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Description from Ma Yansong:

A tray , like earth, holds many things.
we look to the earth
but see see only what rests upon it.
she fades from sight,
and seems not to exist.
yet she persists.
a boundless surface
upon which all is reflected;
the home, the city.
an ever-expanding scope.
each rising layer, then, a tower storey.
an unscripted space full of kinetic potential.
but rooted in the still, same earth.
there is nothing without the earth
and yet the earth is not here for us -
she can leave anytime.
it is the blue sky that she loves.

Visit the Alessi website – here.

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Tidvis is a floor standing all concrete version
Tidvis Vägg is a wall mounted version in ash and concrete.

Visit the Kvarnen Studio website – here.

Visit the Forsberg Form website – here.

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Statement from Eva Hild:

Influence, pressure, strain. These words have been the foundation for my current projects that comprise communicating the theme in large, hand-built clay forms. Delicate continuously flowing entities in white thinbuilt clay. They reflect varying degrees of external and internal pressures, and how, as a consequence, perception of inner and outer space is changed or challenged.

My sculptures are bodies, exposed to pressure and movements.
On one hand, it is the mass in thin layers, running in a meander-like closed movement. On the other hand it is the empty space, air and light forming volumes, described by the contures of the mass. The construction is really made of the absent; the emptiness, the holes of air. The obvious body just defines the volume.

My fascination is about the relationship between the internal and external realities; the dualism between inside and outside, content and form, feeling and shape, impression and expression. The shape consists of continuously flowing inner and outer surfaces, with one line running through the form. Inside turns outside and the loop gives the sculpture its uniformity and identity. The empty space is drawn into the form and becomes one with it; the air fills the cavities.

The last years I have expanded my work with a darker clay body.
In the white sculptures, the air and light have just as much importance as the obvious body; they are equals. In comparison, the dark material absorbs light, and is by itself enough. The fragility is still there in the thin walls and delicate constructions, but the colour and appearance talks a language of weight, strength and capability.

Going from the light and etherical into something dark and heavy has been a necessity but also a challenge. My themes and on-going exploration of emotional states and relations have developed further, and the addition of new components has deepend the content and expression.

I feel a great freedom in hand-building. It grows slowly, I have time to reflect, I can change direction, make connections and have a smooth surface with the same thickness. When the form is ready and the clay is dry, I sand away at the surface. The pieces are fired twice and finally treated with silicate colour, linseed oil and pigments.

Visit Eva Hild’s website – here.

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Description fromDonatas Žukauskas:

I am an interior designer. I graduated from Vilnius Art Academy in 1992 where I studied design. Another area of my activities is detail making of the interior decor. The idea to take up this activity occurred to me after I saw unusual works of art made of paper. I got interested in this rare genre of creative work and felt like changing a usual paper function in the process of creative work I wanted to look at paper as material to be put into practice with the help of various creative ideas. While experimenting with paper mass, I realized that paper has got very extensive possibilities of plastic expression. I was fascinated by its natural material, form, colour, texture, lacework, plasticity and other qualities. Attracted by those possibilities, I started making decorative objects meant for modern interior.

My works are unitary handmade creations that are technologically complex and require a lot of job and patient.  Paper mass mixed with glue, desiccated and processed newly gets qualities of a wood – strength, color, naturalness, facture.

Visit Donatas Žukauskas’ website – here.

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Description from Bonsoir Paris:

DURAMEN is a series of handmade wooden sculptures. Born of a simple impulse, the one to break with conventional ways of exhibiting, Bonsoir Paris and its team have imagined a series of frames so strongly mistreated that they have become unrecognizable. Their wish is to break the properties of the compound, a form of compromise as minimal and it is efficient. They found a subtle twist while remaining faithful to a primitive form of revolt, without getting lost in vain styles effects. The choice of noble materials (Oak, Fir, Wenge, Pear, Linden) and the quest for finesse, enables them – with the DURAMEN series – to position themselves on the razor’s edge between two opposites, that of the deformed and that of the elegant, instinctive and thoughtful.

ART DIRECTION / DESIGN Bonsoir Paris
SCULPTURE Adrien Corroler
CABINET Kwantiq
DESIGN / ACHIEVEMENT Jules Cairon
PHOTOGRAPHER Davina Muller
POST-PRODUCTION Cédric Hugonnet @ Studio Collet

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Draper is a permanent installation commissioned by Florida State University (FSU), Tallahassee for the College of Visual Art’s William Johnston Building. Composed of hundreds of unique stainless steel strips, the project is an experiment in how mass and gravity, along with a force-feedback fabrication technique, can create a carefully tuned lattice structure. At seventy-five feet in height, Draper passes through five separate floors and sub-departments of the school, offering each level a unique view of the piece and its own distinct identity.

Visit the Urbana website – here.

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Blaze has been designed to populate the disparate roadside verges of the A66 in Middlesbrough – this is the first phase of the piece which can be implemented at numerous locations along the roadside.  The A66 currently passes through the centre of Middlesbrough and for many drivers it is their only viewpoint of the town. Blaze was conceived as a unifying treatment to the roadside which would gradually emerge along further stretches gradually providing Middlesbrough A66 with its own unique identity.

A series of anodised aluminium staves are set in the ground in long arrays which give the impression of giant forms in the landscape. The arrays are arranged in layers so that the shape of the piece transforms as people pass by. Fabricated in gold anodised aluminium Blaze is designed to catch the light in unusual ways creating a bright sculptural form along the often dreary dual carriageway landscape.

Blaze originated with a proposal to create a gateway feature at the Cargo Fleet Roundabout on the A66 in Middlesbrough.  The adjacent authority, Redcar, had installed a series of roundabout sculptures with which this scheme was originally to have been aligned.

Middlesbrough Borough Council working in partnership with Tees Valley Arts, Arts Council North East, and advised by Christian Barnes, took the view that the project should be developed as a spatial design concept. It should consist of an integrated landscape approach that might be able to extend beyond the Cargo Fleet roundabout populating other parts of the A66 corridor. The Cargo Fleet roundabout would be just the first prototype of the scheme. A range of other sites have also been identified for the treatment including land adjacent to Trinity Crescent, the approach to Will Alsop’s Middlehaven development and the western approaches to the town.

An RIBA competition was held in 2007 to find a designer of the scheme which was subsequently won by Ian McChesney who proposed Blaze. The piece was subsequently developed with engineers Atelier One and fabricator Chris Brammall Ltd.

• Blaze is approximately 35m long by 35m wide by 4m tall.

• There are 472 individual staves of aluminium in Blaze.

• There are a total of 165 linear meters of staves in Blaze.

• The sculpture contains over 1.5 km of aluminium tubing.

• The cost of Blaze was £116,000 to fabricate and install.

• For the cost of Blaze we could build just 8 metres of motorway.

Contract duration: 9 months

Installation time: 10 days

Cost: £116,000

Client: Middlesbrough Council

Designer: Ian McChesney

Engineer: Atelier One

Fabricator: Chris Brammall Ltd

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You can watch a video of the sculpture – here.

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Visit the Normann Copenhagen website – here.

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Description fromHeike Mutter and Ulrich Genth

The walkable, large outdoor sculpture Tiger & Turtle – Magic Mountain is currently in construction on the Heinrich Hildebrand Höhe in Duisburg Wanheim (D). It overtops the plateau with the artificially heaped-up mountain by 21m | 23yd so the visitor can rise by more than 45m | 49yd above the level of the landscape and enjoy an impressive view over the Rhine.

The curved flight of stairs inscribes like a signature on the landscape and recruits the nimbus of the classical roller coaster. Having a closer look, the public is disappointed in a disarming way. The visitor climbs on foot via differently steep steps the roller-coaster-sculpture. So the sculpture subtly and ironically plays with the dialectic of promise and disappointment, mobility and standstill. Visitors happen to briefly meet with oncoming visitors on the steep and about 1m | 1yd wide corridors.

Led-lights are integrated in the handrails and highlight the flight of stairs so the sculpture is accessible at night, too.

The magic mountain in the South of Duisburg happened to come into existence within only one year out of the blue and owes its presence to the shifting of large amounts of toxic zinc-slag that have accrued during the productions of local zinc works.

Visit Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth’s website – here.

Photography by Eichental

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Description:

Encapsulating the diffusion of a plume of smoke in a glass orb, Lehanneur’s S.M.O.K.E. lends material substance to its often ethereal and ephemeral qualities of deceptively delicate gases. Examining issues of science and the environment, Lehanneur provides solidity and visibility to the pressing issue of air pollution with a playful and thought provoking style.

Photography by David Brook

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Visit Tomás Saraceno’s website – here.

Photography by Jens Ziehe and Tomás Saraceno

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Watch a video of “The Fly” in action – here.

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The Fly installation is on show at the Moscow Biennale in the ArtPlay Centre until October 30, 2011.

Visit the rAndom International website – here.

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Description from Numen/For Use:

Tape Melbourne was specially commissioned by Melbourne’s main civic centre and cultural district Federation Square as a part of their Creative Program focussing on experimental large-scale public art and its social and communal relevance. The full 16 meters stretch of the Fed Square’s Western Terrace is the greatest span traversed by a Tape Installation thus far. The structure had to be constructed with the help of special platforms as it projects from the external walls of the Fed Square’s SBS building at the height of 6 meters above ground. Its more slender and tenuous, distinctly willowy form is dictated by the specifics of the bridged span and setting. Tape Melbourne is the first Tape Installation to be executed outside Europe and below the equator.

Tape installation was envisaged as a site specific, parasitical structure invading an arbitrary location. The straight lines of main trajectories are stretched across a given area and these tendons are then wrapped diagonally with layers of elastic tape, giving shape to a complex organic form through a process similar to the emergence of such structures in nature. With the further layering of the tape, the figure becomes more and more corporeal as it picks up on the slow increase of the curvature. The  interior of the structure is supple, elastic, and pliable while the form itself is statically perfect, as it ideally follows the trajectories of forces, being literally defined by them. In the moment when the audience enters the installation, what started off as a sculpture seamlessly morphs into architecture.

Visit the Numen/For Use website – here.

Photography by Fred Kroh and Numen/ForUse

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Description from Hive:

Raised on boxy legs and punctuated with subtle curves, there’s an undeniable character to these planters by Kenneth Cobonpue. The “Safari” has a charm which lies in its understated silhouette that complements any plant set into it. Cast into tall “giraffe” and petite “hedgehog” molds with naturally crushed stones, these planters add a touch of slow-strolling whimsy to any garden setting. The planters come in natural, terracotta, gray and black shades, and range from low small, low large to tall small and tall large sizes.

Visit the Hive website – here.

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Visit Marcial Ahsayane’s website – here.

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This exhibition sets out the result of almost fifteen years of work staged across 1000 square meter in Galerie 3 of the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

Imagined as a temporary encampment – hence its name – Bivouac is deliberately divested of scenographic elements other than the Bouroullecs’ work.

Movement is imparted by contrasting scales, transparency and superpositions.

Visitors are invited to wander around the gallery, moving between prototypes and finished objects, mass-produced and hand-crafted works.

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As one of the worlds leading developers of applied computational protocols in the field of design and fabrication, Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY were selected from some of the top architectural candidates in the world by BOFFO, Irene Neuwirth along with a specifically selected panel of judges had specifically chosen them to help shape the retail environment into a pure and natural inspired collaboration that will compliment breathtaking structural designs and elegant timeless jewelry.  The precise gold and stone balance of fine gemstones will be present in the store where chrysophase, moponstone, and lapis amongst others are interlaced within intricate golden lattice of digitally fabricated architecture.

Photography by Evan Joseph

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Bailianjing Park Pavilions by Taranta Creations

Bailianjing park is located in the north of Pudong section of the former expo site, along the Huangpu river. Already opened during the China Expo 2010, the park claims its crucial role after the expo. While most of the expo structures are currently demolished, the park remains as a permanent public waterfront. Besides the maintenance of the china pavilion, the expo exhibition center, the Mercedes Benz stadium and the expo boulevard, it is unclear what will happen with the large amount of unoccupied land after the torn down of all the country and corporation pavilions. Continuing the theme of the expo “better city, better life” the green waterfront should function as an attractor of high quality urban developments. A series of art installations along the green belt are part of the landscape design. Among the designers for the different art installations was Taranta Creations.

Park life
If you visit the parks in shanghai, you will notice that the Chinese people use these public spaces extensively. From early in the morning till dusk, people come to the park to meet, exercise, eat or relax. You find people practicing tai chi, dancing, singing karaoke, drinking tea or playing the typical Chinese mahjong game.

The objective of our design was to create sculptures that added more than only visually quality to the park. We wanted to create an installation that enables and facilitates this typical park life. Inspired by the diversity of Chinese recreational cultures, each sculpture is designated for a specific function to suit for multiple purposes. One sculpture will be equipped with microphones and a screen, so it can be used for singing karaoke. Another will contain trays to store chess and card games. In one of the pavilions you can place bottles, for keeping your drinks cold during the hot summers. Or you can dance on the tunes produced by the “jukebox” sculpture.

Tea pavilions
The sculptures are designed as small pavilions. This way we create a reference to the ancient Chinese Fengkafei tea pavilions, which have always been small centers for recreational and social purposes. Given the location next to the river, we decided to place the pavilions on poles. Not only does this protect the pavilions against a flood from the river, but also makes people aware of this existing threat.  As a contrast to the normally gray sky that you usually will experience in shanghai, we choose to execute the pavilions in fresh and bright colors. The colors in combination with the shapes give the cluster of pavilions the appearance of candy. As we believe our pavilions can be the “candy” for people to visit the park. small wind turbines placed on top of the pavilions provide the pavilions with the necessary electricity. During the night the pavilions light the environment.

Bubble gate
At the start of the path that leads towards the pavilions we place a pavilion that represents the modern version of the old Chinese gate. The bubble shape gate is a reminder of the flamboyant architecture that we have experienced at the expo pavilions.

Design team: Enrico Taranta, Giorgio Radojkovic, Juriaan Calis

Visit the Taranta Creations website – here.

Photography by Zhang Jun Photography

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The natural acrylic stone material HI-MACS® was chosen by eminent French artist Ora-ïto for his entry into the recent Wallpaper/Reebok exhibition in London. Fabricated by Candido Hermida in Spain, HI-MACS® was selected for its outstanding properties, visual and tactile effects and the ability to offer the artist thermoforming capabilities that placed zero restriction on his vision and ability to create a stunning three-dimensional creation.

Five of the world’s leading creative artists were invited to participate and Ora-Ito’s contribution was an interpretation of the Reebok RealFlex shoe in the form of a wall-mounted installation made entirely from HI-MACS®.

The detail of Ora-Ito’s work was what he described as the “iconic sneaker soles”. In creating this by using HI-MACS® the designer was able to exercise various sculptural experiments taking inspiration from the RealFlex sole’s “hidden art” aspects, resulting in a topographic landscape made to touch and explore its own poetic qualities.

This amazing sculpture was fabricated by Candido Hermida, who commented, “To work for a top designer like Ora-Ito, is always a challenge and a pleasure, his creations are wonderful in terms of design, but inevitably extremely complex in terms of fabrication. In this case the fabrication complexity was mainly because we had to understand the design and determine how to program the software that controls the CNC machine automatically, in order to achieve the 3d shape required.”

Visit Ora-Ito’s website – here.

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Architecture design and build firm, Tres Birds Workshop from Boulder, CO was recently commissioned to create a large-scale art installation for KEEN’s Recess Revolution Tour encouraging people outside during the workday for daily activity breaks and encouraging adults to re-energize by connecting with nature. KEEN, manufacturer of original hybrid footwear, bags and socks, produced the tour in response to American’s increasingly digital and sedentary lifestyles coupled with growing obesity rates. In Denver, KEEN’s recess event called for a nature-inspired makeover of an office, situated outdoors and for adults to participate in playtime activities, such as tetherball. Tres Birds Workshop was selected by KEEN to creatively concept and physically complete the dynamic 5-part art installation that was erected in the middle of downtown Denver’s business district on the 16th Street Mall.

The overgrown office scene, brought together with the help of Green Roofs of Colorado and The Fabric Lab, cleverly reminds viewers to avoid office overgrowth in daily life, a chronic problem in many modern and fast-paced lifestyles. Participants and passers-by were encouraged to interact with the installation, where an executive office, conference room, break room, cubicle space and file cabinet made up the five distinct areas. Using 100% live vegetation, the Tres Birds Workshop team spent much of their preparation time hand-sewing sedum and ground cover quilts to drape over large furniture pieces for creating the overgrowth effect. All non-living props were obtained from second hand stores, including an old Canon copier, water cooler, cubicle walls, golf set, computers, kitschy knick knacks, coffee mugs and more.

Once the elaborate installation was complete, the sedum and vegetation were recycled into the community (two families and one business eagerly took the leftover vegetation once break-down began) and the office props were re-donated to second hand stores, making it a highly sustainable art piece as well.

Visit the Tres Birds Workshop website – here.

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