Hasta La Ideas

This sculpture of a boy and rocking horse by Berlin artists Elmgreen and Dragset will be the next installation on top of the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Called Powerless Structures, Fig.101, the bronze sculpture will be unveiled in 2012.

An enormous blue cockerel (below) by German artist Katharina Fritsch, called Hahn / Cock, is to be the next commission and will replace Elmgreen and Dragset’s installation in 2013.

Six shortlisted proposals were exhibited at St-Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square last year, where visitor were invited to comment via cards and the project website. See all the shortlisted proposals in our earlier story.

Here are some more details from the competition organisers:

Elmgreen and Dragset
Powerless Structures, Fig.101
Proposed material: bronze
To be unveiled in 2012

In this portrayal of a boy astride his rocking horse, a child has been elevated to the status of a historical hero, though there is not yet a history to commemorate – only a future to hope for. Elmgreen & Dragset’s work proposes a paraphrase of a traditional war monument beyond a dualistic worldview predicated on either victory or defeat. Instead of acknowledging the heroism of the powerful, Powerless Structures, Fig 101 celebrates the heroism of growing up. It is a visual statement celebrating expectation and change rather than glorifying the past.

The rocking horse, a toy originally dating from the 17th Century, and later popularised in Britain, is here depicted in a stylized version merging a Victorian model with a contemporary mass-produced design.

The boy’s features and gestures underscore a character that has its own “infantile” logic, one that is not yet influenced by the classic masculine expression. As in a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, this “enfant terrible” gently questions the authoritarian pose often found in the tradition of equestrian sculptures. His wild gesture, mimicking the adult cavalier, is one of pure excitement – there will be no tragic consequences resulting from his imaginary conquest.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset said:

“We received the big news about having been selected for the next Fourth Plinth commission per cell phone – still jet-lagged after a long inter-continental flight – and with our hands full of shopping bags from the local supermarket. On a cold and rainy London afternoon, it took a couple of minutes for the news to sink in. Our proposal is somehow an appraisal of the “non-heroic“, so this scene actually felt rather appropriate for the situation. Though Trafalgar Square is such a prominent location and our sculpture probably will be seen by thousands of people, it is a comfort to know that it will be there only temporarily. That’s the strength and true beauty of the Fourth Plinth commissions – they are there just long enough to evoke debate, to be treasured or disliked – and then they will be exchanged with a new project, which in turn will be discussed. Such dynamics are part of keeping a city alive.”

Katharina Fritsch
Hahn / Cock
Proposed materials: steel, epoxy, paint
To be unveiled in 2013

The sculpture, a larger than life cockerel in ultramarine blue communicates on different levels. First of all is the consideration of the formal aspect of its placement: the mostly grey architecture of Trafalgar Square would receive an unexpectedly strong colour accentuation, the size and colour of the animal making the whole situation surreal or simply unusual.

The cockerel is also a symbol for regeneration, awakening and strength and at the same time plays with an animal motif that was popular in classic modernism, for example in the works of Picasso. However it is frowned upon today because it has become kitsch through overuse in the applied arts.

Katharina Fritsch said:
“It is a great honour for a German artist to get chosen for the Fourth Plinth. When I was called in my office, I got very excited because it is a great challenge for an artist to do a piece for such a worldwide important and famous place. Also to deal with the historical meaning of Trafalgar Square was very interesting for me and I wanted to do a sculpture, which is on one side serious but also humorous to give an optimistic perspective and not becoming too severe. I am very happy and I hope that people will like it.”

See also:

.

The Battle of Trafalgar by Jaime Hayón	Outrace by Kram/Weisshaar for Trafalgar Square	ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor

Great illustrations by London and Berlin based Victoria Topping.

Check out her site for more.

London firm Universal Design Studio have completed the interior of a shop on London’s New Bond Street for fashion brand Mulberry.

Opening this week, the shop features a concrete floor, display stands made of oak batons and an 8.7 metre-long polished brass cash desk.

More about Universal Design Studio »

Photographs are by Leon Chew.

The following details are from Universal Design Studio:

Mulberry unveils new store and design concept for its London flagship location

In December 2010 Mulberry will be moving its flagship boutique from its current location at 41-42 New Bond Street, London to a few doors away at number 50. The move is another manifestation of Mulberry’s overall success, evidenced by the company’s mid-term announcement that sales have jumped 79 percent across UK stores compared to last year as well as the recent launch of their app for iPhone and iPad. The opening of the 50 Bond Street store will seal Mulberry’s standing as a luxury fashion brand with a unique emphasis on desirable and responsible creative British output.

The new store design is the result of Mulberry’s two year collaboration with Universal Design Studio. It is an innovative, thoroughly modern, dynamic retail environment that reflects the brand’s aesthetic, its commitment to craft, ecological and ethical concerns, and its ties to the English landscape.
According to Georgia Fendley, Brand Director, Mulberry; ‘We are immensely proud of our British heritage and our reputation for craftsmanship; we wanted to facilitate the translation of these quintessential elements of our brand into our retail interiors.

Rather than a pastiche of the craft used to create our products we have sought out the best of British craft for each material and function and let the quality and authenticity speak for itself. The teams have delivered an astounding result given the almost impossible brief we set – beautiful, totally Mulberry, authentic, responsible, flexible and innovative. They have wrestled with the sometimes conflicting agendas of aesthetics and ethics and their passion and commitment are evident in the attention to detail achieved. Unlike many slick ‘shop-fitted’ environments our new Bond Street flagship is designed to last and to develop a patina over time, like nearly all of the best things in life it will get better and better with use!’

The new design will provide an open and informal layout over 5,400 feet of retail space set on one level, where customers will be encouraged to meander through the sections at their leisure. To maximise the ability to reflect the change in pace of retail life the majority of fixtures are freestanding and fully flexible, allowing for the manipulation and reconfiguration of the internal architecture.

The finished store will reflect many features of a modern art gallery; juxtaposing informal, open spaces and daylight-simulating, energy-conserving light boxes. The vast open space and raw concrete ‘warehouse’ style floor will be a visual canvas for the refined, bespoke features such as handmade irregular tiles and the textural contrasts between crafted oak, smooth brass and white lacquered surfaces.

Different materials are contrasted in all aspects of the interior makeup, for example the brass tablets designed by Jonathan Ellery set into the floor, or in the service area where an 8.7 metre polished brass cash desk is contrasted with the gloss-lacquered panels behind that are designed to reflect light into the narrowest area of the store. There are also sculptured oak timber and textured brass ‘follies’ that break up the store space and offer an intimate shopping environment within the open-plan floor layout.

The environmental concerns of such a large space have been addressed as an integral part of the design brief. Mulberry has been working closely with Max Fordham, consulting engineers who implemented energy efficient concepts into the new store design. As well as the construction and design process there are measures in place for ongoing energy monitoring, designed to create an environmentally aware retail space and working atmosphere.

A key feature supporting energy conservation is an undulating stone wall forming the backbone of the store, created using the traditionally British craft of dry stone walling. The wall is an ingenious part of the mechanics of the store, retaining heat in the winter and cooling the air in the summer. Equally inspired is the adaptation of a simple Roman idea; polished brass back plates behind lamps in one of the follies reflect light back into the space, maximising the efficiency of the fittings.

Universal Design Studio is expecting the store to receive a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’ which is very unusual in retail constructions and space.
The new Mulberry Bond Street store will be the first flagship to feature this new concept, with several international stores currently under construction. By subtly contrasting the traditional with the modern, customers will be given the chance to immerse themselves in a new retail environment, maximising their enjoyment of the product and appreciation of the space around them.

Mulberry has also created a micro-site, www.fiftynewbondsteet.com, to house exclusive content regarding the project. There are interviews with those involved with the store’s construction, and a time-lapse film showing how it came together, as well as various images of the interior and individual design concepts. Information is being added regularly to build a rich depiction of this dynamic new store and the myriad of components and people involved.

See also:

.

Louis Vuitton Maison by Peter Marino	Reiss flagship store by Universal Design Studio	H&M Seoul by Universal Design Studio

Bartlett lecturer and photographer Simon Kennedy has sent us his photographs of a deserted south London housing estate awaiting demolition.

The photographs focus on the communal spaces in and around the run-down estate and were exhibited at the Bartlett School of Architecture last month.

Images are © Simon Kennedy.

See all our photography stories »

Here’s some more information about the project from Kennedy and architectural historian Ben Campkin:

The Heygate Estate in South London was completed in 1974. The estate now stands empty and awaiting demolition.

635 x 508: Heygate Abstracted is a photographic installation, a result of numerous visits to the estate through 2010. A large format camera was used to photograph and re-photograph specific views and locations around the public areas of the estate. The spaces within the photographs were then analysed and augmented.”

‘There is another Modernism well worth rescuing from the dustbin of history and the blandishments of heritage . . . [T]he Left Modernisms of the 20th century continue to be useful: a potential index of ideas, successful or failed, tried, untried or broken on the wheel of the market or the state. Even in their ruinous condition, they can still offer a sense of possibility which decades of being told that ‘There is No Alternative’ has almost beaten out of us.’[1]

Heygate Abstracted

Simon Kennedy’s photographs of the Heygate Estate prompt us to contemplate not the failure of modernism, but the failure of the failure of modernism, and the possibilities for reclaiming a mode of utopian urban thinking. In doing so they provide a visual elaboration of a prominent theme in contemporary architectural debate.

At a time of acute shortage of affordable housing, the photographs make us question the validity of the decision by Southwark Council to demolish these buildings—are they essentially and irretrievably a failure?

In their guide to the architecture of south London Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner struggle to make sense of the estate, built between 1968 and 1974. Clearly impressed by the visual impact of its slabs and the gargantuan social ambition of the London Borough of Southwark Architects’ scheme, they also categorise the Heygate as one of ‘the most notorious products of industrialised building’.[2]

Few London locales have become so linked with postwar ‘modernism in ruins’ as the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood long stigmatised through an iconography of material and social ‘blight’ and ‘brutality’, an inner-city intersection with a vast stock of council housing, the physical deterioration of which attests to its being mostly by-passed, along with the area’s residents, by the wealth circulating in late-modern London.

Kennedy’s photographs emphasise the consequences of the painfully protracted if not perpetual contemporary ‘regeneration’ process which has left homes and shops conspicuously vacant for years on end.

They show an urban landscape of quasi-ruins, attractive to photographers and journalists through the spectacle of ‘sink’, to use the term Tony Blair problematically applied to the Heygate’s sister Aylesbury Estate, PR birthplace of New Labour government.

Trained as an architect, Kennedy’s gaze fixes on the formal qualities of the estate’s exteriors and public spaces, selecting architectural moments, abstracting views and elevations, in a process that disassociates these buildings from their contentious histories, and any sense of domestic life.

The result is that the photos capture something of the essence of the original blueprints. Yet an air of pathos pervades, emptiness is the striking feature of this catalogue of intended social spaces.

These qualities have particular resonance now, of course, at a time of accelerated state withdrawal from housing provision, and changes to housing benefit policy that will force those on low-incomes towards the periphery of the city.

Ben Campkin

See also:

.

Shophouses 4 x 8 m Bangkok by Peter Nitsch	More photography on Dezeen	More architecture on Dezeen

A French denim umbrella

Since its inception just two years ago, London Undercover has become the ultimate silver lining to any rainy day with its collection of elegantly-crafted umbrellas. With designer Jamie Milestone at the helm, the English outfit’s latest venture with Dutch denim shop Tenue de Nîmes perfectly illustrates both brands’ dedication to making premium goods.

The denim umbrella is the upshot of Tenue de Nîmes’ keen interest in “creating a bizarre illustration” that would reflect their Amsterdam boutique combined with Milestone’s relentless pursuit to make an umbrella in denim. Sourcing fabrics from France (the birthplace of denim), Milestone explains that, unsure if it was even possible to proof it properly at first, they got it to work after a few tests by thinning the French denim “so it would open in the right way,” and then waterproofing it. For the interior illustration, the team tapped Amsterdam-based illustrator Hiyoko Imai, who Milestone says “really took the illustration to another level and brought it to life with a fun, quirky concept” of a cotton flower comprised of individual tiny raindrops.

To produce the design, each of the umbrella’s eight panels were screen-printed individually, a lengthy (and costly) process. But, Milestone says it was worth it, “The end result is absolutely fantastic. For me, it’s the trade-off of old and new that really makes it work.”

Adorably capturing the concept of “indigo rain,” Imai also made a short video featuring Mr. de Nîmes—dubbed the finest jeans maker in Amsterdam—and his quest to beat the furious rainmaker Rainy Grey.

The Tenue de Nîmes natural beech and denim umbrella sells online from London Undercover for £115.