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Iconic Parisian cathedral transformed into ‘sensory nighttime exploration’ by multimedia company Moment Factory

2023-10-26T12:53:00-04:00

Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to celebrate the building’s architectural and historical heritage.

Image credit: Moment Factory

Conceived in 2019 by cultural operator Cultival in collaboration with Musée de l’Armée, the project seeks to create a “sensory nighttime exploration” in which visitors wander through the Dôme des Invalides and its six chapels guided by light. The experience is divided into three acts, each portraying a distinct facet of the site: “its construction, the memories it harbors, and its power to inspire one and all.”

Image credit: Moment Factory

To project an experience onto the main dome, which measures 295 feet high and 98 feet at its smallest diameter, the t...

Refik Anadol repurposes his AI data sculpture 'Machine Hallucinations' for 2023 Grammy Awards stage

2023-02-07T18:54:00-05:00

Istanbul-born media artist and design innovator Refik Anadol has quickly become a household name with his mind-bending, data-driven art. This year, Anadol continues to push what's possible during his visual backdrop debut at the 65th annual Grammy Awards.

"The collaboration with the Recording Academy started almost six months ago with an exciting call from the designers who are in charge of the stage design and the whole flow of the ceremony," Anadol shared with Archinect.

Anadol's work can be seen in the background illuminating the space during the award's premier ceremony speech by the Recording Academy's CEO Harvey Mason Jr. Video courtesy of Recording Academy/Grammys.

Along with the event's lead production designer Julio Himede, the art direction team, and electronic graphics expert Hugh Grew, Anadol's distinct data-generated paintings from his AI artwork and NFT collections, Machine Hallucinations — Nature Dreams and Machine Hallucinations: Space Metaverse, could be spotted ...

Is Tim Burton's Beetlejuice the best Halloween movie for design students to watch?

2022-10-29T09:00:00-04:00

Every season has its own set of iconic movies, and within that set, there are those that stick out for their portrayal and elevation of architectural issues. Tim Burton’s 1988 classic, Beetlejuice, is perhaps the fall’s best example — an ever-trendy classic Halloween tale that showcases and offers some critique of the period’s salient design trends. Even the scale model of the town has some architectural qualities, and its central star — a shopworn Victorian-style home — has become an inspiration to aspiring designers around the world.

The conceit of Beetlejuice has essential elements that design students would be well-served to evaluate. Two families fighting for the creative control of a structure with radically different agendas. Its conflict is based on a disagreement about preferences in residential architecture: The “good, sturdy country craftsmanship” of a rural Victorian run up against a vacuous amalgam of 80s high design.

Opening title sequence from the film. Image courtes...

Beyoncé filmed her NOLA-themed "Formation" video at this historic Pasadena mansion

2016-02-10T20:16:00-05:00

Despite the themes of the video, nothing was shot in New Orleans...The concept and quick turnaround required Tobman and the rest of the crew to convert [the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena into a] fitting Southern Gothic set...A Beaux Arts mansion commissioned by and built for Dr. Adalbert Fenyes and his wife Eva Scott Muse Fenyes in 1905, there was nothing really Southern about architect Robert D. Farquhar's design

If you're still bumpin' the Queen Bey's latest hard-hitting single, get a glimpse of the history behind the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena, where parts of the song's impressive music video were filmed.

More music-related goodness on Archinect:

The Architecture of the Hunger Games' Horns of Plenty

2014-11-26T19:44:00-05:00

“We looked at Frank Gehry designs and a lot of modern architecture with folded planes and fractalized surfaces and kind of riffed on all of that. It looks like it fell from the sky onto this field.” Looking at Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao the influence is clear. Two other architects immediately come to mind as possible influences. Daniel Libeskind and Greg Lynn are leaders in the field of “folded planes and fractalized surfaces.”