Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen podcast: in this podcast British architect John Pawson recounts how he began his career, his only use of colour in an interior and talks us through his exhibition Plain Space, which opened yesterday at the Design Museum in London.

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The exhibition presents an overview of Pawson’s career since the early 1980s through photography, models and material samples, and also includes a full-scale architectural space to be entered and experienced by visitors.

The exhibition is on display until 30 January 2011.

Tomorrow, Friday 24 September, the exhibition is open until 10pm with tickets only £5 in advance.

Photos are by Luke Hayes.

Here’s more info from the Design Museum:

John Pawson
Plain Space 22 September 2010 – 30 January 2011

This autumn, the Design Museum presents a major exhibition on John Pawson. Often labelled a ‘minimalist’, he is known for his rigorous process of design. By reducing and editing he creates architecture and product designs of visual clarity, simplicity and grace.

Plain Space celebrates Pawson’s career from the early 1980s to date and includes a selection of landmark commissions including the Sackler Crossing at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the new Cistercian Monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in the Czech Republic and Calvin Klein’s iconic flagship store in New York, as well as current and future projects.

At the heart of the exhibition is a site-specific, full-sized space designed by Pawson to offer a direct and immersive experience of his work. This is the first time the Design Museum has realised a 1:1 scale architectural installation inside the museum.

Using a rich range of media the exhibition will explore projects from Pawson’s career. Specially commissioned, large-scale photography will look at his architecture in the landscape. Actual architectural elements in stone, bronze, wood and metal taken from a range of buildings including the Baron House in Sweden and Pawson’s own house in London will explore his sensitive use of materials.

The process of design and construction will also be shown through photography, film, sketches, study models, prototypes and interviews relating to a number of projects including a private home in Treviso, Italy currently under construction. Personal items from the Pawson archive will also be on display including letters from Karl Lagerfeld and the writer Bruce Chatwin.

A new book, John Pawson Plain Space, written by Alison Morris, will be published by Phaidon Press to coincide with the opening of the exhibition.

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David Adjaye at the Design Museum	Sustainable Futures at the Design Museum	See all our podcasts

Ariane 5 rocket on the pad at the Guiana Space Centre carrying $700 million worth of satellites

In a series of stunning images, photographer Simon Norfolk documents the life of a satellite, from manufacture and testing all the way to the launchpad

I’ve loved Simon Norfolk’s for a long time so I was specially pleased to see that he had entered our Photography Annual this year with Satellite, a series of images commissioned by This is Real Art which document the life of an Astra satellite.

Two of these images made it into the Photography Annual helping it, I think, to become the strongest we have done. It’s wonderful to be able to show all these beautiful images in print, but there is a downside. Compared to online, there is a chilling permanence to print: get something wrong and that’s it. So it was with a sinking stomach that I noticed that we had managed to print Simon’s images at a lower resolution than they should have been. Everyone at CR apologises to him for this but there is an upside. We are going to run an extended selection of images from the Satellite series as our Monograph for the November issue.

This post is to give you a taster of what to expect. If you’d like to receive Monograph, please go here.

Part of the satellite production room; calibration and testing rigs, EADS Astrium, Toulouse

Emergency back-up power generation, SES Astra satellite guidance centre, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

Supercomputer cooling systems, SES Astra satellite guidance centre, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

Astra 3B undergoing testing in the anechoic chamber at EADS Astrium, Toulouse

The DINO Room in Betzdorf which controls all the satellite TV content being reflected by SES Astra’s satellites

The S5 Payload Preparation Facility where satellites are checked over before launch

Uplink antennae, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

The hydrazine fuel that powers the satellites is so poisonous it has to be loaded by workers wearing full space suits

Soyouz launch pad, Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana

Project commissioned by This is Real Art. Creative director: Paul Belford.

Simon Norfolk is represented by Peter Bailey

More on the CR Photography Annual here

Se cercate una valida tablet senza svenarvi, un buon compromesso tra prezzo e funzionalità lo offre la linea Wacom Bamboo. La versione Fun incorpora tra l’altro sia il multi touch che la penna. Io iniziai ad usare Wacom con una Graphire da battaglia ma questa è tutt’altra cosa.

Pencil hand made print tee disegnata da WWWK. In vendita sul loro Bigcartel.

The Sperone Westwater gallery by Foster + Partners architects opened in New York earlier this week, featuring a moving exhibition space that connects the floors of the gallery.

The 12 by 20 foot moving gallery allows visitors to travel between floors or can be fixed at a chosen level to extend the static exhibition spaces.

The milled glass facade of the gallery dampens noise from the street and controls the temperature and light admitted to the gallery spaces.

Photos are by Nigel Young.

Here’s more from Foster + Partners:

Sperone Westwater gallery opens on the Bowery

Sperone Westwater celebrates the opening of its new gallery on the Bowery in New York with an inaugural exhibition by Argentinean artist, Guillermo Kuitca.

Nearly 35 years after its conception, Sperone Westwater continues to exhibit an international roster of prominent artists working in a wide variety of media. Its new building, designed by Foster + Partners, doubles the exhibition area and pioneers an innovative approach to vertical movement within a gallery setting.

Responding to the compact 25 by 100 foot site, one of the features of the project is a 12 by 20 foot moving gallery, which connects the upper four exhibition floors and allows visitors to move gradually between levels. It is a prominent feature along the Bowery, visible from the street, its gentle pace contrasting with the fast-moving traffic. At any given floor, the exhibition space can be extended by parking the moving room as required, with an additional elevator and stairs providing alternative access.

The gallery offers a range of exhibition spaces, which vary in proportion and ambience. The design incorporates a double-height, 27-foot high exhibition space at street level, with a sky-lit gallery, a mezzanine floor, a sculpture terrace overlooking a park, and private viewing galleries on the fourth and fifth floors.

A setback at the sixth floor marks the location of the gallery’s administrative offices. Works of art will be stored primarily in the basement, while a library is located at the top of the building, below the mechanical floor.

The milled glass facade that houses the moving room acts as a buffer zone, protecting the building from extreme temperatures and acoustically insulating the gallery spaces.

Norman Foster commented:

‘The concept for Sperone Westwater represents both a response to the Bowery’s dynamic urban character and a desire to rethink the way in which we engage with art in the setting of a gallery. The moving gallery animates the exterior of the building and creates a bold vertical element within.’

‘Like a kinetic addition to the street, it is a lively symbol of the area’s reinvention and a daring response to the Sperone Westwater’s major program. I hope that artists will be inspired by the gallery’s new spatial and structural possibilities.’

See also:

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West Kowloon District by Foster + Partners	The Khan Shatyr Centre by Foster + Partners	National Glass Museum Holland by Bureau SLA