Hasta La Ideas

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pemAbout-Face by Rosalyne Shieh and Weatherizing by Catie Newell./em/p

pIt’s no secret that houses can be acquired for cheap in Detroitmdash;as low as $500 if you attend the a href=”http://www.waynecounty.com/wcauctions/”Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction/a. With property so easy to acquire, a new question surfaces: what should be done with them? Many are dilapidated from disuse, burnt-out with no plumbing or electrical wiring to speak of, despite being located in partially occupied neighborhoods. Prior ‘cheap-house’ projects have made a href=”http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com/” polemical, visual statements/a that A href=”http://www.thedetroiter.com/b2evoArt/blogs/index.php?blog=2title=why_art_3_paint_the_town_orangemore=1c=1tb=1pb=1″call out/a the urban blight in Detroit. a href=”http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/architecture/faculty/fellowships/5fellows/abrons/”Five teaching/research fellows from the University of Michigan’s Architecture Department/a have approached their $500 house a little differently, using it as a testing ground for their ideas about architecture and domestic space. /p

pThe house was purchased at the above-mentioned Wayne County Auction, and is located near Hamtramck, in the same neighborhood that community-focused Design99 built their recently blogged a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design99s_neighborhood_machine__16658.asp”Neighborhood Machine/a. Over the past year, Ellie Abrons, Meredith Miller, Thomas Moran, Catie Newell, and Rosalyne Shieh have been rehabilitating the property, rewiring it for electricity and investing in new windows, for example. At the same time, they’ve tested their own ideas about new ways to experience and occupy this house, building them right into the existing architecture, reflected in the title of the project: emFive Fellows: Full Scale./em Now that their fellowships are over and the project is complete, the deed has been turned over to Design99 for further development and use./p

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pemThom Moran’s Table and Chairs staircase./em/p

pAbove, see Thom Moran’s emTable and Chairs/em, built to give the house a new staircase (in addition to the old one in the bathroom). It’s room-like in scale, and its steps double as seating surfaces and shelving. The direct making technique suggests that there are interesting building opportunities even with basic tools and skills./p

blockquoteThis project intends to provide the house with its missing staircase. The bleacher-like quality of the stair makes it a space to move through but also a place to linger. Something between a shelf and a ladder, the form of the stair can serve as permanent home for plants or a temporary place for a book or a drink. The stair is designed to be realized with minimal means. Not the “capital M” minimalism of art history, but the more immediate minimalism of survivalists, home depot and the typical apartment dweller’s toolbox. Inspired by Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione (roughly translated, it means “self-made” or “self-designed”), the stair is constructed with only cheap 1×2 boards and nails. It is something anyone can make with a saw, hammer and nails. This frankness and simplicity in making, initially a response to the lack of infrastructure (like electricity) in many Detroit homes, is more about practicality than polemics. Rather than offering a critique of contemporary techniques of making, the “lo-fi” quality of this project explores the opportunities of the primitive as an optimistic act./blockquotea href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/one_500_dollar_house_five_architectural_experiments__16683.asp”(more…)/a
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Hospitality is an industry of intersecting disciplines, and Design Hotels emphasizes the multi-pronged approach to hotel planning and design in “Hybrid Thinking,” the upcoming Future Forum conference in Berlin, Germany.

Design Hotels’ annual symposium focuses on architecture and design. This year, the agenda of “Hybrid Thinking” encompasses other aspects in synergy with the hotel business and hospitality, from the sensory experiences of food and drink to marketing and economic trends.

The conference speakers are a distinguished international group, including style and design writer Christopher Sanderson, winemaker Irène Tolleret, artist and researcher Sissel Tolaas and consultant David Bosshart. Architects Wolfram Putz and Lars Krückeberg are also scheduled to present.

Future Forum 2010 runs from 10-11 June 2010. Visit the Design Hotels website for ticket information on the conference and events.

The beginning of June 2010 will be remembered in Rome as the beginning of a new era in contemporary art. With the opening of the brand new MAXXI museum by Zaha Hadid (which CH previewed a few months ago) comes the inauguration of another impressive structure—a new wing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome.

MACRO opened in 1999 in the former Peroni beer factory, located Rome’s central Salario district. In 2001, French architect Odile Decq won the international competition to redevelop the venue and the resulting structure is truly remarkable.

The entire building was conceived to blend with the classic neighborhood, through plain surfaces and dark transparencies. In the main hall the auditorium stands out as an iconic piece of design with a red diamond-like shape boasting a bright red interior, rich with functional details. Long gangways float all over the space, surmounted by a large glass ceiling that gives way to natural lighting.

From there is the Great Hall, now showing gigantic works by Mario Schifano, Subodh Gupta, Jannis Kounellis and Tom Sachs.

The 500-square-meter white gallery is a space suitable for smaller works of art, such as the poetic custom-made installation by American-Japanese artist Jacob Hashimoto.

The bar maintains the central red them while intermingling with other colors, and the museum’s huge terrace offers a unique view of the rooftops of Rome. Even the restrooms are worth a visit, with lighting, mirrors and metallic surfaces providing their own artistic experience.

The new MACRO building will be fully functional starting October 2010.

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pHere’s a project that’s “born from the trash and returned to the trash.” After a short, but useful lifecycle, a href=”http://victorvetterlein.com/home.html”Victor Vetterlein’s/a Trash Me lamps can be returned to the trash/recycling stream from where they came. Each lamp is made from four, pulped to bits egg-carton and hand smoothed over a mold. After a few days of drying, the lamp is assembled section by section with aluminum screw posts. In the desk lamp, a sack of bird seed nestled in its base provides stability./p

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pOnce you’re through with it, Trash Me can be disassembled and dumped into the recycling bin for further transformation and reuse./p

pMore shots after the jump./p

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pAt the time of this writing it appears A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/science/earth/04relief.html?hpw” a workable, if slow, solution/A has been implemented to contain the Gulf’s oil crisis, though debate still exists as to its efficacy. The A HREF=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05obama.html?hp” cap recently placed on the well/A appears to be slowing the flow as planned, but the end-term solution is meant to be two relief wells drilled into the problem well, which will then be permanently sealed off via the new pathways with mud and cement. The downside: The relief wells won’t be complete until late August./p

pIn addition to the A HREF=”http://www.whatshouldbpdo.com/forums/59879-general-idea-submissions/topics/60443-i-think-bp-should-/filter/top” “What should BP do”/A website, there’s been no shortage of Monday-morning quarterbacks weighing in on how best to plug the hole, but even a casual perusal of the proposed solutions reveals that most people (including your correspondent) don’t have a full enough grasp of how fiendishly complicated it is to plug an undersea well gushing millions of gallons of oil. Many transpose common plumbing solutions, like the well is just a huge toilet, and there’s many suggestions of the childish “Why doesn’t BP just…” variety, as if it’s as simple as putting a hat back on a snowman./p

pThus far the only practical crowdsourcing solutions we’ve seen are those proposing ways to clean up the spill once the hole’s been plugged. There is, most famously, A HREF=”http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/q_who_will_clean_up_this_mess_in_the_gulf_a_kevin_costner_q_uhwhat_16607.asp” Kevin Costner’s Ocean Therapy machine/A:/p

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pThere is a biomass powder solution:/p

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pThere is another powder solution called Aerohaz, from a company that reportedly went out of business years ago:/p

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pAnd then there is the YouTube leader (at press time), with over 1.5 million hits, of two good ol’ boys demonstrating a hay and bluegrass solution./p

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pIf anyone happens across an actual design solution for Iplugging/I the well, written by someone who has a clear knowledge and understanding of the problem, please e-mail us!/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/oil_spill_in_the_gulf_clean-up_solutions_aplenty_plugging_solutions_not_so_many_16679.asp”(more…)/a
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