Its always nice to see campaigns that are fun and get people involved. Dulux Walls is a film for the Let’s Colour Campaign by Euro RSCG London for Dulux. The exciting initiative set out to transform dull grey areas into vibrant spaces with 120 different bright coloured paints and the help of members of the community. Everything was beautifully documented by award winning director Adam Berg who captured the colour in Brazil, France, London and India over a four week period.
Archive for the ‘Public Spaces’ Category
26/08
Bus-Tops by Alfie Dennen and Paula Ledieu
Bus-Tops will be a public art installation on the roofs of bus shelters across London, inspiring wonder and creativity in unexpected places. LED panels will become canvases showcasing digital commissions by a range of established artists, as well as allowing Londoners to display their creativity, play games and express what is special about their London.
People will be able to submit and view artwork through a number of mediums including website and mobile applications. Using drawing toolkits, people can create images, text or animations for display on the panels. For those unable to view the roofs of bus shelters, the website will provide live updates of the artwork and the opportunity to construct personal ‘routes’ through the works.
Cutting edge technology will also allow the bus shelters to develop individual personalities, becoming ‘Viziters’ to the city in their own right in the run up to the Games. Over their period of stay, each Bus-Top shelter will develop a unique character through their relationships with each other, members of the public and participating artists.
The canvases will appear on the roofs of bus shelters across London from July 2011.
London from Artists Taking the Lead on Vimeo.
12/08
Indoor Forest at The Architecture Foundation
Norwegian architects PUSHAK have made a striking installation of moss-covered arches in the entrance and gallery space of the Architecture Foundation, London. The project, named Moss Your City, is the outcome of the Foundation’s international exchange scheme which is aimed at promoting the work of emerging architects in Norway and the UK.
PUSHAK intended the installation to be a representation of Norwegian landscape but its haphazard and angular openings read more like an eccentric English maze that’s been allowed to overgrow in strange geometries. It’s fairy-tale like quality has been taking urban dwellers by surprise since the exhibition was set up in June for the London Festival of Architecture.
The work, designed by Sissil Morseth Gromholt, Camilla Langeland, Marthe Melbye and Gyda Drage Kleiva, has emerged from the Oslo-based practice’s research into the relationship between contemporary architecture, landscape and natural resources. It was inspired by the Bankside Urban Forest (a focus area of the London Festival of Architecture 2010) and by the work of green activists across South London. The aim of the project was to show that moss to be a ‘beautiful and versatile material that can work in harmony with contemporary design’.
The exhibition has been extended until the end of this week.
Images via Dezeen
05/08
Insect Hotel by Arup Associates
The London based firm Arup Associates have won the top Golden Beetle Prize for their ‘insect hotel’. The ‘Beyond the Hive’ competition, hosted by British Land and The City of London, created a brief that called for a sustainable and creative insect habitat for the City of London parks.
The bio-mimetic design is constructed out of 25 layers of 20 mm-thick birch plywood. The irregular voids are cut out using a CNC machine and loosely bonded together on site with mechanical fixings. the 1500 mm x 1500 mm hotel’s facade is influenced from the voronoi pattern, an organic system of irregular shapes often found in nature, such as the wings of a dragonfly. the 500 mm-deep compartments provide an armature for the recycled waste materials, each compacted with different types of deadfall to cater to different types of insects: Stag beetles require rotting logs for their larvae to eat and grow in, while butterflies and moths prefer a series of vertical slots using dry wooden pieces and tree barks.
Via Designboom
13/07
Serpentine Pavilion 2010
For the Serpentine’s 40th Anniversary the gallery commissioned renowned French architect Jean Nouvel to design its 10th annual pavilion. Following the tradition of experimentation associated with the Serpentine Pavilions, Nouvel designed a dramatic and daring red structure that contrasts lightweight materials with metal cantilevers. Large awnings and sloped walls in geometric forms provide the framework for glass, polycarbonate and fabric infills that create an interesting play between interior and exterior spaces. The structure is multifunctional, operating as a public space, cafe and an auditorium that will accommodate the Serpentine Gallery Park Nights. The design playfully incorporates traditional French outdoor tennis-tables.
The program has a unique model, giving the designer a maximum of six months for the entire process – from commission to completion, but with no budget restriction. Nouvel approached this project with the same conceptual rigour associated with his work so far and designed a dynamic pavilion for Londoners to enjoy for the summer.
(Images are by Philippe Ruault)
06/07
LFA Urban Gardens
In keeping with the theme of ‘the welcoming city’ the area between the South Bank and Elephant and Castle saw urban gardens in various shapes and sizes erected for the London Festival of Architecture.
Reduce, reuse, recycle was part of the brief and the environmentally minded projects were constructed using mainly recycled materials, palettes being particularly popular. The guerrilla gardening projects included a pop-up cookery school at much loved Borough Market where the students from the Cardiff University’s Welsh School of Architecture built nomadic allotments that provide people in tight spaces with the opportunity to grow their own food in dense urban environments.
02/07
BIJOU coffee shop by im.architektur
Milos Mirosavic and Ivana Popovic (otherwise known as im.architecktur) are a pair of Serbian architects that take their coffee seriously. These images are of their BIJOU coffee shop concept, ‘a small and elegant spot for a daily dose of pleasure.’ Designed around notions of jewels and luxury, the bar space is wrapped with metal rods that are covered with tiles intended to ‘flicker like diamonds’ and reflect light over the floor, ceiling and walls.
The concept has won them much accolade and a prize in the ‘Business Premises’ category of the Tile Awards – a Europe-wide design competition aimed at illustrating new, creative and unusual uses of tiles to create ‘unconventional and sensational’ interiors. The competition, addressed to architects and interior designers under the age of 35, was initiated by German architecture magazine AIT to celebrate newcomers in the industry.
Concept image.
The tiles will reflect light on the shop surfaces.
25/06
Extension to the High Line
Fans of New York’s ‘High Line’ park have some good news to celebrate. The hugely popular urban landscape, designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 2009, is due to be extended to twice the length of redundant railway line it currently occupies.
Through a masterful use of detail and materiality, the design pays homage to the signs of decaying industry that surround it. Concrete planks that allow grass to grow in between them are a poignant reminder of nature’s ability to reclaim the man-made and artificial. The new section, designed in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations, will interpret these ideas further and include a dense area of trees and shrubs chosen for their ability to grow in the shade of skyscrapers. A lounging lawn and a sitting area bordered by an empty billboard frame will also enhance the existing design, which elevates visitors above the bustling city below.
The park’s much-anticipated extension is due for completion in Spring 2011.
(images from Inhabitat)
18/06
1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces at the V&A
From this week, a brand new curiosity is on display at the V&A. Architect Terunobu Fujimori’s ‘Beetle’s House’ cuts a dark and crooked figure in the relative light and airiness of the Museum’s Cast Courts. The structure is part of the 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition, aimed at promoting our engagement with real architecture, offering an antidote to the standard methods of building exhibition: drawing, model or photograph.
Fujimori’s elevated tea-house, along with six other designs constructed for the Museum at full-scale, was designed to ‘examine notions of refuge and retreat’. The tough charred wood exterior (resembling a beetle’s shell) protects the visitor and the sense of intimacy, offering only two small windows to remind us that an outside world still exists.
The Japanese sense of ceremony is intrinsic in the structure’s design and materiality. Our shoes must be removed before climbing a small ladder to the compact interior, which can accommodate only four people at a time. Our heads are dipped on entry (in imitation of a bow) in order to avoid clashing with the steep pitch of the roof. Inside, yet more curiosities are to be found: a model bike, a signed picture, a set of cups and a teapot in the hearth. Perhaps testament to its importance in everyday life, the hearth is the only part of the earthy, white interior that is allowed to bulge through to the outside, penetrating the beetle’s dark, grainy shell.
Despite being crammed in amongst the Museum’s native relics and artefacts, ‘Beetle’s House’ remains a stark and solitary edifice. As if plucked from a remote Japanese mountain-top, it seems uncomfortable with the strange and busy world it has entered, harking back to a simpler time and place. With the ability to transport its visitors there too, ‘Beetle’s House’ makes a strong case for the use of 1:1 scale to create delight and intrigue.
The exhibition runs until 30 August and admission is free.
15/06
Container Cafe
For a brunch with a view I recommend Container Cafe, the latest offering from the people behind Fish Island’s Counter Cafe. The interior is as chilled out as the friendly staff and features a playful mix of unusual art, vintage pieces that have lived a little and contemporary geometric furniture made from plywood.
The food on offer is equally fresh. Everything is made from scratch using locally sourced ingredients. From the menu written up on a blackboard you can choose between a selection of baguettes, bagels and soup or from some very tempting treats on the counter.
The cafe is located along the green way built for the 2012 Olympics, on the ground floor of the View Tube (a structure made from bright yellow reclaimed shipping containers) and you’d be hard pressed to find a better view of the Olympic developments. So if you want to see how Sir Peter Cook’s Stadium is coming along or get a glimpse of Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre, you might as well do it with some East London style enjoying a cup of Square Mile coffee.
