Sunken Fountain by Horst Hoheisel

The sunken fountain is not the memorial at all. It is only history turned into a pedestal, an invitation to passers-by who stand upon it to search for the memorial in their own heads. For only there is the memorial to be found.                                                   Horst Hoheisel

The Sunken Fountain in Kassel, Germany is one of the examples of counter memorials. Counter Memorials are Structures that defy the concept of the memorial, these project aim at returning the memory back to the user, instead of relying on an object/structure to bring forward the memory, the people have to look for the memory within themselves.

 

Original Fountain 1930's

The Original Fountain was a gift from a Jewish Businessman to the city of Kassel in 1908. In 1939 the Nazis destroyed it and by the 80’s on one could actually remember what had happened to the fountain. This project came as a response to the town’s  local amnesia.

Hoheisel proposed creating a hollow concrete replica of the fountain, he displayed next to the original site for a short period and then buried it upside down. To him the fountain could never be constructed  as it was originally. The inverted fountain was then covered by glass and grate ; the only thing the passerby would see is the hollowness of the fountain, as a metaphor for the feeling of emptiness and disquiet one would feel when thinking about what had happened to the Jews in Germany. The sound of the falling water  isolated from the outside world and the only thing you can focus on is that hidden fountain underneath.

Horst Hoheisel left open the option that the fountain might some day be dug up and placed in its original orientation again above ground. That could only happen, he felt, after the German people had achieved a new understanding about the meaning of the Holocaust.

Replica of the Fountain

Burying the fountain upside down

The Fountain today

Bridging Tea House

 

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.

Fernando Romero

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.

 

 

Ai Weiwei: Can Art Alter Society ?

“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/

The Open Box House by A-cero

Description from A-cero:

A-cero presents Open box house, a new project in the outskirts of Madrid. It is a 750m2 house designed according to the A-cero sculptural philosophy. This is inspired in the “Oteiza” work, a very important Spanish sculptor. With a powerful look, Open box is notable for its façade in concrete granulated in some face and brandering in other faces. The house´s plot has is 2.600 m2. It has three storeys. The basement takes the garage and facilities and the ground floor has the living room, kitchen and servant’s quarter. In the first floor are the private rooms (4 bedrooms) and a library. The interior design includes furniture designed by A-cero and the Italian company Fendi. The landscaping has been designed by A-cero too. It is a Japanese garden As a conclusion, an A-cero work in which you can see its looking for the quality, comfort and design excellence.

Oteiza work

SIT by Matthias Pliessnig

Made of  steam bent oak, the structures were inspired by the human form and  its relation with space. Those wave-like seats sit in space and create a continueous flow that connects different bodies together.

The Great Wall of Vagina

The artist Jamie McCartney started this project as an experiment.He wanted to show people that every one is unique in his creation even vaginas are different. 9 panels each with 40 vaginas stand next to each other to form the Great Vagina Wall. Looking closer we can see the differences between each vagina, each one belongs to a different women, each one has an age and a uniqueness.

Is there a perfect vagina? The exhibition poses this question and nagates it at the same time. You can never ask such a question because after closer look at the vaginas you notice that each once has its own perfection in some way. How can you compare between relatively different “things”. To some extent it makes women feel more comfortable about their own vagina. It is no longer a taboo to take a closer look at your own organ.