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Today was the opening for Cooper Union’s end of year show. I got to walk around the architecture and art shows and saw a lot of beautiful models, some great drawings, and a few fun/smart pieces of art.
The one above was one of my favorites: a hand crank break dancer + MC Hammer zoetrope. Can’t beat it.
See images of some interesting projects on view after the jump.
Last night, after an awesome lecture by Jose Oubrerie on the completion of The Church of Saint Pierre, the student work show GAUD++ curated by the independent study group opened in the first level gallery at Pratt.
From left to right:
Sean Dugan, Mike Szivos, Troy Zezula, Jason Mcgee, Andrew Seskunas and Robert Beach.
View some low quality pics after the jump, but check out better pics from the opening in their blog here.
GAUD++
Opening Reception
March 31, 2008
Immediately following lecture
Robert and Hazel Siegel Gallery
61 St. James Place
Brooklyn, NY 11205
To see the development of the project, please visit the blog at: http://www.gaudplusplus.com/
SOFTlab’s Mike Szivos has been leading an independent study group at Pratt’s GAUD. The group ( Jason Mcgee, Troy Zezula, Robert Beach, Sean Duggan, Andrew Seskunas + Mike Szivos) are curating this semester’s show of work produced at the school. They’ve been working on a parametric system for the manufacturing of the system of podiums which will hold the models. There is a perspectival organizational logic to the grouping of the models. The boards have their own organizational principle based on 3 different parameters too.
The show opens on Thursday at Pratt.
Visit the independent study’s blog at Gaud++, where they’ve documented the entire process very methodically. Pretty fantastic, and quite an amount of work.
Congrats guys.
I just came across this project created at the Bezalel academy for arts and crafts, for the course “Food for Thought” in the jewelry department. This coffee grinder operates according to the users heart-beat rate and is intended as a critique to consumerism (isn’t consumerism linked directly to the fetishization of objects?). In their own words: “To use this object, you must caress it and hug it, much like as a baby is held, the user inevitably bonds with it, emotionally.”
Although the object is currently a one off, it could potentially become a mass produced product. Ultimately, it is a poetic approach to an everyday object/task, and makes us [re]think about the way we relate with objects. Whether I would want to bond with my coffee grinder or not, well, that’s a different story.
Visit Nastypixel to read more about the project. Check out some of their other projects while you’re there, pretty interesting stuff.
Just recently I came across Troika’s ‘Cloud’, an installation for British Airlines’ Terminal 5 in London’s Heathrow Airport . It uses a combination of digital input and analog double-sided disks (flip dots) to animate the skin of the sculpture. Absolutely fantastic.
Visit Troika’s website here.
According to their news section, they will have an exhibition at MoMA starting March 12. Not to be missed.
View the YouTube video after the jump below.
via [interactive architecture]
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I made it earlier today to the MoMA preview of Design and the Elastic Mind. I couldn’t really take enough time to look around, but it is definitely an impressive selection of interesting work..
I’ll post something more complete once I make it back to the museum and actually get to spend some time in the exhibition. But for now, here are some low quality phone pics for now.
The Happy Corp’s LVHRD DL this time around was between Konik and FxFowle. Paul and James (FXFOWLE) dueled David and Sean (Konik) for 120 minutes in the Music Hall in Williamsburg. The program: It’s the year 2029, a new wildlife research facility in Alaska is to be created by re purposing metal from the Alaskan pipeline. The teams had to leave it all in the field by designing and making a model in only 120 minutes.
This time around Konik’s project won, with a giant straw tower and some big time model chomping.
Watching the ‘duel’ itself, was in the fun scale, somewhere between watching paint dry and an American soccer game. I think having a commentator on site would make it about 1000 times more fun. That should do.
I’ll post more images later on.
Better late than never… I finally made it down to the Herzog & deMeuron 40 Bond street project to see the building in person-from the outside- and here is what I have to say: it is an awesome building, BUT it just goes way over the top (and this is intended as a pseudo-negative comment).
It has fantastic moments and techniques, yet it is a bit overdone in certain instances. More specifically, the patterning in the lower level just becomes too much: the gate, behind it the bumped metal panels, with the patterned film and at the lobby entrance the perforated ceiling… they would all work fantastically each on their own.
Other than that nit-picking comment above, the building is just beautiful. The curved glass over the structure and the gate itself, which looks as if made out of bone are just remarkable.
See more hi-res images after the jump below.
The dream of building an island utopia just off the coast of lower manhattan takes a big step forward with the announcement of the winning team for the masterplan of GI. See what the New York Times had to say.