Archinect - News

Art performance at Tadao Ando's concrete MPavilion features grayscale gelato

2024-01-26T17:26:00-05:00

An exciting and tasty art performance has taken shape at the Tadao Ando-designed MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

It comes in the form of grayscale gelato, created by Brazilian artist João Loureiro in collaboration with local creamery Piccolina Gelateria. The treat is available in six different flavors, each a different shade of gray ranging from light gray to nearly black. No flavors are labeled, stimulating a unique and surprising sensory experience with pavilion visitors during the Australian summer months.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Piccolina Gelateria (@piccolinagelateria)

The gelato colors mirror the pavilion’s aesthetic, which comprises enclosed concrete perimeter walls and an aluminum-clad, single-column main structure and roof.

Related: Tadao Ando's MPavilion opens in Melbourne. Image: Beatrice Eckermann

As stated by MPavilion, "...this work questions our sense of comfort and forces us to rethink associations that have been rooted in u...

Adjaye Associates selected to design Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in New York City

2022-03-08T13:22:00-05:00

For the first time, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s family has organized a show of rare and never-before-seen works since the artist’s untimely death in 1988. The family has partnered with internationally acclaimed architect David Adjaye to design the exhibition, which launches April 9 at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, at 601 West 26th Street in West Chelsea.

The exhibition titled “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” will feature over 200 paintings, drawings, ephemera, and artifacts from the family’s collection. It will be divided into seven categories that cover the artist’s upbringing, family heritage, personal life, and career. A recreation of Basquiat’s New York City art studio will be featured. Adjaye Associates will transform the ground floor of the Starrett-Lehigh Building through the lens of Basquiat’s family.

Additionally, Italian design brand Arper will outfit the exhibition space to recreate the style of the Michael Todd VIP Room at the Palladium, a historic nightclub that Basquiat created two paintings for. The exhibit will span 15,000 square feet.

Zaha Hadid Architects' NFTism exhibition at Art Basel Miami proposes a new standard in digital architecture and the metaverse

2021-12-03T19:36:00-05:00

As Art Basel Miami Beach draws to a close this weekend, the twin buzzwords of NFTs and the metaverse have been left ringing throughout the convention hall with the notion that the oft-dismissed digital art platform will invariably become an art fair mainstay as the critical acceptance of the works and their medium continues to grow.

Going into this year’s rendition, many attendees and other interested observers were eager to see how Big A architecture might respond to the new mandate for metaverse spaces with showcase designs that offer real-world locations to host and display the blockchain technology.

Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid Architects took up the mantle with a virtual gallery that houses a dynamic multi-artist exhibition its curator compared, favorably, to a Trojan Horse. The studio says its spatial design focuses on the user’s experience and interaction with one another along with the theatrical presentation of the virtual exhibition itself.

Image courtes...

Edoardo Tresoldi unveils wire mesh cathedral inspired by Dante’s Inferno

2021-09-03T13:02:00-04:00

Edoardo Tresoldi has unveiled the latest of his signature wire mesh cathedrals, with his installation titled “Sacral” currently on display in the Italian city of Ravenna. Designed for the Dante exhibition at the MAR, Ravenna’s art museum, Sacral is currently on display in the museum’s cloister until January 9th, 2022.

Photography: Roberto Conte

The installation forms part of “A POP Saga,” the third exhibition in the “Dante. The Eyes and the Mind” series at the MAR. In the design of Sacral, Tresoldi drew inspiration from the Noble Castle in Dante’s Inferno, a symbolic place inhabited by the souls of those who left honor and fame behind after death. “They are the great souls of antiquity,” says Tresoldi, “philosophers, poets, scientists and writers — with grave and slow-moving eyes. People who were great in their earthly lives because of their moral qualities but who are destined to eternal suffering because they lack the theological virtues.”

Photography: Roberto Conte

The installat...

New art exhibition explores prejudice in western society

2021-02-11T16:44:00-05:00

Hosted at HOFA Gallery in London and presented by PAVE Contemporary, CURE/RATED: Bigotry, A Societal Cancer, is a new group exhibition that "explores the tensions and emotions systematic prejudices engender in society." It will feature a group of multimedia and multidisciplinary contemporary artists who use their respective mediums to investigate discrimination and bias in western society.

Alannah Farrell. © Stella Rose St. Clair.

The exhibition will feature the work of painter and sculptor Amir Fallah, painter Alannah Farrell, poet and artist Christian Ruiz Berman, and select works by Katelyn Ledford, Lindsey Kircher, and Jacob Hicks, among others.

Double Xolotl by Christian Ruiz Berman, Acrylic on panel, 2020

The installment is jointly curated by Las Vegas-based oncologist Dr. Fadi Braiteh, and New York-based physician and entrepreneur Dr. Dan Hguyen.

Life Ain't a Picnic by Katelyn Ledford, Acrylic, oil, gouache, and molding paste on canvas over panel, 2021

Of the project, PAVe Cont...

Pavilion 3D printed from 30,000 up-cycled plastic bottles takes shape in Dubai

2019-12-30T14:22:00-05:00

Located at the Dubai International Financial Center stands an eye-catching pavilion designed by the Middle East Architecture Network (MEAN). Known for their evocative designs using computational design and digital fabrication techniques, their most recent project, Deciduous, highlights the studio's passion for experimentation with fabrication and materials.

Image © Naaro

According to a project statement by MEAN, "Deciduous is composed of a hybrid of 3 different sustainable materials: CNC-milled Birch plywood flooring, Robotically 3D-Printed Concrete Base, and a series of branching 3D-Printed PETG stems, a plastic polymer up-cycled from 30,000 discarded water bottles.” The goal of the pavilion and its unique material construction is to aid spectators by revisiting their "relationship with nature, through an experience reminiscent of walking through an abstracted botanical form," according to the designers.

Image © Naaro

Video Documenting 'Deciduous' Fabrication, Construc...

Interdisciplinary stage designer Es Devlin fills Pitzhanger with giant mirrored planes

2019-09-25T16:15:00-04:00

In this new large-scale work...visitors are immersed within a vast chronological landscape mapping pivotal shifts in human perspective over 75 millennia...the locations and moments represent a personal and subjective cartography and have been chosen by Devlin and her studio team to invoke our collective memories/history and to provoke dialogue and debate.

The Es Devlin: Memory Palace exhibition, designed by Es Devlin, the famous interdisciplinary stage designer who was featured in the first season of Abstract, is an 18-meter-wide sculpture that fills the entire Pitzhanger Gallery space and is accompanied by mirrored planes that exaggerate its presence, creating a heightened user experience.

The name of the exhibition builds off of the mnemonic technique that situates memories within spatial locations in one's mind. Devlin identified areas where she believed human thought took significant shifts and has situated those moments into distinguishable fragments of cities and buildings. The intent is to present a three-dimensional evolution of human thought.

Interested in designing public installations and art exhibitions? Here are 9 firms offering architectural job opportunities

2019-08-01T15:56:00-04:00

This week, Archinect has selected jobs with firms whose work focuses on creative and imaginative public installations and art exhibitions. Whether permanent or temporary, these spaces allow for experiences outside of people’s daily interactions through art and the built environment. Below are 9 firms located in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Manhattan looking to hire the right candidate to join their team.

Fluidity Designs Consultants seeks a Junior Designer
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Fluidity Design Consultants is a Los Angeles-based leader in water feature design and engineering. The firm collaborates with many of the world’s most respected architects, landscape architects, institutions and developers in the realization of creative and technically refined installations around the world, mostly in the public realm.Work will entail concept development, modeling, visualization, materials research, the exploration of architectural assemblies, and related efforts. Candidates must have profici...

Stanley Kubrick enters the spotlight at the Design Museum

2019-04-25T18:54:00-04:00

As any student of architecture or design will know, the attendance of a Stanley Kubrick exhibition is an experience not to miss. The recently opened exhibition at London's Design Museum, following those at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Barcelona's CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona), is the most in-depth yet, set in the country where the director lived and produced nearly all of his work. As Oliver Wainwright writes in his review of the exhibition, "[Kubrick] was scared of flying, so the vast majority of his films were shot in the UK. If he wouldn’t travel then the world would be brought to him, at astonishing lengths."

Production designer Ken Adam’s sketch for the war room in Dr Strangelove. Photograph: © Sir Kenneth Adam

According to its website, the exhibition "features about 700 objects, films, interviews, letters and photographs. Expect to see a detailed model of the Centrifuge-set that Kubrick had developed for 2001: A Space Odyssey; film props such a...

MAD Architects restore a historic lookout tunnel for Japan's 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Triennale

2018-08-07T18:21:00-04:00

MAD Architects have restored Japan's historic Kiyotsu Gorge Tunnel as a permanent art installation, “Tunnel of Light”, coinciding with the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Triennale. The art event hosts approximately 160 artworks across 200 villages, inhabiting abandoned spaces as sites for interaction. Located in the Niigata prefecture, the 2,500-foot long passageway cuts through rock formations to offer visitors panoramic views of Japan's mountainous snow country.

"Tunnel of Light" by MAD Architects, located in Echigo-Tsumari, Japan. Image: MAD Architects.

The firm's scheme for this historic lookout consists of transforming several points along the tunnel as spaces for interaction with art and nature.

"Tunnel of Light" by MAD Architects, located in Echigo-Tsumari, Japan. Image: MAD Architects.

Upon approaching the tunnel, a small wooden hut has been constructed to serve as the café and souvenir shop. Inside the pitched cedar roof on the upper level is a hot spring foot spa.

"Tunnel of Light" ...

The first digital art museum in Paris opens with a Klimt exhibition

2018-07-27T15:47:00-04:00

The museum is in a former foundry and is operated by Culturespaces, a French museum foundation that specialise in immersive art displays. This is the opening exhibition at what Culturespaces calls its “Workshop of Lights”, and its larger space, La Halle, is dedicated to Gustav Klimt and a century of Viennese painting. There are also works by Egon Schiele and Friedrich Stowasser, better-known as Hundertwasser.

The museum foundation Culturespaces recently opened Paris’s first digital museum of fine art, Atelier des Lumières, with an opening exhibition displaying works by Gustav Klimt. The former foundry has been transformed into an immersive, multi-sensory space expanding artworks across the entire architectural interior.

Atelier des Lumières, Paris. Image: E Spiller.

The museum utilizes 140 laser video projectors to display works across 32-foot-high walls and over 11,000 square feet of surface area within the renovated 19th-century building. With the growing digital engagement of culture, the museum aims to disseminate art through relevant methods for future generations.

Klimt display at Atelier des Lumières, Paris. Image: E Spiller.

Three famous modernist houses set the stage in this video art exhibition

2018-06-29T17:57:00-04:00

At Pioneer Works, in Brooklyn, the show “Gerard & Kelly: Clockwork” — photographs, text, installations, and live and filmed dance — references the three small structures and the intertwined careers of their architects: the Schindler House in West Hollywood, Calif., by R. M. Schindler; Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill.

Artists Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly's film Schindler/Glass uses three iconic modernist houses as the backdrop in which issues of gendered space and domestic intimacy are explored. The video piece is part of an ongoing series by the artists called “Modern Living". Shot on site at the Schindler House, the Glass House, and the Farnsworth House, performers interact with the complicated architectural histories in each structure.

Zaha Hadid's seminal artwork makes its Hong Kong debut

2017-03-17T19:17:00-04:00

Ceaseless experimentation was the root of Zaha Hadid's architectural practice, as depicted in her early drawings and paintings. The Serpentine Galleries and Zaha Hadid Design teamed up to showcase Hadid's artistic prowess in the exhibition, “Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End To Experimentation”, which opened today at the ArtisTree gallery in Hong Kong.

Presenting Zaha Hadid's artwork in Hong Kong for the first time, the exhibition shows her paintings, calligraphic drawings, and rarely seen private sketch notebooks, along with VR experiences and screenings of archival footage.

Hafenstrasse Development; Hafenstrasse Development, Hamburg, Germany, 1989; © Zaha Hadid Foundation.

Concept Painting, Cardiff Bay Opera House, Wales, UK, 1994-1996; © Zaha Hadid Foundation.

Head over to Bustler for more about the exhibition.

OMA's Dubai-based "Concrete" is pretty transparent

2017-03-16T12:40:00-04:00

By placing a semi-transparent facade onto a series of former industrial warehouses in Dubai, OMA has created an arts-oriented, multi-disclipinary space called "Concrete." The completed version doesn't quite match the firm's optimistic renderings (in part because the concrete ameliorating foliage isn't present in these photos) but one thing is certain: this is the first finished project of OMA's in Dubai, and Rem Koolhaas thinks that the design is very much of its place and time.

“Dubai is one of the cities that has had a deep impact on our work, and I am very happy that this particular building is our first effort here," Rem said. "In Concrete, we are not introducing a new shape but instead were able to infiltrate an existing building with an arts institution. This building is totally produced in Dubai; it is not a foreign ideal, and that I think is significant.”

The 600 square meter building's first art exhibition, "Syria: Into the Light," will be viewable until April 3rd.

...

Doug Aitken among artists in Palm Springs-adjacent art show, "Desert X"

2017-02-23T19:53:00-05:00

Amid the dust and clamor is the steel skeleton of Aitken’s “Mirage,” which takes the form of a 1960s-style suburban California ranch house. The seven-room structure, to be fully mirrored on the outside and inside, is perched on a hillside with city and desert views, which are key to the piece. The structure has gaping holes where doors and windows might be, and its interior walls are built on angles to reflect the sky and contrasting surrounding terrain...

What does the desert in Riverside County have to offer aside from a massive annual music festival, the sleek modernism of Palm Springs, and the ethereal vista of untrammeled nature? Well, starting on February 25th, it has the Desert Exhibition of Art, or Desert X for short.

Exhibitors in the self-guided, wide-ranging exhibit (you should plan on driving) include Doug Aitken, Sherin Guirguis, and Claudia Comte, who has created a 110-foot long stucco/wood sculpture that is part wall, part meditative exercise. Maps are available at the Ace Hotel; the exhibition will be up until April.

SHL's Shanghai Cloud Pavilion is a stunning glass and steel extrusion of a cartoon cloud

2016-08-18T12:44:00-04:00

Intended as both a counterpoint to the heavy industrial cranes that line Shanghai's West Bund as well as an art/exhibition space, SHL's new Cloud Pavilion is the permanent version of the wildly successful 2013 Shanghai biennial installation, which was intended only to last for two months.

While the first iteration's ephemeral 20,000 white ropes have been replaced by steel rods and a glassed-in viewing area, the hope is that the initial free-floating feeling remains.

As Schmidt Hammer Lassen design partner Chris Hardie explains, "The new pavilion creates a singular space in the form of an extruded glass cloud. The cloud shape in plan directly relates to the cartoon like form associated with how a child would draw a cloud, and how clouds are often seen depicted in traditional Chinese prints. The cloud is considered a symbol of luck in ancient Chinese painting."

Here's a video showing the Pavilion and the context of its site:

Is Le Corbusier the real grandfather of hip-hop?

2014-09-17T14:15:00-04:00

"In the late 1920s, Le Corbusier created a plan for Paris," Ford says. "Its most celebrated portion was called 'Towers in the Park.' [...] Think unremarkable, high-rise apartment buildings. Think low-income housing projects. [...] "Many of hip-hop's most prominent artists were born, raised, and perfected their crafts in those very same housing projects. Hip-hop was a result of the economical, political, and sociological deprivations instituted by the housing projects across America."

Frank Gehry designs new Alexander Calder show at LACMA

2013-12-16T13:55:00-05:00

“I always remember the Calder show at the Guggenheim in New York,” Gehry told LA Confidential, “and how the work responded to the curves of the museum. It was spectacular. LACMA didn’t have such a space for the show, so we designed one. I hope to at least give the art its individual space and let the architecture help reveal the dynamism of each piece.”

Artist Jay Senetchko builds full-scale farmhouse as an extension of his paintings; show opens tomorrow in Vancouver

2013-09-26T20:23:00-04:00

"Industry and the Sleepwatchers" by artist Jay Senetchko from Vancouver, BC is a three-part art installation based on a poignant narrative of paintings that re-imagines the everyday lives of the artist's paternal grandmother Ann Senetchko and her husband Pete Senetchko, who was involved in the Alberta oil patch as a tool-pusher. The opening reception will be this Friday, Sept. 27 from 7-10 pm at an open space at a local Sole Foods Street Farm, an organization that transforms vacant land into fruitful working farms in Vancouver.

Taking place in a life-size prairie farmhouse the artist constructed just two weeks earlier this month, the story behind this installation examines the positive and negative aspects of how the oil and gas industry affect domestic life--two elements the artist describes as "definitive of contemporary reality." Although Senetchko's grandfather was able to provide a comfortable life for his wife, he spent a great deal of time away from the house--and from he...

Unfolding southamerican utopias: the Clip/Stamp/Fold in Santiago.

2013-06-25T14:35:00-04:00

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X takes stock of seventy little magazines from this period, which were published in over a dozen cities. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term “little magazine” was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals.

This month the boundary has been finally crossed. It is because the exhibition and ongoing research project Clip/Stamp/Fold has landed in the south hemisphere by this month until July 2013. Santiago has had the chance for this first landing. The local version of the project became real due to the remarkable work of Fernando Portal, Pablo Brugnoli and Andrea Lathrop, whom gave shape to the Chilean participation on the architectural radical magazines of the 60’s and 70’s.

The selected local magazines were proposed according to the main outline: “radical architecture of little magazines”. In this regard, AUCA was immediately considered as one of the first ones due to its invaluable role as one of the bravest publication according to the social impact in the hard days Chile was facing. Architecture, Urbanism, Construction and Arts configure its name as well as the matching with the aboriginal (mapuche) word, which means Rebel. Also AUCA bore a respectable name because it born in t...

PLANT ARCHITECT’S EXHIBIT OPENS AT HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

2012-10-04T11:00:00-04:00

On 29 September 2012, the Architecture Exhibition Fall 2012 opened at Harboufront Centre in Toronto. Curated by Patrick Macaulay, BREATHTAKING: Constructed Landscapes features PLANT Architect Inc.’s installation Lenticular Curtain alongside the works of architects Baird Sampson Neuert, Idea Tank Design Collective, and visual artist Vid Ingelevics.

BREATHTAKING: Constructed Landscapes explores the use of architecture in defining and directing how people view and understand nature and landscape. In response to the curatorial question “How can architecture create an awe-inspiring experience through the placement of built form within the landscape?”, PLANT Architect Inc. designed an immersive architecture meant to overwhelm, infuse, inhabit, and amplify the landscape. Lenticular Curtain is a larger-than-life, interactive lantern—a sculptural intervention that, when entered, disturbs and distorts multiple landscapes in order to form new ones. The central role of the visitor, whether ...