Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Venice Architecture Biennale 2010: visitors to the Polish pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale launch themselves off a pile of birdcages into a sea of artificial clouds.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Called Emergency Exit, the installation by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska consists of empty metal cages stacked up to form the jumping platform, smoke machines and a neon sign spelling out ‘Emergency Exit’.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

The pavilion was curated by Elias Redstone.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

See all our stories about the Venice Architecture Biennal in our special category.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Here’s some more information from the designers:


Emergency Exit.
Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Polish Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice

‘A neon Emergency Exit sign hangs on the facade of the Polish Pavilion. Inside, a surreal structure made of hundreds of reclaimed bird cages hides a path to its summit.

It is lit from within, suggesting a night landscape, a fantastical de-materialized world containing an object and an action. You climb the seemingly precarious structure. At the height of the summit you look down into a churning sea of clouds. Your breath catches, your pulse quickens; you look down, then out, and then leap blindly into the void. . .

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

The installation Emergency Exit by artist Agnieszka Kurant and architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska seeks to go beyond the logic of urban reality through the creation of ‘urban portable holes’: in-between spaces, places of uncertainty and doubt, of time-space discontinuity, such as abandoned or unfinished buildings, sites of catastrophe or accidents, illegal markets, rooftops and tunnels. The title refers ironically to the health and safety regulations in buildings and urban space that seek to plan, control risk and eliminate the accidental and unexpected.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

The installation is constructed from an aggregate of metal cages, more commonly used to contain birds and prevent flight, to create a new fictional sport within the urban context. The design makes reference to the forms of decaying sports monuments, such as the ski jump in Mokotów, Warsaw—a surrealistic icon of socialist era architecture thatis now in ruins. During a test phase, visitors will be able to climb to the top of the structure and jump out into artificially generated clouds, representing ultimate freedom and urban escapism. The Polish Pavilion acts as a laboratory within which Emergency Exit engages with the public directly to provoke, inspire and excite the collective body. These actions will be documented and then presented within the Pavilion.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Kurant and Wasilkowska interpret the city as an unpredictable, complex system whose collective understanding is composed of intersecting real and imaginary spaces changed through extremely rare events. Nine out of ten things that influence our behaviour and thinking are invisible or intangible. Factors such as myths, rumours and legends overlay themselves onto the physical environment to create an urban morphology of augmented landscapes. At the same time, spontaneity and risk exist as human characteristics that can work against a rational layer of control within the urban fabric. Both invisible phenomena and social actions can change the dynamic of a street, borough, or even the entire city. Architects and planners are therefore unable to precisely anticipate all the needs and transformations of the city. If a rigid and deterministic master plan is unable to integrate emergent needs and changes then the whole city looses its equilibrium.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

Emergency Exit is conceived as a hybrid machine for the transfer to other realities, perforating the system of the city. It is a portable hole to the unknown; a catalyst for different, contradictory emotions and needs. Through the transfer, people fill in the gaps with their own emotions, ideas and desires. Kurant and Wasilkowska see the moment of jumping as an exit from the modernist paradigm in architecture where emotional, affective space was ignored and considered an obsolete ornament. The activity materialises the need and desire to lose control, to free oneself both physically and metaphorically from the current system; from a dominant paradigm, logic or state. To get out of here.

Emergency Exit by Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska

The project promotes an approach to architecture and urbanism that reverses the logic of a unilaterally defined urban reality and deterministic master plan; it embraces the unknown phenomena of the city; introduces a higher flexibility of the urban tissue through integrating interstices, gaps and pores, and leaving people space to plug-in or plug-out of dominant urban structures through developing individual, self-organising activities and actions.

Polish participation in the 12th International Art Exhibition in Venice was made possible through the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

Pavilion Commissioner Agnieszka Morawińska
Curator Elias Redstone
Assistant Commissioner Joanna Waśko

organization of the exhibition
Zachęta National Gallery of Art

Promotion supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Legal advisor of Zachęta White & Case
Sponsor of the exhibition PERI Polska


See also:

.

Canadian pavilion
by Philip Beesley
Villa Frankenstein by
muf architecture/art
All our stories about
Venice 2010

DAD Sharp’ner: Art of the Fanzine

Issue four (left) and two of Fever Zine, who will be at the next D&AD Sharp’ner

D&AD‘s next Sharp’ner event will look at the culture of fanzines in a panel discussion headed up by Professor Teal Triggs, whose new book on the subject is out in October…

The next installation of D&AD’s discussion-based panel events is set for 21 September at House on Berwich Street in London.

It will see Teal Triggs, Professor of Graphic Design at University College London, and author of new book Fanzines leading the conversation, with contributions from Alex Zamora (Fever Zine, shown above); Cathy Lomax (Arty); Laura Oldfield Ford (Savage Messiah); and Neil Boorman, creator of CR favourite, Shoreditch Twat.

Tickets for the event are available, here.

Sharp’ner is D&AD’s new pub-based initiative that aims to bring a panel of creatives together for a discussion on a loose theme every two months. The events are free for D&AD members and £5 for non-members.

The Art of the Fanzine 
7pm, Tuesday, 21 September 2010
House, 1 Berwick Street
London, W1F 0DR

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat has unveiled his design for a corporate university campus to the west of Moscow for Sberbank Russia.

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

The university will provide training for the bank’s employees and include teaching spaces, conference rooms, accommodation for teachers and pupils, sports facilities and a club building.

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

The long prefabricated wooden structure will be clad in prefabricated wood and glass panels, with all clusters of buildings connected via a climate-controlled colonnade.

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

Completion is scheduled for 2012.

Corporate University for Sberbank Russia by Erick van Egeraat

Here are some more details from van Egeraat’s office:


Erick van Egeraat builds Corporate University for Sberbank Russia

The board of Sberbank, the leading bank of Russia, signed a contract with the Dutch Architect Erick van Egeraat for the realization of their new Corporate University, west of Moscow, close to the Novorizhkoye highway.

Sberbank is Russia’s largest and oldest state run bank with over 250.000 employees and 20.000 branch offices in the country. The new Sberbank University will provide education, seminars and team building programs to the company’s top professionals, to continuously improve their performance within the corporate standards. The most prominent Russian bank implies the highest standards for its employees and therefore it aimed for the most ambitious educational project in terms of design and quality. Erick van Egeraat’s design for the 32,000-m2 Corporate University was chosen from 4 other proposals including David Adjaye’s entry.

The site is located in a suburban, almost rural setting, bordered by woods on its southern side, and the Istra river embankment on the northern side. The University will consist of education and conference spaces, dormitories, guest teacher quarters, teacher housing, a club building and sports facilities.

The spacious and picturesque setting allows for a campus model; the program’s distribution on site creates comfortably scaled public spaces that intensifies interaction with the natural surroundings. Education, lodging and sports functions are each clustered in orthogonally defined volumes. Taking into account the climate, all building elements except the teachers’ housing are connected with an elegant and climate controlled colonnade. This colonnade is programmed with recreational, bar, relaxation functions and serves as an identifying backbone of the entire complex.

Technical side of the project aims at the highest level of sustainability and considers a very short construction process. The campus lay-out allows for many building elements to be constructed simultaneously. The load bearing structure consists largely of prefabricated wooden construction elements. All facade and space dividing elements are executed with prefabricated wood and glass elements. The complex fully integrates sustainable design tools and technologies, putting sustainability in the centre of the corporate agenda. The floor slabs have considerable cantilevers providing terraces, summer shading and adding to the building’s thermal mass, reducing the need for mechanical cooling and heating. Heating and cooling capacity needs to vary per functional cluster, and surplus heating or cooling capacity between these functional clusters will be exchanged, further reducing the need for mechanical cooling and heating. The majority of the buildings allow for predominantly natural cross ventilation, only assisted with mechanical ventilation under exceptional circumstances.

Most horizontal surfaces will be executed as vegetated roofs, thus improving both the appearance and the insulation qualities of the building. The aim is to execute the project as much as possible with materials of low environmental impact, such as wood, mineral stucco and granulated concrete foundation.

This winning design proposal provides Sberbank with a modest, recognizable all-season training resort that will be an asset of the company, and a perk to attract and keep talented professionals within its ranks. Design works for next stages have commenced. The project is scheduled for opening in the first quarter of 2012, making it the 6th executed project of Erick van Egeraat in the Russian Federation after Housing Barvikha Hills, Chess Club in Khanty-Mansiysk, Vershina 1 in Surgut, a private residence in the Klyazma area and two towers for Capital City in Moscow.


See also:

.

VTB Arena Park by
Erick van Egeraat
Budapest City Hall by
Erick van Egeraat
Grave City Hall by
Erick van Egeraat

Adidas Roundhouse Violet Orange

Après la paire Adidas Leather Wings 2.0, voici un design et un look très efficace sur ce modèle en série limitée et proposé en exclusivité chez Styles Japan. Il s’agit de la collection “Adidas Roundhouse Mid Violet & Orange”. Disponible en pré-commande jusqu’au 20 septembre.



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In Brief: Etsy Raises $20 Million, Kikkomans Solar-Powered Soy Sauce

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  • Etsy, the craftacular online marketplace that is featured in the Cooper-Hewitt’s current National Design Triennial, has raised another $20 million from investors. This, the company’s fifth round of funding, was led by London-based Index Ventures. With 5 million members and 125 employees, Etsy is in the midst of its first profitable year, according to founder and CEO Rob Kalin. “The two biggest costs running Etsy are our servers and our employees,” he wrote Friday on the company’s “handmade” blog. “We want to make sure we can secure the best of both, and this investment helps us here.” Meanwhile, Adam Freed has just joined Etsy as chief operating officer. A veteran of Google, Freed is also the owner/guardian of Hank, a dog that bears a striking resemblance to a Muppet. We smell an Etsy store opportunity!

  • In other crafty business news, Kikkoman has seen the light. The soy sauce specialist is going smartly sustainable by installing solar panels on its Folsom, California factory. The new photovoltaic system will be up and running by late September. It will not only significantly reduce the need for fossil fuel-based electricity to power production but also allow the company to sell solar electricity back to the grid when the facility is not in operation. Installed as a fixed carport over the company parking lot, Kikkoman’s solar system will have the added benefit of shading cars from the Caifornia sun.

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    TW35 40 by Tamawa

    TW35 40 by Tamawa

    Belgian designer Hubert Verstraeten of Tamawa will present these watches made of Bakelite at Maison & Objet in Paris this week.

    TW35 40 by Tamawa

    Named TW35 40, the watches have cases in a choice of eight colours, with the face and hands in either silver or black.

    TW35 40 by Tamawa

    Maison & Objet takes place 3-7 September.

    The text that follows is from Tamawa:


    Whilst waiting for the arrival of the young Belgian designer this October at Bon Marché’s Galerie Imaginaire, Tamawa will be making an appearance at the Maison & Objet Show in Paris with a collection which has been diversified by the addition of a new watch to the accessory and jewellery range. Playing definitively on the purity and simplicity of Bakelite beads, Hubert Verstraeten, the artistic director of the brand, is proposing a brand new watch model larger than the previous one. Called the TW35 40, it is made entirely in Europe. The face, made up from a 35 mm bead is available in the brand’s usual colours. The interior of the watch face is available in silver and black, just like the hands, thus permitting many combinations with the 8 Bakelite colours.

    The black leather bracelet is available in a double or single length.

    Exercising radical style, Tamawa exclusively uses Bakelite beads. It maintains a history in design which takes off exactly from where the mythical “Hang it all” by Charles & Ray Eames stopped: 8 colours (the official snooker colours) made from 2 to 16 cm diameter beads, this is the designer Hubert Verstraeten’s scope for the unlimited conception of a range of objects. Today, the collection which began with jewellery, is expanding into accessories and objects for the home (lamp, photo stands, coat stands) designed by Hubert Verstraeten and guest designers such as the Big Game collective or Sylvain Willenz. In Japanese, Tamawa literally means “bead on a steel ring.” The young Belgian designer is relying on the shift in focus to propose an elegant and fun range. Having moved away from its “snooker” image, Bakelite has immediately regained its pure and profound nature, the plastic qualities of which go beyond the snooker room. The idea of ‘play’ is there however, but in a formal way: infinite possibilities – from precious objects to furnishings – with this small sphere, as basic as it is essential.

    Tamawa at Maison & Objet

    Stand J181 Hall 7
    3rd to 7th September 2010
    Parc des expositions, Paris-Villepinte

    Tamawa at Bon Marché
    Galerie Imaginaire
    2nd floor
    30th October to 31st December 2010.


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