This movie shows shoppers walking under and sitting beneath the Christmas lights installed above public crossings and squares in central Berlin by German studio Brut Deluxe.
Brut Deluxe created a series of three festive light installations to hang along the shopping avenue of Kurfürstendamm.
“Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols contemplated from the outside, we wanted to create a space that can be entered and experienced,” said the design studio.
One of the installations features five illuminated cubes hanging at different angles in the middle of a traffic crossing.
A patterned dome comprising segments of wavy lights and spanning 7.5 metres appears to hover over Joachimstaler Platz.
At the traffic crossing at Knesebeckstrasse, a dense collection of 50 wavy light strings are suspended vertically above pedestrians.
The installations will be in place until 6 January. Photography and movie are by Miguel de Guzmán.
Here is some information from the designer:
Weihnachtsbeleuchtung Kurfürstendamm, Berlin 2013 christmas lights, Berlin 2013
Three light installations were realised on Kurfürstendamm: the first, a huge light dome with a diameter of 7.5m, at Joachimstaler Platz, the second consisting of five big three-dimensional light cubes at the crossing with Uhlandstrasse, and the third, an artificial landscape build of 50 light shrubs, at the crossing with Knesebeckstrasse.
What all three installations have in common is that we want to achieve an atmospheric effect with them. Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols that are contemplated from the outside, we want to create a space that can be entered and experienced.
We imagine this artificial space in the city as a place of retreat, similar to an imaginary clearance in a forest.
The atmosphere surrounding the spectator is produced only with light that alters its density and intensity constantly through the visitor’s movement and changing perspective.
The realised landscapes of light are inspired by images and situations recalled from our memory that we associate with Christmas and abstractly convert to light.
Dezeen Music Project: a choir of outdated computer equipment and games consoles performs a rendition of Carol of the Bells in this music video by Glasgow filmmaker James Houston.
Houston created the video as a Christmas e-card from The Glasgow School of Art, from which he graduated in 2008. “I thought it would be wise to do a song or a track,” Houston told Dezeen. “Music is the best way to get festive.”
He used speech synthesis on some of the machines to make them sing while the other consoles sound the four repeated notes from the tune of Carol of the Bells, a Christmas carol composed in the early twentieth century.
Houston wanted to continue his work using old technology to create sounds and images, and combine it with showcasing his old Christmas gifts: “The idea was to get a collection of old Christmas presents, stuff that I’ve been given over the years and try to make music out of that.”
All the machines are his own apart from a couple of items he sourced via Twitter. Old Apple Mac computers, a Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum + 1 and a SEGA Mega Drive are among the choir. The ensemble sings lyrics by writers Robert Florence and Philip Larkin about gaming at Christmas, which Houston did a lot as a child.
“Christmas for me is mostly about gaming,” he explained. “Each Christmas is delineated with whatever game I was playing at the time.” The video was filmed in The Glasgow School of Art school’s Mackintosh Library, where the machines were unpacked and arranged on a table among Christmas decorations before playing the festive song.
A concrete kitchen worktop doubles up as a dining room floor inside this renovated house in Porto by Portugeuse studio Ezzo (+ movie).
Named Flower House, the project involved demolishing and rebuilding the building’s upper storeys, as well as refurbishing the existing ground floor to create sunken zones for the kitchen and living room.
“The project was aimed at creating a series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility and linking the internal spaces of the ground floor in just one: living, dining and kitchen,” said Ezzo.
Kitchen cabinets are slotted beneath the concrete floor, while a small breakfast counter is created by an extended section of the same surface.
The concrete was hand-poured on site and has been finished with a waterproof coating to give it a polished look.
The hollowed-out living area sits adjacent to the kitchen, whilst a dining area and small bathroom are positioned just behind.
The house’s new upper storeys are contained within a traditional vernacular form with a gabled roof, but the exterior has been painted entirely white.
“The core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling, which, over time, would come to reflect an approach to contemporary renovation work,” explained the architects.
The first floor accommodates a pair of bedrooms that open out onto a shared balcony, overlooking the surrounding city rooftops. Both bedrooms feature built-in storage space.
A bathroom with bright blue walls is located on the left hand side of the landing, while a wooden ladder leads up to a study room and seating area on the top floor.
A courtyard is located at the back of the house and is surrounded by walls clad in polycarbonate plastic panels.
Flower House involved the remodelling of a small old house to provide space to accommodate a single client. The scheme included the refurbishment of the existing ground floor, demolished of the 1st floor as well as the construction of a new one.
The building is set within heritage site, which has drawn out a unique response to the history and settings. The building geometry, orientation and size is driven by the site constraints.
At the site, the existing buildings are idiosyncratic of their type, with flank elevations and roof profiles, which run the breadth of the neighbourhood of Foz Velha. These buildings are detailed in a utilitarian manner, with an honesty of material and detailing one would expect.
In responding to this condition, the design of the new building make clear reference to their historical parts. A two storey dwelling with character and personality, respectful of the existing neighbourhood, and taking advantage of the views.
In the interior the project was aimed at creating a series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility, linking the internal spaces of the ground floor in just one: living, dining and kitchen. Two different stairs ensures the connectivity between ground floor living spaces and upper floors of bedrooms and study space.
The core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling, which, over time, would come to reflect an approach to contemporary renovation work and create a flexible environment for who will live there.
Accessible via a path with only 2 m wide, flanked by old houses, externally, the building is wrapped in a homogenous white skin, which wraps up from the landscape.
This relationship of building to street retains those historic associations described, and similarly allows for a contemporary sculptural form to sit comfortably within its context.
Project: Flower House Architects: EZZO – César Machado Moreira Collaborator: João Pedro Leal Location: Porto, Portugal Project Area: 120 sqm Project year: 2010/2013 Engineering: Penman Ldª Constructor: Van Urbis
Dezeen Music Project: London artist Di Mainstone is developing an electronic instrument that enables performers to make music from the subtle vibrations of suspension bridge cables (+ movie).
“I would regularly go to Brooklyn Bridge [in New York] and it struck me that there’s a comparison between a suspension bridge and a harp,” said Mainstone, who presented the project at this week’s Wearable Futures conference in London.
“I started thinking about the cables of the bridge, which carry vibrations down them in the same way as a harp string. I wondered if there was a way to develop a parasitic interface that would enable people to ‘play’ the frequencies of the bridge, which is this beautiful deep groaning sound.”
She added: “I imagined these people called ‘movicians’ who were almost part bridge, part instrument with all of these cables attached to them.”
Di Mainstone attaching a Human Harp module to Brooklyn Bridge, New York
These devices, which Mainstone attaches to the structure of the bridge, contain retractable cables that control the volume, pitch and intensity of the sounds based on the length, speed and angle at which they are pulled.
Mainstone’s performers wear a special vest, which these cables clip on to, enabling them to alter the music by rolling and contorting their bodies.
Mainstone tested the Human Harp on Brooklyn Bridge earlier this year, using pre-recorded sounds from the bridge. She is now looking at developing technology to enable the modules to record the sounds of a bridge in real time and wants to create specific sound installations on bridges around the world.
“We plan to do a tour in the UK and then a global tour of suspension bridges after that,” she explained.
Alchemist Lauren Bowker has embedded ink that changes colour depending on different climatic conditions into a feathered garment (+ movie).
Bowker designs clothing and sculptures to demonstrate how the inks she has developed blend from one colour to another depending on the surrounding environment.
Her extravagant PHNX fashion pieces were made from feathers impregnated with the ink, which respond to light, heat and friction so they ripple with changing tones as the wearer moves.
“I chose the feathers because the piece was about the birth of something new and the piece goes through dark phases to light, which is meant to be spiritual,” Bowker told Dezeen at the Wearable Futures conference where she presented the project earlier this week.
PHNX fashion piece
She also collaborated with photographer Ryan Hopkinson to create Valediction, a sculpture made from white leaves covered in thermochromatic ink so they would turn blue when they became hot. When the piece was ignited, the colours mapped the destruction before it occurred.
Bowker began her research by creating a pollution-absorbent ink called PdCl2, which changes colour from yellow to black in dirty conditions then reverts back in fresh air.
At the Royal College of Art she developed the product into ink that can respond to a variety of different environmental conditions.
“I graduated with an ink which is respondent to seven different parameters in the environment,” Bowker said. “Not only will it absorb air pollution, it will change colour to UV, heat, air friction, moisture and more. This gives it the capability to go through the full RGB scale.”
“Each ink works very differently, it depends on what sort of material you want to apply it to,” she added.
The inks can be applied to most materials using various methods, depending on the characteristics of the surface. “You can screen-print it, paint it, spray it, or alternatively you can dye things with it, impregnating the fibres with the colour,” Bowker explained.
After presenting the technology in fashion pieces, it was picked up by a range of companies who asked her to collaborate on projects including a concept aeroplane cabin by Airbus. “Everyone saw this technology and saw their own vision of how they could use it,” said Bowker.
She can customise the inks to change colour in specific places by mapping the conditions at the locations and creating an ink to respond to these parameters.
“If you came to me and said ‘Lauren, I want my silk jersey to change colour when I’m at Oxford Street, then when I’m at Baker Street I want to be a different colour’, I would go out and map the fluctuations in the environment of each tube station then I would create you an ink that responds to those environments,” Bowker said.
Bowker recently set up The Unseen, a design house for biological and chemical technology house to raise awareness of the product and further the applications of her creation by making it more affordable. The company aims to launch a collection using the materials at London Fashion Week in February 2014.
Valediction sculpture
In the future, Bowker hopes the inks will be adopted by the medical industry: “If it goes into a T-shirt that lets you know if you’re going to have an asthma attack, that for me is much more successful than having an amazing fashion collection.”
Bowker presented her work at the Wearable Futures conference at Ravensbourne in London, which concluded yesterday.
Here is some more information from the designer:
Multi-award winning alchemist Lauren Bowker leads prophetic art house The Unseen. Focused on Seeing The Unseen; The Unseen is a luxury design house and consultancy that integrates biological, chemical and electronic technology into fashion, through materials.
Philosophy
“The Unseen believes technology IS magic. My vision is to create a world of seamlessly captivating science; through exquisite couture, luxury products and opulent materials; in lieu of the believer searching for special pieces and unique experiences. To do this I will build a House and environment that both appeal intriguingly and aesthetically. That is well informed, well educated, inventive and sensitive to both Technology and Design. Offering luxury attire enhanced with technical magic that will lead fashion. I trust in the unseen world around us, it can offer beauty, magic and faith. I want others to see what I see.”
Valediction sculpture
Valediction
A collaboration with genius Ryan Hopkinson.
Valediction depicts the burning of a sculpture made entirely from the skeletons of leaves, hand painted in Thermochromic, Heat tracking Pigments to appear blue. The sculpture, once ignited, acts as a mapping tool of its own destruction. The Thermochromatic treatment allows the viewer to witness patterns of heat flux in real time as the leaves combust and the flames propagate. With a starting height of eight feet the sculpture is reduced to nothing within ten seconds leaving only ash and a limited number of high resolution photographs as physical proof of it’s existence. On first glance aesthetic beauty conceals the technology, while the true nature of the sculpture is exposed through destruction by flame. Data is made available and witnessed in real-time, illustrating a new platform for physical visualisation.
PHNX
Through the expansion of many types of ink PHNX is an original take on dynamic chromic imaging. Using existing and vast variables from the immediate human habitat as an external input to the PHNX sensory ink, forming an array of new Chromic materials within natural structures. Resulting in a constructed and dynamically controlled textile that is capable of constantly evolving, continually changing colour state in front of the viewer’s eyes. Inspired by reincarnation and the cycle of life PHNX was intended to enhance the beauty of Technology in materials and the imagination of experimentation within Fashion providing an aesthetic that provokes discourse on beauty of materials in fashion, technology, interaction and data.
Valediction sculpture
PdCl2
The multi award winning PdCl2 ink is designed to treat the symptoms of hazardous lifestyles we live in today. The Chromic Dye is capable of reacting in the presence of carbon emission. Presenting a reversible colour change from yellow to black. The surrounding concept addresses issues in health as a result of passive smoking, logically evolving into a platform that aesthetically visualises environmental conditions. Using Material to offer an innovative language within visual communication.
“The building is a naked structure; everything you see is at the same time carrying, so structural, and space-making, so spaces defining and containing,” Herzog tells Dezeen.
“There is no inside/outside, there is nothing that is masked, so everything you get is doing all you expect from architecture. In that sense it’s a very honest or very archaic architecture.”
Veranda – photograph by Iwan Baan
Herzog & de Meuron‘s Pérez Art Museum Miami opened to the public last week in downtown Miami and accommodates 3000 square-metres of galleries within a three-storey complex with a huge elevated veranda.
A car park is on show beneath the building, while a single roof shelters both indoor and outdoor spaces.
View from the veranda. Copyright Dezeen.
“Typologically you could say that this is a building built on stilts,” says the architect. “Layers end with a trellis-like roof and start with a platform which is also kind of a trellis, under which you can park your car and that also is open to the elements. Literally everything is visible, is part of the whole.”
Exhibition galleries – photograph by Iwan Baan
The architect describes how galleries were designed to open out to the veranda so that “landscape would walk inside the building”.
“We wanted to do buildings that are transparent or permeable, so that inside/outside would not be a strict barrier,” he explains.
Exhibition galleries – photograph by Iwan Baan
Exhibition galleries occupy the two lower floors of the museum and were organised to encourage a fluid transition between spaces.
“The special concept of the museum is this kind of sequence of spaces, which are more fluid,” says Herzog. “It’s a new kind of museum typology, which we believe was right to do here.”
Auditorium staircase. Copyright Dezeen.
The building also features an auditorium that doubles up as a connecting staircase.
Auditorium staircase. Copyright Dezeen.
“The auditorium staircase is an attempt to do more than just an auditorium – that would be a space that is closed and only used when there is a performance or conference – but to introduce it so that you have a grand stair leading people up to the main gallery floor,” says the architect.
He continues: “By means of curtains it can be subdivided, so it gives more opportunities to the curators and directors, and the people here.”
Jacques Herzog and Dezeen’s Marcus Fairs in a bay window. Copyright: Dezeen
Bay windows puncture the walls of the first-floor galleries and contain benches that visitors can use to take a break from exhibitions.
“This is to give the windows more than just the role of being a hole in the facade,” adds Herzog. “This again is a transitional element between inside and outside, inviting people to rest, sit and warm up a little bit.”
This movie shows how a redundant Second World War bunker in the Netherlands was turned into a sculptural visitor attraction by slicing it down the middle to reveal its insides.
The bunker was built in 1940 to shelter up to 13 soldiers during bombing raids and the intervention by Dutch studios RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon reveals the small, dark spaces inside, which are normally hidden from view.
The movie shows a diamond wire saw being used to cut a straight section through the centre of the monolithic structure, and a crane lifting it away to create a narrow slit.
It took 40 days to slice through the solid concrete bunker, which was one of 700 constructed along the New Dutch Waterline, a series of water-based defences used between 1815 and 1940 to protect the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem.
“Our aim with the project was to question the policies on monuments by doing this intervention,” Ronald Rietveld of RAAAF told Dezeen, adding that the bunker was subsequently elevated from a municipal monument to a national monument and is now part of the New Dutch Waterline’s bid for UNESCO World Heritage status.
The designers also constructed a set of stairs to connect the nearby road to a path that leads through the centre of the bunker onto a wooden boardwalk raised above the flooded area.
“The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war,” said Rietveld in a statement about the project.
Visible from the busy A2 motorway, the bunker is part of a 20-year masterplan begun in 2000 to transform the Dutch Waterline into a national park. It was completed in 2010 but was officially opened last year and recently won the Architectural Review Award 2013 for Emerging Architecture.
Here’s a project description from RAAAF:
Bunker 599
In a radical way this intervention sheds new light on the Dutch policy on cultural heritage. At the same, it time makes people look at their surroundings in a new way. The project lays bare two secrets of the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military line of defence in use from 1815 until 1940 protecting the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem by means of intentional flooding.
A seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced open. The design thereby opens up the minuscule interior of one of NDW’s 700 bunkers, the insides of which are normally cut off from view completely. In addition, a long wooden boardwalk cuts through the extremely heavy construction. It leads visitors to a flooded area and to the footpaths of the adjacent natural reserve. The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war.
The sliced up bunker forms a publicly accessible attraction for visitors of the NDW. It is moreover visible from the A2 highway and can thus also be seen by tens of thousands of passers-by each day. The project is part of the overall strategy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon to make this unique part of Dutch history accessible and tangible for a wide variety of visitors. Paradoxically, after the intervention Bunker 599 became a Dutch national monument.
Sleepy Skunk a réuni des images des films les plus importants de l’année, afin d’en faire une vidéo de 6 minutes du plus bel effet. Un montage très réussi, résultat d’un travail fou, qui fera plaisir aux amateurs du 7eme art. Plus de 250 films à retrouver et à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our first movie from Miami, Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron claims the Swiss architecture studio is trying to create a “new vernacular for Miami” that eschews sealed, air-conditioned buildings in favour of more “transparent or permeable” structures.
Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron. Copyright: Dezeen
“Very often, if you go to a place, you’re asked to do architecture that relates to that place, stylistically, or typologically or whatever,” says Herzog, who was speaking at the press preview of the new Pérez Art Museum in downtown Miami, which opened on Wednesday. “What would that be in Miami?”
“The most famous style or vernacular here is the art deco [buildings] on Ocean Drive, but this is relatively stupid architecture; it is just blind boxes, which have a certain decoration, like a cake or pastry, with air conditioning that makes a very strict difference between inside and outside.”
Ocean Drive, Miami
He continues: “This is very North American architecture that doesn’t relate to or exploit the amazing conditions that you find here: the amazing climate, the lush vegetation, the seaside, the sun. We wanted to do buildings deconstructing this, opening up these structures and making them transparent or permeable.”
Herzog gives the example of 1111 Lincoln Road, Herzog & de Meuron’s sculptural car park on South Beach, which was completed in 2010 and is open to the elements on all sides.
As well as providing parking spaces for 300 cars, the car park includes shops, bars and restaurants and hosts parties, weddings and other events throughout the year.
“It’s just a stupid garage,” he says. “But the new thing is that we made the building double height so it opens the possibility to have different floor heights and different rooms.”
“Parking cars [in this building] is an experience. We introduced shops and restaurants and little bars and other possibilities for people to hang out and use the entire building, not just to make a blind box for cars.”
Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Modern in London and Parrish Art Museum on Long Island are two other examples of galleries that “give right answers to different places”, Herzog says.
Tate Modern in London by Herzog and de Meuron
“I compare it to cooking,” he explains. “We try to use what is available in every season or in a certain region and not to try to have an ambition to do something exquisite in a place where it wouldn’t make sense, but to fully exploit whatever is there.”
The Pérez Art Museum features large, over-hanging eaves to provide shelter from the sun and rain of Miami’s tropical climate, while suspended columns covered in vertical gardens by botanist Patrick Blanc hang from the roof to emphasise the building’s relationship to its surroundings.
“I think this museum is an interesting attempt [to exploit the natural climate in Miami],” Herzog says. “Somehow it introduces a type of building that could become a new vernacular for Miami.”
In the interview conducted by Koolhaas’ son Tomas, director of the documentary, West also talks about ambitions for his design company DONDA and says that “music has really been a Trojan Horse to create art again”.
“I love Rem’s work,” said West while talking about how much he enjoyed working with the architect’s company OMA in 2012. “I just like that fact that I was able to take my position as a musician, as a rapper and as a celebrity, and be able to invest in a project with a company of that level.”
OMA’s pavilion design for West was a shaped like a pyramid and erected for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and during the interview the rapper revealed that he has been producing a new film that builds on the immersive experience for the past year and a half: “I’m working on a film and I’ve created a seamless version. There were seven screens and they were separated, and the new one is seamless.”
“When it happens and people see it, I think people will understand a bit better what I’m talking about or why I’m so frustrated,” he added.
West also discussed his creative company DONDA, which he set up last year. At the moment he initiates and funds all the projects himself, but the 36-year-old hopes that this will shift so his company is commissioned to create for others within the next four years.
“I’m paying for a lot of the projects that I wanna work on, but it’s like my own home [designed by Claudio Silvestrin], or a store design, or [the] pavilion I did with OMA,” he said. “I believe, just to will this into fruition, that when I’m 40 [DONDA] will have to turn down projects.”
“I’ve done basically everything I can do with the amount of finances I have,” West continued. “If I go and think about a new form of film making and I go through the entire process, I end up funding the entire thing myself because it’s too abstract of a concept for people to put a finger on.”
“I went to college on an arts scholarship, I was the number one you know so music has really been a Trojan Horse to really create art again,” he declared. “What do you think I spend the most time on when I’m creating a tour? The visuals. I am more of a visual artist and a product person.”
Tomas Koolhaas is currently aiming to raise funds to complete his REM documentary on Kickstarter. The feature-length documentary will focus on how the architect’s buildings are used by people and will “comprehensively explore the human conditions in and around Rem Koolhaas’ buildings from a ground level perspective”. Watch the trailer below:
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