Ando

Charlotte sent me details of Ando's installation in London, Silence. It is beautifully detailed and after a maximum of 15 minutes should reward you with a rising mist transforming the environment. It is well worth a visit. more details here and here

Ryuji Nakamura

Fed sent me details of this beautiful project by Ryuji Nakamura: 'Porous wall of hung ribbons that create a synthetic fog between the viewer and the mannequins....Measuring 18mm wide, the thin strips of polyester ribbons create a dynamic curtain that seemingly changes its opacity depending on how far one is away from it. The resulting effect is a fuzzy aperture that focuses on one mannequin at a time, despite the fact that the clothes are lined up side to side. at once simple and airy, the design allows for an interactive space that 'breathes' in and out of transparency according to each point in the room.' Design Boom Ryuji Nakamura's web site for more details here design boom article here

Cornfield is another project by Ryuji Nakamura. 'He wanted to make it large enough so that one could not view 'cornfield' in its entirety all at once. The installation is made up of lines upon lines of paper that are drawn upon one another, retaining a subtlety, blending into its surroundings.'design boom more details of Cornfield here on Ryuji Nakamura's web site design boom article and video here

Tacita Dean Interview

Tacita Dean was interviewed on Front Row, listen here, but forward on to approx 7mins in to find it.

Interactive architecture

Ruairi Glynn's site Interactive Architecture.org is a good resource - it's not updated that frequently at present, but there are archives and resources there which are worth looking through. go to the site here

Theo Jansen Strandbeest

There are previous posts on Theo Jansen's work, but if you haven't seen it it is worth looking through the site he now has here where there are details of how these work and further information.

The Point of Perception

Madi Boyd in collaboration with neuroscientists at UCL, Drs Beau Lotto and Mark Lythgoe, produced the Point of Perception. Madi describes it as 'an immersive environment consisting of a ‘screen’ which is a giant gridded space of uncertainty and projected film. Our interest is in ambiguity in perception and the ‘tipping point’ where there is enough information for the brain to understand what the eye is seeing, the line between form and formlessness.' 'The sculpture has been designed in such a way that the resulting geometry could have many different possible realities, none of which are immediately obvious. By placing people in a position of uncertainty, between the known and the unknown, we aim to investigate the exact point at which there is sufficient visual information for the brain to comprehend what it is looking at. But in addition, the structure – as with all of Lottolab’s public projects – places people in the unique context of ‘seeing themselves see’, of being observers of the process by which they literally make sense of themselves and the world.' lottolab more on the project here on lottolab's web site, & more on lottolab here.

James Turrell Interview

Tacita Dean - Tate Modern

Tacita Dean's 'FIlm' is now in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern (11th October- 11th March 2011). In the above video she talks about her work and one piece in particular, the search for the green ray. Its very well worth watching to hear her thoughts about ways of seeing, and the analog versus digital portrayal of the world and the things that fall between. 'Dean’s films act as portraits or depictions rather than conventional cinematic storytelling, capturing fleeting natural light or subtle shifts in movement. Her static camera positions and long takes allow events to unfold unhurriedly. Other works have attempted to reconstruct events from memory, such as an infamous thwarted attempt to circumnavigate the world.' Tate

Charles and Ray Eames Powers of Ten

'Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker - with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell. Powers of Ten is a 1968 American documentary short film written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames, rereleased in 1977. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). The film is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke, and more recently is the basis of a new book version. Both adaptations, film and book, follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work.' Powers of Ten web site

Nicky Hamlyn

A contemporary film maker working with structural film. He explores light, time, and filmic substance. “I try to make work that responds uniquely to the unique situation in which it is made. For situation, one can usually read "location". This approach stems from years of early training in observational drawing, but I am also influenced by the idea of films as the outcome of a set of interacting factors: light, objects, camera, lenses, film stock etc.” Nicky Hamlyn. An example of his work.

Tacita Dean

'Dean's work seeks connections between past and present, fact and fiction. She maps not just the objective world but also our private worlds and traces the complex interaction between the two. The depiction of different locations is matched by dislocations in space and time: real landscapes are layered with inner, psychic landscapes defined by our own desires and obsessions. Tate Britain Tacita Dean Recent films and other works The above image is from Fernsehturm 2001
16mm colour anamorphic film with optical sound. ‘This film is shot using an anamorphic lens, which like the old Cinema-scope format, extends the frame to over double its normal size. Filmed in the revolving restaurant of the television tower in Alexanderplatz in the former eastern part of Berlin, this film documents the metamorphosis that the restaurant undergoes with the setting of the sun and the coming of night. The nature of the space shifts from being about the exterior and the view, to becoming an interior social place with the windows in the end effective mirrors. The Fernsehturm has retained its political edge despite its consumption by tourism: with the advent of reunification, the speed of the rotation was doubled so one complete turn now takes half an hour whereas before it took an hour.’ Tacita Dean's work for The Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern will be open on 11 October 2011. more here

Malcolm Le Grice

An experimental film maker. Berlin Horse is an example of his work.

Binh Danh

Binh Danh has developed a method of printing negatives using the chlorophyll in plants. The negative is placed over a leaf in the sun for a period of time fading the areas placed in the dark. web site.

Eleanor Suess

Eleanor Seuss is an architect and experimental film maker who also teaches. One minute structural films include acer

Acer from Eleanor Suess on Vimeo.

The following is a show reel of student films.

Studio 2.2 Lumiere Film Showreel from Eleanor Suess on Vimeo.

For more examples of her work use this linkhere.

Michael Snow

Michael Snow’s Wavelength is a classic structural film.

Erin Shirreff

'"Working online I oftentimes feel disconnected from my body," says Erin Shirreff, recounting the familiar experience of restlessly navigating virtual space. Half-engaged in a stream of weightless graphics and information, it’s easy to lose track of the screen’s physical parameters—and your own. Shirreff’s motivation for developing Shadow, Glare, however, stems from those moments when the screen’s material presence becomes impossible to ignore, when dust accumulations, errant smudges, and the movement of shadows and glares disturb the illusion of transparency. "In my living room the light will shift," Shirreff explains, "and suddenly I’ll be looking at all the dust on my computer screen, or the splotches of light. That will really jar me back into my chair." ' Shadow Glare site.

Unit B In Building Design Magazine

Unit B work has been selected by Building Design Magazine for an article on the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture summer show. The following link sends you to the relevant page. All work initially selected is by third year unit B students, Jon, Richard, Joe, Fed, Ned, Josh, Al and Jack, plus one second year unit B student Wai Sie Ng. Work from the other units has also now been added and attributed to those units, but B's (which is all at the start) is not as yet noted as B. See article here.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Richard, Ned, Al, Josh, Fed, Jack, Jon and Joe on their First Class Degrees. The images above are from their year 3 portfolios in name order from left to right.

Unit B Summer Exhibition 2011

The Unit B Summer Exhibition is presently open in London, at Chetwoods Architects, 12 - 13 Clerkenwell Green, London, EC1R 0QJ until the 19th July 2011, from 10am - 4pm (mon - fri).

Interview with Peter Zumthor

Interview: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 by Peter Zumthor from Dezeen on Vimeo.

Summer Shows and exhibitions

This is the time to visit the summer shows. In London the RCA, AA and Westminster shows are now on and the Bartlett show starts on the 1st July.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is also still open until 15th August, and also at the Royal Academy is an exhibition of recent work by Morphosis until 18th September (see image above). All well worth a visit for inspiration.

Peter Zumthor's Serpentine Pavilion

Peter Zumthor's first building in the UK, the 2011 Serpentine Pavilion, is now complete and has been open to the press. It opens to the public on the 1st July. The Guardian report that Peter Zumthor said at the opening: "This should be an escape, a place where nature is framed and compressed....Make of it what you like. There is no hidden, or even obvious, meaning here. This is a place for you to be. To be. Nothing else." Zumthor's written statement also said: "Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting, it turns into a magical place. I think of gardens I have seen, that I believe I have seen, that I long to see, surrounded by simple walls, columns, arcades or the facades of buildings – sheltered places of great intimacy where I want to stay for a long time." Read the full article here.

Longplayer - Jem Finer

Longplayer is a thousand year long piece composed by Jem Finer which began playing on the first January 2000 and will run on until 31st December 2999. This will be the first full cycle of the competition will then will restart. It can be heard at Trinity Buoy Wharf and also at the Science Museum in London along with a number of other locations around the world and it is also streamed live on the internet.

On Monday 18th April 2011 James Lovelock and John Gray will be discussing long time at the RIBA as part of the Longplayer project.
More information and live audio feed here.
Longplayer site here.

Peter Zumthor Serpentine Pavilion

Speaking about the design for this years Serpentine Pavilion Peter Zumthor said ‘the concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. The building acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves – full of memory and time.’ The pavilion ‘aims to help its audience take the time to relax, to observe and then, perhaps, start to talk again - maybe not.’
More images and information here.
Good article from Independent summing up Zumthor's approach here. 'Zumthor is Mr Atmosphere, the unchallenged master in creating spaces of sensual, pregnant stillness: the vibe is utterly anti-free market, anti-bling. He is a modernist, but his obsessions with memory, shifts of ambience, and meticulously crafted surfaces and details are timeless. Zumthor's Kolumba Museum in Cologne, for example, lacks only the overlapping chants of plainsong to make it a monastery of art.' Jay Merrick, Independent.

Man Made

Fed found information on Stephen Burks’ exhibition Man Made at The Studio Museum in New York... 'makes us reconsider both the conceptual and the aesthetical value of a handmade object, or design product.'
Article here.

TIme

I suggest watching this Horizon episode concerning time - Charlotte Knight recommended it. It has some wonderful thoughts on change, time and aging.
Watch on BBC iPlayer here.

Rogier van der Heide: Why light needs darkness

Fed recommended this video on the importance of darkness to light - well worth a watch.

The Art of Changing One's Mind(set)

Ecological Citizenship and The Art of Changing One's Mind(set)
Friday 18 March 11 - 5 pm, Buckley Building, Oxford Brookes University. Room BG01

This one-day symposium organised by the Social Sculpture Research Unit deals with the issues we are looking at this year. As part of this Dr. Arran Stibbe is going to 'explore the role of the Arts in helping to break out of a set of social and cultural constructions that have placed humanity on a path to self-destruction and in helping to open up new, previously unimagined paths. He will raise questions of whether it is too late, or impossible, for the trajectory of society to change fast enough to avert ecological collapse of some kind, and the consequences for how we see our work.'
More details here.

evolo 2011 Skyscraper competition

Some very interesting ideas were explored in the 2011 evolo skyscraper competition - worth taking a look (recycling plants, air cleaning etc). Also some very useful example of presentation methods and how to communicate detailed ideas.
evolo competition web site here - continue scrolling down the page to see all the entries.

Ken Yeang

Ken Yeang has developed his ideas for bioclimatic design through a sequence of projects with his practice TR Hamzah & Yeang and as a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang.

Two examples of projects are shown below.
Editt Tower
The images above are of the Editt Tower project, Singapore.
'Ecological design starts with looking at the site’s ecosystem and its properties. Any design that do not take these aspects of the site into consideration is essentially not an ecological approach. '
TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Further info here.

Elephant and Castle Eco Towers


Details on TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Full details, including plans etc are in Tall buildings By Guy Nordenson, Terence Riley which you can look at on google books here.

Barragan

Recommend spending a bit of time immersing yourself in Barragan's plans, walking through the designs in your mind aided by the photographs tagged on the plans on the Barragan Foundattions web site. Look at the way he allows freedom of movement, the interplay of internal and external architectural space, and how the simplicity of spaces can reveal the complexity of the movement of time. Barragan Foundation web site here.

Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch

Fed recommended this talk by an RCA student who set about making his own a toaster from scratch....
'It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.' TED site
TED web site.

Living Systems

Liat Margolis and Alexander Robinson's Living Systems blog named after their book has a few intersting projects on it, including that shown above - : 'The concept of Launch is a combination of living and nonliving systems: a progression of vegetal growth and its correspondent structural scaffolding that is required to guide the plant’s form and trajectory until it reaches stability. The scaffold may be a transitional structure, i.e. biodegradable; permanent; or designed to evolve symbiotically. The material systems include aboveground structures, such as a tensile cable, a mesh, and beam frameworks that allow for plant attachment, as well as subsoil materials, such as geotextiles.'
Living Systems
Launch.

Inspiration?

The AA have a few years worth of videos of lectures available to view on-line. Lecturers include a whole array of influencial and interesting architects and theorists.
AA Lecture Videos

Biomimicry Institute

This site has a wealth of information and is well worth a look. 'Biomimicry is the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems. Carbon-sequestering cement inspired by corals and energy efficient wind turbines inspired by schooling fish are examples of biomimicry happening today.' Janine Benyus (http://www.biomimicry.net/) has probably done more than anyone to reveal the way that natural organisms have adapted to resource-constrained environments. Amongst the most inspiring of these are the Namibian fog-basking beetle that creates its own distilled water in a desert; the bark beetle that can detect a forest fire at a distance of 80km; the abalone whose shell is a masterpiece of design and is twice as strong as the toughest man-made ceramic; and coccolithophores that build exquisite structures from calcium carbonate.' Michael Pawlyn Biomimicry Institute and also see Ask Nature.

Michael Pawlyn

Michael Pawlyn previously worked with Grimshaw's and set up Exploration architects in 2007. The practice focuses learning from nature, as he says nature has had a few million years of Research and Development. There are some very interesting projects dealing with water, energy and biodiversity on the site. Also see his talk on TED.

Two examples:



'The Las Palmas Water Theatre by Grimshaw ... the Namibian fog-basking beetle has evolved a way to create its own fresh water in a desert. This scheme employed similar ingenuity to take advantage of the sunny conditions, steady wind direction and cold seawater to create large amounts of desalinated water...'


'The World Water Headquarters project proposal ... a completely self-contained building that generates its own energy, is self-cooling and is a nett producer of distilled water in a desert location.'

Exploration Architecture

Morphosis Phare Tower

'The complex structure and skin adapt to the tower’s nonstandard form while simultaneously responding to a range of complex, and often competing, physical and environmental considerations. Technologies integrated into the Phare Tower capture the wind for the production of energy and selectively minimize solar gain while maximizing glare-free daylight. Its high-performance skin transforms with changes in light, becoming opaque, translucent, or transparent from different angles and vantage points....Both the form and the orientation of the building respond to the path of the sun; the south façade’s curvilinear double skin minimizes heat gain and glare, while the flat, clear-glazed north façade maximizes interior exposures to year-round natural daylight. A brise soleil wraps the tower’s continuous South, East, and West glazed façades. This double-membrane façade system improves both energy efficiency and worker comfort, by reducing the solar heat gain and minimizing glare, while maintaining panoramic views and affording natural light to the office spaces. ' Morphosis
Morphosis site for more information, plans and images. also an article here.

Living Form Exhibition: the Transformable World of Chuck Hoberman

An exhibition of Chuck Hoberman's work is on at the Building Centre in London from 4 March - 30 April 2011. Well worth a visit.
'We believe that a world undergoing accelerating change needs an adaptive, interactive approach to design. Whether that means inventing a rapidly deployable shelter, re-defining portability for children's products, or collaborating with architects to develop next-generation adaptive buildings via our Adaptive Building Initiative, our clients seek us out to shape change — and inspire it.' Hoberman Associates.
Exhibition web site and Hoberman Associates web site.

Adaptive Building Intiative

The Adaptive Building Initiative is a collaboration between Chuck Hoberman and Buro Happold specialising in the development of adaptive elements. Worth a look:
Adaptive Building Initiative web site and Projects.

Adaptive Architecture Conference, 3-5th March 2011

Unfortunately I only just found out about this conference, it is highly relevant to the unit's work. It is not on until March however and the site says there are a apparently student tickets available, but these come at a cost. It is to be held at the Building Centre, London from 3-5 March 2011.

'Architecture has always been inventive and adaptable. However, our current era is unique in its technological potential combined with societal and environmental challenges. The need to generate sustainability, developments in design techniques and technology advances are leading to the emergence of a new Adaptive Architecture. The built environment is becoming truly responsive in terms of physical, real-time changes acting under intelligent control. Adaptive Architecture can be characterized by four key attributes; it is Dynamic, Transformable, Bio-inspired and Intelligence. Drawing on these themes, the Adaptive Architecture Conference will bring together leading practitioners, researchers and industry experts who will present built work and practical research. Presenters will demonstrate new types of reconfigurable architecture, and will show how adaptive strategies can extend a building’s life cycle, enhance energy efficiency and optimise resource utilisation. The conference will be organised into four modules:
Dynamic Facades
Next-generation, responsive facades will be examined, including the creation of a building fabric that is both intelligent and communicative. Presenters will demonstrate systems that are capable of reducing energy demands, enhancing occupant comfort and integrating energy generation into contemporary architecture.
Transformable Structures
Methods to create building-scale structures that change their size and shape will be demonstrated. Speakers will discuss architecture that adapts over different time-scales, whether daily cycles or long term response to changing economic demands, climate adaptation, weather patterns, emergencies and other external factors.
Bio-inspired materials
Nature creates responsive organisms and materials that transform, heal, and change colour. These functions originate at the molecular level and scale up to create adaptive systems that actuate by chemical and physical cues. Utilizing insights from the natural world, researchers are now creating a new generation of adaptive materials and devices. Speakers will present state of the art research, and discuss how nature’s strategies can provide inspiration for design.
Intelligence
As buildings develop the capacity to adapt, the challenge is to implement effective control where building automation systems, user interfaces and services can interact seamlessly, to embed intelligence within the architecture. Speakers will present current strategies as well as explore the future potential of intelligent systems.'
Adaptive Architecture Conference site. The student ticket registration is here.

Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity?

Richard found this interesting article about consumerism: 'I was thinking recently about what my biggest distractions were – the things keeping me from pushing my creative projects forward. As I scanned through my daily activities, I found that the most insidious distraction was, in fact, things. More specifically, the wanting, hunting, and getting of things – whether they be tangible (a new computer) or intangible (information). As Annie Leonard says in The Story of Stuff, “Our primary identity has become that of being consumers – not mothers, teachers, or farmers, but of consumers. We shop and shop and shop.” We love our stuff. Yet more than the stuff itself, we love the act of finding it – the search, the anticipation.' Jocelyn Glei
Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity? Article.

The Secret Life of Waves

A very interesting programme which is more about a view of reality as an ever changing process than ocean waves themselves. 'Documentary-maker David Malone delves into the secrets of ocean waves...Waves are not only beautiful but also profoundly important, and there is a surprising connection between the life cycle of waves and the life of human beings.'
The Secret Life of Waves on BBC iPlayer until 13th Feb 2011.

Kinetica Art Fair

The Kinetica Art Fair is on from Thursday 3rd to Sunday 6th February and might be interesting. Madi Boyd is one of the artists exhibiting and her work is shown above. She says: "For me, a blank canvas is a pitch dark room into which I sculpt light and space by combining built environments with projected video. I have made several works where the cinema screen is re-invented as sculpture and interacts with the film. My current work explores perception of movement and form in space. I am collaborating with neuroscientists at UCL to produce experimental arenas in order to explore the limits of human perception. These resist full comprehension of their form, making them compelling to view. People often report that they are mesmerised by my installations.' Madi Boyd
There are also some interesting talks as well as workshops 'to create inventive, interactive devices.... lighting fixtures that respond to the world around us, or magically make music out of simple electronic circuitry.' workshops
Art Fair site

BIG's Waste to Energy Plant

“The new plant is an example of what we at BIG call Hedonistic Sustainability – the idea that sustainability is not a burden, but that a sustainable city in fact can improve our quality of life. The Waste-to-Energy plant with a ski slope is the best example of a city and a building which is both ecologically, economically and socially sustainable”, Bjarke Ingels Founder and Partner, BIG.... All of this while the smokestack is modified to puff smoke rings of 30m in diameter whenever 1 ton of fossil CO2 is released. These smoke rings which are the brainchild of Germany-based art studio realities:united will form due to the condensation of water in the flue gases as they as they slowly rise and cool, serving as a gentle reminder of the impact of consumption and a measuring stick that will allow the common Copenhagener to grasp the CO2 emission in a straightforward way - turning the smokestack traditionally the symbol of the industrial era into a symbol for the future. At night, heat tracking lights are used to position lasers on the smoke rings into glowing artworks.'e-architect full article here and also see BIG's slide show of images of the project here.

Peter Zumthor to design 2011 Serpentine Pavilion

BD report

What is Reality?

Horizon "What is reality?' is on Monday 17th Jan (& then on BBC iPlayer). Worth watching.
'There is a strange and mysterious world that surrounds us, a world largely hidden from our senses. The quest to explain the true nature of reality is one of the great scientific detective stories. Clues have been pieced together from deep within the atom, from the event horizon of black holes, and from the far reaches of the cosmos. It may be that that we are part of a cosmic hologram, projected from the edge of the universe. Or that we exist in an infinity of parallel worlds. Your reality may never look quite the same again.' programme web site

Tine Bech - lecture at Brookes

Tine Bech, an interactive artist, is giving a lecture on Tues 8 Mar 12 noon – 1pm, Tine Bech: Playful Interactions, Venue: Willow Lecture Theatre, Oxford Brookes University Headington Hill Hall Campus
'Tine Bech is a visual artist and researcher who works with interactive artwork and public art. Her work is concerned with audiences’ engagement using interactions and play. The work is intentionally accessible and aims to create experiences of play and participation, using interactive electronics and location tracking technology, a notion of play, urban spaces and environmental elements such as gravity, water, sound and light.' Tine Bech's web site

Studio Roosegaarde

'Studio Roosegaarde creates interactive artworks which explore the dynamic relation between space, people and technology. As artistic laboratory for interactive projects it won the Dutch Design Award 2009 and is internationally known for its artworks such as 'Dune' and 'Sustainable Dance Floor'. Studio Roosegaarde is the home of artist Daan Roosegaarde and his team of designers & engineers. By designing interactive landscapes that instinctively respond to sound and movement, artist and architect Daan Roosegaarde explores the dawn of a new nature that is evolving from technological innovations.' SR
Above is a video of interactive installation in Rotterdam we hope to see on the field course. Studio Roosegaarde web site,
and interview with Daan Roosegaarde. Some other interesting projects (all have videos):
Interactive walls:
Flow
Wind
Lotus and Energy generating dance floor,

Hans Danuser

The Swiss photographer and artist Hans Danuser was commissioned by Peter Zumthor to photograph his work for its first publication in 1988. Zumthor was apparently inspired to commission Danuser by the IN VIVO project (one photograph from IN VIVO is above). Danuser photographed Zumthor's buildings in the fog, gave equal weight to the surrounding landscape and showed partial images, beginning to capture atmosphere. Its worth having a look through the way Danuser captures atmosphere in his other work: Hans Danuser's web site. A book of his photographs of Zumthor's work was published in 2009, 'Seeing Zumthor'.

Peter Zumthor

Alan de Botton presents the latest conceptual images and models of Peter Zumthor's first UK based project.
An interesting AJ interview by Patrick Lynch with Zumthor from 2009: here, and an extract below.
'In Search of a Lost Architecture” begins: ‘When I think of architecture, images come into my mind… Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece of metal shaped like the back of a spoon …. When I went into my aunt’s garden… I remember the sound of the ravel under my feet… memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and images that I explore in my work as an architect’. [Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser 1998].... Peter Zumthor: 'Basically I’ve come to think that I work like an author. There was a time when I thought that all architects work like authors, but when I looked around I saw that they were implementers and service providers. This is not my world. So I work like a composer writes his music, a writer writes his book and a painter… and so on...In your case and in any other case it is a matter of “what we know” and what is inside us. Most things that are inside us we don’t know! So, we have all these many sayings of artists, like Picasso, who said that: “art is not about inventing, art is about discovering”. This is nothing new. Everybody says this in different fields. It’s obvious that what is inside you ... – this is the stuff that you are working with as an author if you “create”....If you make something new, this is where everything comes from. It does not come from following ideologies. It is great if you become part of the church, Modernism or whatever, then of course it consoles you and it supports you and makes part of a group. You are a Chelsea fan….' Patrick Lynch: 'Or a Zumthor fan….' Peter Zumthor: 'Ha Ha! Yeah, true. This is also human. But in order to create something this is not a good thing. Better to be yourself.' AJ

RIBA Presidents Medals Exhibition

The RIBA Presidents Medals exhibition is on at the RIBA in London until 28th January. All entries can however also be seen online here. Jonathan Schofield's project shown above won the Silver Medal.
RIBA Presidents Medals Exhibition details

Shadow Catchers Exhibition

Floris Neususs 'Gewitterbild, Kassel, 1984' shown here is amongst the work exhibited at teh Shadow Catchers exhibition. The image was formed by placing a piece of photographic paper on the ground in a garden during a thunderstorm. The lighting exposed the paper and made the print. Floris Neususs at Shadow Catchers

Susan Derges ('River Taw (Ice), 4 fenrary 1997' above) 'used the landscape at night as her darkroom, submerging large sheets of photographic paper in rivers and using the moon and flashlight to create the exposure. Within seeming chaos, Derges conveys a sense of wonder at the underlying orderliness. She examines the threshold between two interconnected worlds: an internal, imaginative or contemplative space and the external, dynamic, magical world of nature. Her works can be seen as alchemical, transformative acts that test the threshold between matter and spirit.' V & A
Susan Derges video and Susan Derges work
The Shadow Catchers exhibition is on at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 20th February. The exhibiton explores camerless photography through the work of Adam Fuss, Floris Neususs, Suan Derges, Pierre Cordier and Gary Fabian Miller.
exhibition information

Adam Fuss

'Having worked as a commercial photographer, Adam Fuss is conscious of what he calls "the pervasive technological-consumerist culture". In response to this, along with other artists of his generation such as Garry Fabian Miller and Susan Derges, he has returned to the simplest photographic means: photography without the use of a camera. Such procedures recall the earliest photographs of the 1830's and 1840's. In Fuss’s work, light is used as a metaphor to illuminate the processes and stages of human life.' V & A The photogram above is from the series 'My Ghost, 1999 (Birds in Flight).'

His work is currently being exhibited at the V&A in London as part of the Shadow Catchers exhibition (on until 20th February). His work 'deals with time and energy rather than material form.... Through outward sensory vision, they explore metaphysical ideas of non-sensory insight.' V & A
video and for images from the exihibition

Daniela Di Maro and Roberto Pugliese

Joe came across this interactive sound installation by Daniela Di Maro and Roberto Pugliese.
'Some of the speakers play an audio soundscape, while other make sounds that are improvised on the spot based on human interaction. Noise in the environment is captured through microphones and small samples of this are altered and played back. The resulting synthesis of sound creates a soundscape that is both natural and artificial, a fact that is true of the physical installation as well.' Design Boom
Design Boom