Hasta La Ideas

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 closes this weekend and this movie by Cristobal Palma shows how visitors to the Chilean Pavilion had to walk over a bed of salt while viewing proposals for Chile’s public spaces on glowing boxes suspended from the ceiling.

The pavilion was named Cancha, the pre-Hispanic Quechuan word for public space, to tie in with biennale director David Chipperfield’s theme of Common Ground. “Cancha is the reference used to comprehend our Chilean Ground, our Common Ground which is not urban but territorial,” explained the curators.

In response to this, seven architects presented concepts for public spaces in Chile as images on the hanging boxes, while Cristobal Palma produced seven short movies (shown below) to capture the essence of each idea.

The salt crystals covering the floor of the pavilion were a nod to the salt flats of Tarapacá, which supply salt to Venice and form a tie between the two places. Roughly cut salt blocks also provided seating for visitors.

See all our stories about the biennale, including the Russian Pavilion covered in QR codes and the Dutch Pavilion with constantly changing spaces.

Photography is by Cristobal Palma.

Palma’s movies follow below with project captions from the exhibition:

Deserta by Pedro Alonso: ”The constant mutation of a territory traced by the human interventions of ground exploitation reveals from the apparent emptiness of the Atacama Desert.”

Metropolitan Promenade by Alejandro Arevena, Elemental: ”An urban scale public space as a tool to build social equality in Santiago de Chile”

Limitless Chile by Juan Pablo Corvalán, Susuka: “Cancha’s spatial conditions begin on its boundaries, just like a country. By using the traditional Mexican mural method, they show us a process of delimitation and then the suppression of the country limits, reaching a utopian continent-like country.”

Playground by Genaro Cuadros: “By explaining the consequences of property speculation, he lets us understand the fundamentals of the constitution of a country by its ground system with the participation of the State and the individuals.”

Kancha by Germán del Sol: “By focusing in the origin of common American space, he takes us out from the colonial structure into Quechuan and pre-Hispanic origins; the spatial matrix that established territories and landscapes with the presence of man.”

Travesía of the Amereida by Iván Ivelic: “Through the method used in the School of Architecture of the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, he shows us how the South American continent can be re-comprehended and re-founded.”

Performance of a Conquest by Rodrigo Tisi: “A proposal of categorisations of the way that social and political individual bodies conquer the land, through three case studies on Chilean territory.”

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Architecture Biennale 2012 appeared first on Dezeen.

News: industrial designer Yves Behar believes his revamped SodaStream can save 2000 bottles a year – but a TV advert promoting its green credentials has been banned in the UK for alleged “denigration” of rival products (+ watch the ad).

The banned ad, which was due to launch on ITV1 last night, carries the tag “If you love the bubbles set them free” and features crates of soft drinks exploding each time the SodaStream is used to carbonate still water.

Clearcast, which monitors and approves TV advertising in the UK, said: “Clearcast were unable to approve the recent SodaStream ad because in our view, its visual treatment denigrated other soft drinks which put it in breach of the BCAP [Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice] code (Rule 3.42).”

Clearcast added: “Environmental issues were not relevant to that decision.”

The BCAP code states that: “Advertisements must not discredit or denigrate another product, advertiser or advertisement or a trade mark, trade name or other distinguishing mark.

“This decision is absurd,” said SodaStream UK managing director Fiona Hope. “We have neither named nor disparaged any of our competitors in the industry and cannot see how this makes any sense.”

Hope added: “Through the ad, we are simply displaying an alternative way to living more sustainably and illustrating one of our product’s benefits – the reduction of plastic bottle wastage. The consumer should be allowed to make their own decisions about how to live their lives and the products to choose. This decision appears to put the sensitivities of the world’s soft drinks giants ahead of concern for the environment. We will continue to fight this decision with Clearcast and will push to reverse this decision.”

Behar, who runs California design studio fuseproject, unveiled the new-look SodaStream at MOST in Milan earlier this year. The product was repositioned as an environmentally friendly alternative to bottled soft drinks. Behar demonstrated the product in a video interview we filmed in Milan.

“It really works well in this day and age when we are trying to reduce our consumption of plastic bottles,” Behar said in the interview and said the average US household would save 2,000 bottles per year if they used a SodaStream instead of buying carbonated drinks. In the UK the annual saving would be 550 bottles.

The 30-second ad, which has already aired in the United States, Sweden and Australia, was due to premiere during I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here yesterday evening.

Clearcast said it would work with SodaStream to agree a revised script.

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ad banned in UK appeared first on Dezeen.

These delicate bowls by Japanese design studio Nendo are so thin they quiver in the wind (+ movie).

Nendo created Shivering Bowls for the KAMA. Sex & Design exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. Eight designers were asked to produce a piece that explores the idea of eros, the Greek term for erotic love, and Nendo responded by creating an extremely thin bowl from silicon.

“We wanted to express eros through a design that invokes desire – a design that viewers simply can’t bear not to touch,” said the designers.

The bowl changes shape when touched by a finger or buffeted by a breeze, as the movie shows.

The KAMA. Sex & Design exhibition runs from 5 December until 10 March 2013 at the Triennale Design Museum, Milan.

Other projects by Nendo we’ve featured recently include a collection of glass bowls that look like the bottom half of a Coca-Cola bottle and a chair that’s wrapped in fishing line rather than varnished.

See all our stories about Nendo »
See all our stories about bowls »

The movie is by Takahisa Araki and photographs are by Hiroshi Iwasaki.

Here’s some more information from Nendo:

Shivering Bowls

A set of bowls for the KAMA. Sex & Design exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. The curators asked eight designers to create an object, in conjunction with an exhibition that explored ideas of eros in design from ancient times to the present, from a cultural anthropology and mythical perspective.

We located the intersection of eros and design in the spiritual pleasure provided by an object’s touch, and decided to make an extremely thin bowl out of silicon for our contribution. The bowl resembles a ceramic one, but with a tension to this perception, generated by the extreme thinness that would be impossible to achieve with clay. The bowl changes shape as easily as liquid when it is touched, and continues to quiver momentarily in response to the outside force. We wanted to express eros through a design that invokes desire – a design that viewers simply can’t bear not to touch.

KAMA. Sex and Design
Date : 5th Dec 2012 –10th March 2013
Place : Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy

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by Nendo appeared first on Dezeen.

A disused hospital building in Valencia explodes and shifts into new configurations in this series of manipulated photographs by Spanish studio espai MGR (+ slideshow + movie).

Led by espai MGR, the architects manipulated photographs of the former Hospital Universitario La Fe to draw attention to the need for “urban recycling” to revive empty buildings.

“Nothing is unrelated in a city. To empty a building and leave a black spot in the city is something that somehow also affects the closest environment,” architects Manuel López and Bernat Ivars told Dezeen.

“We wanted to show a building that evolves parallel to a society more and more aware of the importance of urban recycling,” they added. “A building able to be restructured and to change in order to house new functions without needing to be demolished and rebuilt.”

An accompanying website tells the story of the hospital through a cryptic fable about an octopus and a broken pitcher, which references a fairytale about a proud milkmaid whose pail of milk falls from her head.

The broken pitcher, or pail, suggests an object that has been badly managed and can no longer function properly, the architects explain.

The images accompanying the text are not directly connected to each other, but are organised like a soundtrack accompanying a scene in a film. “For instance, in the moment the pitcher is broken, the building breaks with it, depicting an interior full of possibilities,” they said.

Creative Dismantling was led by espai MGR with the assistance of Aitor Varea as a product of Proyectos con Final Feliz, a work and research cooperative based in Valencia.

Last year we reported on another photo-manipulation project by espai MGR, which imagined impossible Lego structures filling vacant plots in Valencia.

We recently reported on another set of surreal photographs in which Parisian houses appear to be floating in the sky like kites.

See all our stories about manipulated photography »
See all our stories from Valencia »

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Creative Dismantling_short story about strange cities_ep1

Authors: Bernat Ivars, Manuel López
Collaborators: Fran Azorin, Lola Bataller, Isabel González, Eva Raga, Aitor Varea

Abstract

When an institutional bulding is disused, its stillness infects life around it. Creative Dismantling tries to reverse this situation by means of injecting movement both visually and reflexively. The case study is the former Hospital La Fe, currently a large container without use in Valencia, Spain.

This building served as a public hospital since its opening in 1968 until its closure in February of 2011. Once all its services have been transferred to a new location, its around 150,000 sq m of floor area are ready to be reinvented in order to keep on energising its unbreakable bond with the neighborhood of Campanar.

By means of a different language, we pursue to make visible a problem and turn it into an opportunity: the establishment of the former Hospital La Fe as a symbol of urban recycling.

Text

The creative dismantling seeks to reconstruct the different links of urban reality. The goal is to get the city to maintain ecosystem equilibrium relationships among agencies so that the dynamics of each complement the other. This requires a reinterpretation of the usual meaning of the elements that turn problems into opportunities. A rearticulation to heal wounds urban partially through the influence of reflex areas.

We talked about a long-term process where the fundamental piece of change is not the result but the movement itself. The real destruction of a building is not its disappearance but its stillness: stillness that extends to everything that surrounds it. Some buildings should disappear. Others gradually disappear. In one case or another, they must always give way to a new life. The task of the architect is also to decide the optimal way to deconstruction. Progress sometimes appears with removing the first stone.

A brand new symbology

Creative dismantling is not unless it contributes to activate a fair and complex social economy. As a sign of a new attitude, creative dismantling has a symbolic character that feeds on what makes us individuals and allows us to live everyday. Halfway between utopia and an unavoidable step whose border a change of attitude, creative dismantling does not focus on the material but also on values, dismantling institutions stacked in a wrong time. How can something die with dignity and become more important during the process of death than in life? We only have to redefine the direction taken so far and adopt a more coherent logic. In the end, asserting only common sense.

Former Hospital Universitario La Fe was opened in 1968 to meet the needs of the health area of Valencia. This service was guaranteed by the involvement of almost 7,000 employees. For 42 years it served daily to over 600 patients. During its long period of activity it acted as an economic and social promoter of a neighborhood that became identified with his existence. his intense activity contributed to the creation of housing and services for the broad set of employees, patients and families.

In 2001, the Ministry of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana announced the decision to build a new La Fe hospital to replace the current centre. The transfer of all its services to the new location took place between November 2010 and February 2011, since when the new site has assumed the continuity of all inherited health responsibilities.

Today, the old centre is one of the most important urban opportunities in the city. About 150,000 m2 of floor area remain ready to be reinvented and continue its task of energising an unbreakable bond with the neighbourhood of Campanar.

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by espai MGR appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen promotion: lighting consultancy LightCollective has collaborated with electronics brand Philips to create a smartphone app enabling lighting designers to collect and share their inspirations, available to download and trial for free from today on Apple and Android (+ movie).

Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers from Light Collective created the database for professionals in the lighting and design industries so that “a global online community would record, document and analyse the lit environment”.

Features include the recognition of geo-tagged photographs so that users can view pictures taken around them or search by place through maps, and comment and favourite functions that track the popularity of your images.

The interface appears as a mood-board of uploaded images, which can be scrolled through for inspiration.

The app is compatible with both Apple and Android devices and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Here is some more information from Philips:

Philips and Light Collective offer a new crowd-sourced and image-based app for Lighting designers to share inspiration

The LightCollector app from Philips and Light Collective is based upon two lighting design fundamentals: the desire to be inspired and the need to store the things that inspire us so we can use them when required. LightCollector is an opportunity to create a crowd sourced global image collection for the professional lighting industry sharing to aid greater knowledge, ease of working and collective creativity.

As explained by Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers from the lighting consultancy Light Collective “We know how often we trawl our image library to find the perfect image to illustrate our concept to our client. We know that somewhere, in the depths of our not-quite-adequately filed hard drive we have that photograph we once took, in that city we once visited, of daylight transmitted through a stained glass window and creating an explosion of colour on the floor. Finding the image allows us to explain what we are trying to achieve in our design. LightCollector is a resource for collecting these light based images.”

‘’We loved the idea of an inspirational light and lighting database as a way to spark and share creativity for each design challenge. We hope to support the design community in creating better and more ground-breaking solutions harnessing light that impact people lives through this shared inspiration.’’ Matthew Cobham, responsible for lighting application at Philips Lighting.

The result is an easy to use App, which will enable lighting and design professionals to speed up their image searching requirements and to feed their creative need for inspiration. As a mobile enabled tool, it allows use of the App while on the go on both Apple and Android platforms. The App is the key to initial involvement in LightCollector but the web interface is equally important.

Visit the LightCollector website for more information.

Download the App for Android in the Google-Play store here. The App for Apple phones is available from today.

www.light-collector.com

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now available to download appeared first on Dezeen.