Object Architecture

Amazing video creating various architecture landmarks out of objects such as books, bowls, knives and even a wig. For any architecture lover, this is pretty great. Created by Luis Urculo.

Via Arch Daily & Veronica

Kickstarter

This post has been a long time coming and I'm so happy to be able to share some truly awesome projects. For those of you not familiar, Kickstarter is a GREAT site that serves as a funding platform for creative projects. Its been featured on just about every major site you can think of and every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields. On the site, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands.








Some awesome projects that have been funded through Kickstarter include:
The Noun Project which started on Kickstarter here
TikTok+LunaTik started on Kickstarter, going on to raise nearly one million dollars and soon to be sold through Apple (via FastCo Design article)
Designer Frank Chimero's new book The Shape of Design was fully funded almost immediately on Kickstarter













So here's the best part - there are some really great causes on Kickstarter as well as some great projects from friends of mine. Check these below that friends of mine have been involved in -



Parsons Splash House - a graduate architecture project providing lockers and changing rooms for a Washington Heights pool so that the areas rec center can remain open throughout the summer. The project must reach its funding goal by June 1 2011. See the project website here.




Switch Hooks - a great project by Andy, a friend of a friend, converting light switch panels into multi-functional objects for holding things like keys or phones. See the project website here.




Trade in Hope: Fighting Child Sex Slavery in America - a powerful project to create a feature length documentary about American children being sold for sex. See the project website here.

Dispersed Memorial

Check out this amazing project by some past professors of mine.

On 1/11 Dispersed Memorial Announces its Vision to Honor 9/11 Victims

Asheville, North Carolina - Jan 11, 2011 -- A project to honor the lives of 9/11 victims, Dispersed Memorial, is setting its goals for the 10th and 11th anniversaries of the tragedy. Thousands of glass plates, inscribed with written dedications to victims and an outline of the missing Twin Towers, will populate New York City in locations where the towers were onc

e visible. The memorials will create a dispersed constellation of markers throughout the city that will connect the stories of loved ones and materialize a collective memory.

Each glass plate outline of the Twin Towers will correspond to the memory of the city’s skyline in varying locations. At night, the markers will light up one by one as an echo to the candles that were lit for the lives of victims in the days following 9/11, and will illuminate the inscriptions of stories, letters, poems and names that honor each victim. The memorial allows each contributor to choose the location of the glass plates where they wish to honor victims.

Dispersed Memorial was conceptualized in 2001 by Martha Skinner and Doug Hecker of fieldoffice, an interdisciplinary practice which challenges the distinctions between architecture, urbanism, and art. Their design response was related to their firm’s focus on the temporal quality of social responses to tragedy. Co-founder Martha Skinner explained, “As a former resident of New York City, I felt like I needed to be there, to be part of people coming together to deal with the situation, to heal, a

nd to share something in common.” In anticipation of the 10th and 11th anniversaries of the event, fieldoffice has expanded the team to work with individuals ranging from urban planners, university professors, artists and architecture students, and is inviting additional collaborators.

By collecting and installing the stories behind the lives of 9/11 victims, Dispersed Memorial explores concepts of dispersed memory as a continual presence in a city and how that memory can connect people. “There is a sacredness within the fabric of the city. It is about the memory of the Twin Towers as an orienting device, and entire lives, and the losses that affected so many people,” Skinner said.

For more information about the project team and collaborative opportunities, visit the Dispersed Memorial website: http://www.dispersed-memorial.net/

Contact:

Martha Skinner

Co-founder of Dispersed Memorial

864-650-8570

skinnermartha@gmail.com

http://www.dispersed-memorial.net/

Lauren Manning Design Work

Hi my name is Lauren Manning and here's a bit of my work in a temporary portfolio while my full site is under construction. here is my new portfolio site.

I am a designer, thinker and storyteller interested in constructing brand stories through design systems, solving problems with collaborative thinking and innovative solutions, and creating a narrative from raw data to communicate effectively through visualization.

Contact: lmanning729@gmail.com

For more information on any project, my resume or recommendations, feel free to email me.


Data Communication/Visualization
“It’s like comparing apples to oranges.” This phrase is the best way to describe the current state of data visualizations. For the designer, its easy to find good visualizations and bad ones, but how to apply the successful elements of particular designs to one’s own data set starts to get a little more complicated. Data sets vary tremendously, so one man’s brilliant solution can be another’s complete failure. Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? What new comparisons, knowledge and structure might be developed from this?

Using a data set created from two years of meticulous life documenting, I visualized one point of data – food consumed – over forty ways. Exploring various methods, techniques, styles, degrees of complexity, degrees of additional context and many other elements, a true “apples to apples” comparison has emerged.

The project has been featured on datavisualization.ch and infosthetics.com.

















The Curiosity Project
The Curiosity Project is an effort to bridge the very unique gap between the print and digital worlds. By combining QR codes (that work!), a blog, hand making and pure curiosity the hope is to restructure the way we interact with both print and digital media.

















Be Versatile
Part of a self promotion piece, this project showcases multiple hand-crafted techniques to create various letterforms spelling the phrase “Be Versatile.” The making of all of the letters was videotaped and the one hundred hours of footage compressed into a two minute high speed time lapse. The video shows the “proof” of the making process while the phrase itself it meant to inspire designers to use methods beyond the computer to explore ways of communicating.

Contemporary Architecture on "V"

Well its no news that the ABC remake of "V" used the architecture of Santiago Calatrava, primarily his Milwaukee Museum of Art, as inspiration for the interiors of the alien spaceship. With huge curving beams and lots of cool whites and greys, it had Calatrava all over it.

What I found interesting instead when watching the show last fall was what they did to create the part of the ship shown when sitting on the leader Ana's balcony of sorts. Overlooking the rest of the ship, if you look closely, you may recognize a few works of architecture not-so-much emulated, like the rest of ship, as just plain old plopped in there.

Having personally studied and visited these actual buildings, I thought it was hysterical to first notice Norman Foster's Swiss Re, or 30 St Marys Axe, lying pathetically on its side. Then I soon realized the a few other Santiago Calatrava buildings from the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia were making cameos as well. Both L'Hemisfèric and El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe appear as completed buildings just hanging out in the background.

Certainly an interesting way to make the architecture of your spaceship look contemporary - just rip off actual contemporary architecture.

Follow Up - Sukkah City Union Square

About two months ago I posted about Sukkah City - an international competition to re-imagine the sukkah held in New York City's Union Square. I was excited to see the 15 designs that were chosen from the hundreds of entries and they certainly did not disappoint. While there were some pretty big discrepancies between some of the design proposals and the actual realizations, others were spot-on and all were fascinating to see in 3D form. Of the 15 chosen, 13 actually made it to Union Square for the event to be voted on by the public.

The event was held over two days and I got to attend on a BEAUTIFUL Monday afternoon. Union Square was absolutely PACKED! There were students, tourists, New Yorkers, designers and more all enjoying the sukkahs. The winner after voting was Fractured Bubble, which remained in Union Square for the week.

My personal favorites were Sukkah of Signs by Ron Rael & Virginia San Fratello using signs purchased from homeless people and Gathering by Dale Suttle, So Sugita, and Ginna Nguyen which had beautiful, sweeping lines and excellent craftsmanship.

To see the sukkahs, click on the image for a large view or check them out on my Flickr page.

Renaming architecture

Polshek Partnership, creators of great buildings like The Standard Hotel(2008) above, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center (2004), and the Rose Center for Earth and Space(2002) at the American Museum of Natural History recently changed their name to Ennead. The more ambigous name follows a popular trend to steer away from the "white male architect" leading a firm, to a more collective environment. Polshek is also looking to retire and wanted to remove his name from such a prominent position.

This NY Times article mentions other firms who have done the same thing including Hugh Hardy Architects to H3 and Fox & Fowle to FXFowle. These older firms are following in the footsteps of younger firms, who created names like these from the start. Firms like OMA, Pentagram and Morphosis all have big name designers in them, but aren't reliant on that one designer's name should anything change.

Its certainly an interesting topic, especially with the generation of starchitects reaching very old age, and almost all their firms simply being named after themselves. The question becomes, can a firm continue on if its namesakes passes away or wants to retire? In the next 10 years, I think name changes like Polshek to Ennead will become very common. The design understanding and firm reputation does not need to be lost just because the namesake is no longer an integral part.

Sukkah City in Union Square 9/19 & 9/20

Sukkah City: NYC 2010 comes to Union Square this weekend! This international competition drew entries from all over world with 15 winners being selected to be constructed in Union Square. The 15 re-imagined sukkahs will be voted on by New Yorkers and the winner will remain in Union Square for Sukkot festival.

These 15 winners include designs using all sorts of materials, techniques and concepts. One of my favorites is one that is constructed from a single string...that will be very interesting to see in real life and see if it is structurally sound.

These sukkahs will be in Union Square from dawn to dusk Sunday and Monday so make sure you don't miss it. For more info on Sukkah City, check out the website will all the winners and also every competition entry...there are some pretty hysterical ones.

Book Fair Pencil Wall

For the Leipzig Book Fair this amazing pencil wall was designed by Johannes Albert and Helmut Stabe. The book fair is one of Europe's largest and this wall was used to display books for Mitteldeutscher Verlag Publishers. The pencils functioned on three levels. They held the wall together, the held the books up on the wall and they also were take-away elements for booth visitors.

I think this is a really creative solution to a fair booth. Its a really great solution to make your product/company stand out among a huge crowd.

Seen in The Cool Hunter article 15,000 Pencils Become a Fair Stand

Barcelona's Subway Upgrade

Drassanes Subway Station - Barcelona

Soooooooo bummed this wasn't finished when I lived there!! I suppose it was under construction while we were there. Can you imagine if NYC started doing this to subways stops over a period of time. If Herzog & deMeuron redid the Times Square Station and Zaha Hadid got her hands on Union Square Station. Contemporary architecture at this daily scale would make taking the subway so much better!

Seen on The Cool Hunter in this article.

BIG - Bjarke Ingles Group

8H - The 8-House from BIG on Vimeo.

For this blog, I want there to be a wide variety of types of design covered. With all my work, I am striving to attain a multidisciplinary view on the project and to bring all my background experiences with me. With that said, here's an amazing architecture video on the process behind the 8 House by BIG. I'm pretty obsessed with most everything this studio does, from their website to their models and now this. I've never seen anything like this done before. You can not only see the design process for this building, but hear the thought process and see the changes made because of certain considerations. I'm not entirely sure how they even did certain parts of the video, but I think its pretty great.

Seen in the ArchDaily article called "In Progress: 8 House/BIG" by David Basulto.

Why didn't I know about this?!

On August 18, 2010 the Standard Hotel NYC, an anchor of The Highline and one of my personal favorite buildings in the city, was transformed into an amazing light show. The installation, funded by Target, was created by Mother NY & LEGS. LEGS is the studio that created the shockingly strange, and recently nominated, music video for Dog Days are Over by Florence + the Machine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWOyfLBYtuU&feature=related

The event was called the Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular and Target went the distance in my opinion by handing out 1500 binoculars and also setting up a toll free number so that you could hear the music if you watched the show from far away...genius.

I think this is an extremely success instance of many design fields merging together to create something awesome. It reminds of the Blinkenlights exhibit from Berlin, but because I've spent so much time on the High Line, I'm even more drawn to this one. Hopefully The Standard will continue to bring media attention to the High Line area, which just so happens to be my one of my favorite parts of NYC.

Oh and the video is pretty long, so if you don't watch the whole thing...I recommend the first few minutes and then around 7:35 in and also 9:35 in.

Based on an article by Matt Lambert called "LEGS & Mother Take Over The Standard NYC" on motionographer.com