Have you ever imagined yourself living in Ikea? Well, Photographer Christian Gideon and his friends decided to make belief for one day. They went and took shots of them doing normal life shores & activities in Ikea, from sleeping on beds to cooking and dishwashing. Take a look below, really funny:
“The aim is to create an experience that surprises and inspires with fantastic tastes, gastronomic hints and tips from some of the world’s greatest chefs and never-before-seen views, ultimately stimulating guests to explore their own creative boundaries next time they entertain friends or family at home.”
Electrolux has created a restaurant that travels to different locations and lands on different buildings and landmarks. At each location, local chefs will cook traditional and local recipes using ingredients from their own country. It is a traveling kitchen that adapts to different cultures and cuisines. The chef and his cooking will be on display for the guests to see & interact with the maker of the recipes. When the food is done and ready to be served the dinning table will drop from the ceiling to seat the guests.
An ambitious master plan was designed for the construction of a multipurpose modern city in Jinhua. In the spirit of this plan, the local government commissioned a teahouse to be built beside a pond in a park next to the river that runs through the city. The concept was reworked formally to create a structure that also serves as a mirror—the lower part reflects the upper part, thus producing an effect of continuous space. Our first concept was totally open and functioned as a mask in relation to the neighboring pavilions. Working in collaboration with local engineers, a structure was suggested in which different platforms would be constructed for diverse uses. The translation of this suggestion gave birth to a building that contains a series of spaces on diverse levels that create privacy and intimacy, micro-atmospheres that generate distinct visual experiences for the teahouse’s visitors. The final sculptural object resulted from the unification, within a single contemporary form, of two traditional typologies derived from the gardens of ancient China: the bridge and the teahouse.
A striking Red color and a deconstruction of planes and spaces bridge two lands together in Jinhau, China. The bridge, designed by Fernando Romero, explores the relation between the traditional chinese tea house and the concept of the bridge. The design looks like a sculpture standing tall in front of the landscape. The architecture of the space allows for different private/public platforms. It is a bridge but at the same time it is a space where you can sip a cup of tea with a friend privately while enjoying the view. Everything is red, the color unifies all the spaces introducing them to the eye as one large object.
The container guest house stands as the first successful reuse and adaptation of the shipping containers. It is designed by Poteet Architects who are known for their sustainable & adaptive reuse of existing buildings. The design serves as a guest house, the space is small yet well designed perfect for family/friends who are visiting. The main problem with reusing containers as living spaces was that it traps heat, but Poteet Architects were able to solve this problem through installing a green garden on op of the roof that acts as insulator & and a cooler at the same time. The interior walls of the container are covered by spray foam and bamboo plywood. The architects were committed to sustainability all the way; the container itself stands on a foundation of recycled telephone poles. The deck is made of recycled soda bottles (HVAC equipment pads). The exterior light fis=xtures are blades from the tractor disc plow. The roof garden is fed from the waste water of the shower in the bathroom. Sustainability all the way.
Amsterdam designer Laurens van Wieringen presented this piled-up child’s chair at Ventura Lambrate this week. The idea was to use the same chair from toddler to adult years. The foam seats stack on top of each other marking different stages of one’s life. The older you are the less seats you need. The seat can also be a fun stacking games for kids & adults.
Build me a house! When someone asks you this question, probably the first thing that comes to your mind, is the typical house you used to draw when you were a kid. The rectangular volume with the triangle on top of it. We scrabbled this form so many times on sketch papers and showed it to our parents proudly. Herzog & de Meuron were asked by Vitra to build a space that would house their furniture designs. The Architects started with the Pitched House contour, they extruded & came out with the space. So simple yet so captivating. The space was left hollow from the inside, the only thing kept was this contour. The design of the volume challenges our way of perceiving the typical pitched roof houses. The design is stripped from its functional purpose and the form was used as it is. The same shape is stacked on top of each other to create the Vitra house, the volume interlinks with each other and create a chaotic relation between each other. The volumes are unifies by both their shape and their color, however together they meet randomly and open up to different areas of the vitra campus. The interior of the volumes offer a continuous flow of vision; the walls are white to make the displayed items stand out.
Looking at the Vitra house at night is intriguing. The only thing you see is the typical archetype house form lit, for a second it looks like a 2D yellow plane. It stands out in front of the dark outer walls finish. This relation is also obvious during daytime, where the white inner walls contrast with the dark outer ones.
Build me a house! Stack the houses on top! I do not care about the inner walls. To me they do not exist. The relation is now with the inner space and the outer skin, how does the two dialogue with each other? I think Herzog & de Meuron created the perfection relation. Although the skin contrasts with the inner space, yet the two seem to complement one another. At the first glance the project might seem a bit bulky, but then one can notice that the vision is continuous throughout the inner spaces, nothing cuts your sight, a delicacy the architects succeeded in achieving.
German designer Christoph Thetard has created, during his studies at the Bauhaus University Weimar, an electricity free kitchen machine. He called it R2B2. The R2B2 came to life as a result of an eco-friendly project. There are three different kitchen appliances in the R2B2: Coffee grinder, hand blender, & food processor. All are powered by rotating a flywheel with muscular strength. Electricity is not necessary anymore.
The pedal powers the machine up to 400 rpm which produces 350 W energy per 1 minute. The machine even has a storage cabinet for the different items. You can now exercise while cooking and not just that! You are going to cut down on the electricity bill and make a step in saving the environment.
JR as he would like to be known is a Parisian Photographer who found his camera in Paris Subway and from there decided to make the world his gallery. He exhibits his colossal Prints of human faces on buildings, buses, monuments. Each work has a statement, a message that would contribute as a step to turn the world around, or rather inside out.
“I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.” JR
His identity, for security reasons, is unknown. Another Banksy that proved through graffiti we can send large messages that all people can see and read. Today he is a winner of the TED Prize 2011, and his work proves to be worthy of the award.
One of his famous projects is “Women Are Heroes” 2008 a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. Several Monumental Photo of women were plastered on houses and buildings in Africa, Brazil, India & Cambodia.
Another interesting Project is “Face 2 Face” 2007. In this project JR posted HUGE portraits of both Israelis & Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on both sides of the security fence/separation barrier.
As he remains anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter.
This is what JR is working on. Raising questions...
“If you don’t Speak your mind, then who are you” Ai weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a chinese artist known for his continuous criticism and provocation of the chinese government. He was detained yesterday and most of his work was confiscated. He had several clashes with the government if not personally at least on the world-wide web. His blog was always under watch and continually firewalled. You might remember his Tate Modern’s Sun flower installation where he covered the whole ground with hand crafted porcelain sun flower seeds. Each Seed was individually painted by the town that once made porcelain for the imperial court. Whats absurd about the story is that the town was saved from bankruptcy by making those seeds. The purpose of the installation was to explore the “made in china” phenomenon and the mass production exports coming out from china. Each seed represents a work of art, represents a person’s source of living and yet the whole picture blurs this fact as it does in the real life exports from china. We fail to see the hands behind all those mass productions. The work also questions the place of art in the chinese society; how a town that was once famous for its porcelain works ended up making thousands of seeds if not millions to save itself from poverty. The effects of the world trade on the chinese culture.
Photo Courtesy of the Tate Modern Museum
Also another interesting project was the “Study in Perspective” series from 1995 to 2003 where he captured his middle finger in front of political buildings in Beijing, Berlin, Paris, Washington DC and Hong Kong.
Photo Courtesy of Ai Weiwei
“Map of China” 2003 is another controversial work where he assembled a 50 cm tall extrusion of the map of china from the salvaged wood of the demolished Qing dynasty temples. The “map” was assembled without one single nail through a traditional method of jointing.
An interseting Documentray made by Alison Klayman: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ai-wei-wei/ai-weiwei-story/
If you think books are only for reading, well, think again!! Boston-Based Designer Ryann Ovelline’s new dress is entirely made of recycled pages from stories,specifically stories that were used to make us sleep when we were kids. Yes ! Children books. Although it’s not something you would want to wear, but in case you did, you will attract a lot of toddlers and kids.
ARTSIE ARTSY 
