedge of land.
Photography is by Andy Matthews.
Here are some more details from Joe and Liz Fraher:
The Jewel Box
Intended for a reputable silversmith and QC the brief called for complete renovation and extension to provide a dining area and garden room. This Grade II listed building is located in the prominent Colebrook row conservation area.
Conceived as a series of jewelled boxes carefully inserted into the existing fabric, the proposals open up and revitalise what was a series of dark disjointed spaces. Timber and concrete have been combined in a simple palette of materials that wrap around the existing fabric, inviting the user through the space and into the garden. The remaining period architectural features are retained and celebrated whilst the rear addition utilises a double canted wildflower roof to bounce light deep into the floor plate.
Click above for larger image
A hidden garden study provides a place of contemplation overlooking the south facing courtyard garden.
Click above for larger image
Sustainable Scottish Larch combines with a series of green roofs to soften the junctions of the insertion and provides a habitat for local wildlife. Super insulation and rainwater storage add to the eco credentials of the scheme.
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| Villa extension by O+A | Extension to Residence Königswarte by Plasma | University extension by CrystalZoo |
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