Hello, welcome to my home page on Tumblr! An itchy labyrinth in which I try to find new ideas and influences in architecture and contemporary design.
againstaverage.tumblr.com is my other page, much more agile and focused on new art, fashion and design products, graphics and all that keeps me awake.
Enjoy!
“It started with a conversation about how you define the home and the vision came together, drawing on a fragmented collage of memories, real and imagined. This is our dream of the perfect home, uniting very plural points of view. This is not a singular, purist approach; we wanted to keep very open to different ideas.”
Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien
“We do not subscribe to claims of anti-ageing, promises of youth and distorted ideals of beauty but offer plant-derived ingredients that contribute to the positive treatment and maintenance of skin and hair.”
Ilse Crawford of Studio Ilse designed the first London outlet of Australian skincare brand Aesop. It is located in Mayfair and features a restored Victorian interior with modern and antique interventions.
http://www.studioilse.com/home/
Melbourne architects March Studio have hung 30 km of coconut-husk string from the ceiling of Aesop’s shop in Singapore. Designed in collaboration with Aesop director Dennis Paphitis, the interior was inspired by the twine used to tie the company’s gift boxes.
Japanese architect Jo Nagasaka of Schemata Architecture Office used materials reclaimed from a demolished house for the interior of Tokyo shop. “We find a demolished house anywhere in the world,” says Nagasaka. “We use a place in different purposes anywhere in the world. We get a space in skeleton condition anywhere in the world.”
Above. Located within Parisian concept store Merci, the installation, made by March Studio uses the brand’s own packaging in an undulating installation that rises up one wall and spreads across the ceiling.
Below. The walls, floor and ceiling of the Aesop store in Paris Saint-Honoré are covered by 3,500 pieces of wood. The interior was inspired by parquet flooring.
The kiosk is Aesop’s first venture into the American market and was designed by Brooklyn architect Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox. This one is made from over 1000 copies of the New York Times. The newspapers were stacked, torn and bound in a wooden frame then topped with sheets of powder-coated aluminium.
Designed by Parisian studio Ciguë, the shop is located in the winding streets of the historically aristocratic Le Marais district. This first store in Paris are displayed on 427 steel caps that would normally be used in the city’s plumbing network. The wall-mounted dishes are filled with clear resin to form a flat surface and finished in varying degrees of blackened, rusted and stripped steel. Larger plumbing caps create basins in the polished concrete counters.
Translucent boxes propped up on a forest of steel rods display products by skincare brand Aesop at a Hong Kong store designed by architects Cheungvogl. The monochrome display at I.T Hysan One was inspired by a black and white photograph of floating lanterns.
“Since the late 1990s, japanese artist tatzu nishi has been creating out-of-scale and out-of-place encounters in public spaces around the world. he has transformed street lights, parked cars and monuments, building new spaces around them and altering their setting. mostly choosing renowned landmarks of various cities, tatzu nishi creates a new room for these iconic sculptures, making them accessible to visitors.”
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Hasta mediados de enero de 2012 podrá verse en el Museum of Contemporary Art de Tokyo la muestra ‘Architectural environments for tomorrow - new spatial practices in architecture and art’ comisariada por Yuko HASEGAWA junto a los arquitectos del equipo SANAA. Aunque con predominio de arquitectura japonesa y con ejemplos de casi todo el mundo, la muestra señala también a Holanda y España como la vanguardia en cuanto a experimentación arquitectónica se refiere.
http://www.mot-art-museum.jp/eng/2011/archi/index.html
Estamos de acuerdo en que la arquitectura japonesa ha digerido como ninguna otra la herencia de la vanguardia arquitectónica europea y las enseñanzas de la construcción milenaria tradicional; y que las utopías high-tech, el metabolismo e incluso el minimalismo más manierista no han tenido apenas trabas para manifestarse en las achicadas parcelas que permite su particular ley urbanística. ¿Pero es tan revolucionaria y tan vanguardista como se vende o está llegando ya a su agotamiento formal?
La obra de Sou Fujimoto sería una de las primeras en salvarse de la quema por la cantidad de ideas, novedades y reflexiones aportadas, por lo impecable de su ejecución. Toda su obra resplandece sin mancha y cada nuevo proyecto expande los límites hasta donde puede llegar la arquitectura. En esto no tengo duda.
Quiero detenerme hoy en cuáles son los mecanismos a través de los que se publicita esta arquitectura. Las imágenes son fotogramas del video oficial que el estudio Sou Fujimoto ha distribuido de su último proyecto, la casa NA. Contrastan intencionadamente con la grabación que del proyecto puede hacer cualquier ciudadano anónimo y que puede encontrarse en la red.
Mientras gran parte de la arquitectura que se hace hoy se muestra con plásticas fotografías, límpidos renders o sinuosos travellings de cámara 3d sobre espacios fríos, vacíos y transparentes lo que Fujimoto muestra son imágenes donde la “vida” se esfuerza por aparecer en espacios que a priori tendrían esas mismas “condenadas” características.
Hay un intento de mostrar la arquitectura en toda su domesticidad: accesos y recorridos, espacios de almacenamiento y de trabajo, espacios para plantar algo verde, zonas para la suciedad y zonas para la limpieza, recovecos para la privacidad y plazas para la reunión familiar; y todo ello sin perder ápice de ensoñación, de magia y fantasía.
Posiblemente muchos de nosotros seríamos incapaces de habitar tales espacios, meramente por una cuestión cultural, pero su gran logro probablemente sea ejemplificar la victoria de la conjunción arte-vida sobre los intentos de impresionar, mostrándolos como alternativa segura y atractiva, que no renuncia a nada y lo consigue casi todo.
“The issue marks the resurgence of a critical architecture that engages in a far-reaching way with issues of taste, space, character and ornament. Bridging high and low cultures.”
Parque Humano - Pabellón en Valle de Bravo (México)
Paul Rivera (ArchPhoto) - créditos fotográficos
ARHIS architects - kindergarten in Riga (Latvia)
Bassicarella Architectes - pavilion d’été à sierre (switzerland)
Thomas Jantscher - créditos fotográficos
Estudio Huma - Colegio público de infantil y primaria en Roldán
studio BÄNG - Serlachius Museum Gösta extension
Centered around a garden, the design is intended to serve as a contemplative room. Acting as a stage-like container, the pavilion uses the elements of blackness and shadow to abstract the internal space from the noise and distraction of the city.
Zumthor comments that “the design aims to help its audience take the time to relax, to observe and then, perhaps, start to talk again, maybe not. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves- full of memory and time”
Created exclusively for the project, the garden will be designed by the influential dutch designer Piet Oudolf
Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen
September 15, 2010–May 2, 2011
Here’s the cover of our Counter Space book, which was beautifully designed by Triboro
Counter Space explores the twentieth-century transformation of the kitchen and highlights MoMA’s recent acquisition of an unusually complete example of the iconic “Frankfurt Kitchen,” designed in 1926–27 by the architect Grete Schütte-Lihotzky.
