(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Danish Architecture - and Design for that matter - is not exactly known for its strange and crazy concepts but rather for its cool style and quality.
As an attempt to reinvent this slightly boring identity that hasn't been cultivated much since the 40's, The Danish Architecture Centre asked Canadian Designer Bruce Mau for some help. Connected by the idea that Denmark was a corporation, Mau came up with a list of challenges that seven Danish agencies were asked to conceptualize.
The motto was: 'Too Perfect – 7 New Denmarks and the result was exhibited at the 9th international Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Illustration: Do five million people need more than one port? Superharbour by studio PLOT integrates all Danish harbours in one, thereby creating city and housing areas worh a total of 20 billion euros.
Posted by Sebastian on Dec 22, 2004
Nanoscape by artists and researchers Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau is an invisible sculpture that can be sensed via touch.
Users wear magnetic ring-interfaces and when moving the hand over the table of the installation, strong magnetic forces, repulsion, attraction and even slight shock can be felt.
Wireless magnetic force-feedback interface allows users to touch invisible nano particles, thus creating an changing invisible sculpture which modifies its shape and properties as users interact with it and with each other.
City of Tomorrow is a site with a collection of imagery and links of how the City of Tomorrow has been perceived since 1939.
As the site illustrates, it is not always that difficult to foresee new technologies and shapes but to foresee and illustrate social change is a different matter. E.g. imaginative illustrators and trend forecasters of the 30/40's could easliy envision new high-tech appliances and wireless technologies - but failed to envision the women as an individual - outside the kitchen and with a life of her own.
D-tower is an art piece, commissioned by the city of Doetinchem in the Netherlands, that tries to map the emotions of the inhabitants of Doetinchem.
The project consists of the tower, a questionnaire and a web site that are interactively related. The questionair deals with everyday emotions like hate, love, happiness and fear. These four emotions are represented by four colors, green, red, blue and yellow, and determine the colors of the lamps illuminating the building.
At night time, one can supposedly see which emotion is most deeply felt on that day. Unless, of course, someone has been lying.
The D-tower is conceived by artist Q.S. Serafijn and architect Lars Spuybroek / NOX-Architekten in collaboration with the Rotterdam based v2-lab.
• D-Tower
Inspired and provoked by the conditions of homeless man close to his studio, American artist Michael Rakowitz decided to do something.
He designed a mobile inflatable shelter that can be attached to a ventilation system on existing architecture as a means for providing temporary and warm shelter for homeless people, thereby using otherwise wasted resources.
Over a period of time Rakowitz designed and costumized Parasite-shelters for homeless people but after 9-11 the growing suspiciousness in the U.S towards 'unusual elements' made it difficult for the project to continue.
In any case, Rakowitz stresses that the project does not present itself as a solution: "It is not a proposal for affordable housing. Its point of departure is to present a symbolic strategy of survival for homeless existence within the city, amplifying the problematic relationship between those who have homes and those who do not have homes."
• Parasite
Commissioned by The European Union, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas/OMA has designed a new European flag.
The barcode-like logo places all the colours of the national flags of EU nations in strips alongside each other, thereby adressing the nations' individuality and collectiveness in one image.
The flag is a part of an exhibition and symposium held in Brussel under the title 'Image of Europe', The exhibition is about the representation and perception of Europe and was organized by Koolhaas and developed under the joint sponsorship of the Dutch Presidency and the European Commission
Despite being more beautiful, meaningfull and dynamic than the current blue flag with yellow 12 stars (that remain unchanged regardless of EU enlargements because it's a symbol of 'perfection', no less), Koolhaas' conceptual flag has provoked an outcry of critisism.
Instant city is an interactive music-building game by Swiss artists Sibylle Hauert and Daniel Reichmuth.
Participants - or players - are invited to create architectural compositions using semi-transparent building blocks and in the process make different modular compositions audible. What can be heard thus depends directly on how high the structures is and, many blocks are used and in which order.
Instant City neither has a winner or loser nor an ending - instead it is shaped as an endless collaborate social space.
Posted by Sebastian on Oct 15, 2004
The Blur Building by architects Diller + Scofidio was a pavilion created for the Swiss national expo in 2002.
The pavillion looked like a cloud and was made of a construction that sprayed innumerable tiny drops of lake water from 31400 jets. The high-pressure spraying technology atomized the water into microscopic droplets so small that most of them remained suspended in the air.
Saturated with moisture, the air created the effect of mist or, in this case, blur.
Contact: Sebastian Campion