Founded in Buenos Aires in 2001 by MauricioPezo and Sofia Von Ellrichshausen, Pezo von Ellrichshausen Arquitectos prides itself on its exploration of the relationship between art [Pezo is also a visual artist] and architecture – investigated through experimental projects, many of which are funded by private clients.
The Casa Poli was built along the water on the Coliumo Peninsula [550 km south of Santiago, Chile] by Pezo Von Ellrichshausen and another couple who were fellow artists looking to construct an experimental weekend retreat / studio / gallery on the water.
Von Ellrichshausen explains that the form and aesthetic of the building were not meant [originally, anyways] as a statement of minimalism, but instead purely functional responses to the site and program of the house:
“The site is surrounded by water on three sides, so we needed something compact. It will be closed for much of the time, so we needed shutters over the windows and a building that wouldn’t need maintenance. The concrete will just age naturally, like rock. Lots of small design decisions led to the shape – it wasn’t pre-established”
The construction of the interior [image below] was achieved by recycling the wood used for the exterior concrete formwork, leaving an imprint of he wooden planks on the concrete walls. This same wood was then used again for the doors and shutters, to serve as protection during storms.
[for those of you that don't know, construction waste/leftovers make up a HUGE amount of the Earth's waste, especially the wood used in concrete work in some locations. While it is becoming more popular to recycle construction materials, its still pretty great that Pezo Von Ellrichshausen chose to reuse all of theirs...]
The interior organization of the building is based on the roles of its various functions as house, artists studio, and gallery. The ‘house’ program, along with the service elements such as the stairs, storage, and bathrooms, has been pushed out from the core of the cube to the perimeter, as shown in the axon below. This allows for the work & exhibition spaces to occupy larger spaces, with more continuous wall space for hanging work, within the house’s core. It also let the designers open spaces vertically, such as the three storey gallery space shown below.
.:info + images via-> arqa.com [check out some more photos and the plans & sections there]
How come the ninja is outside the bathroom window all shady-like, as if he’s casing the joint? Ninja can’t even come inside like the rest of GI Joe’s always do? (I know you remember the burning house scene)
Mom’s home, which means this fool better be out before she calls the cops. Just keepin’ ya’ll on your toes. I WILL get at Ghostbusters, too. Believe you me…
So, if you’re like me, you probably have a bit of time on your hands. And if you have time on your hands then you may find yourself interested in the most inane pursuits – like chatting with people online.
Omegle is a service that allows users to open a webpage and begin to chat with whatever random rando that happens to be doing the same thing at the same minute. All conversations take place between “Stranger” and “You.” Most conversations are short-lived and non-interesting. There are many children using the service, not to mention those interested in profane and/or sexual, which can make for a wack experience. But ever so often there is one person who makes the entire thing worth it.
I had a conversation with a dude from Sri Lanka where we went from him hating on America, to him explaining to me the pitfalls of getting married and the benefits of regular hash use. I know that many people won’t have the patience for stuff like Omegle, and why should they? It’s really stupid, and it’s a huge waste of time. But it’s something to do when you’re bored. And like, you shouldn’t judge people for how the spend their free time, okay??
And somehow I can’t help from thinking that this may be the start of some new social paradigm… and once you see the guy who made it all up… you’ll be convinced
So I really want this clock – I mean, look at how ridiculously sick it is. With a touch sensitive interface, the clock is set and applied to a wall – no frame, no case, just the four simple digital displays that will produce the numbers. During the day, the clock numbers show as black – and then this color inverts, becoming white for night time visibility. Too too ill.
Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.
~ Kibardin Design
Unfortunately, Kibardin has yet to find a manufacturer for the clock – but when they do, we’ll be sure to let you know.
An origami artist from Japan, Wataru Ito, has spent four years crafting an incredible model city from paper – but now plans to burn it down. The entire piece – which measures 2.4m by 1.8m and is 1m high – has been crafted using only paper, which Wataru stuck together using craft glue, an art knife and holepuncher.
…and it was all destroyed in a single step by a life-sized Gundam to scale.
Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move Capleton – That Day Will Come Al Borosie – Kingston Town Kermit The Frog – Once In A LifetimePrince Malachi – Jah window
Welcome again to ART Fridays! To commence our new feature, A Dozen, MNP would like to share an interview that we had with Mark Khaisman- definitely a ninja. Orangemenace previously featured his brown tape art, and now Mark reveals what he’s up to, as well as introducing to the masses his newer video tape art. In addition you can now purchase his art on ContemporaryMNP! Enjoy.
How did growing up in the former USSR mold you as an artist?
As an artist, I believe in working against the system.
I was a part of the generation whose intuition, even when we were the school students, was anticipating the end of empire. In my case, along with the mistrust of authority and the values taught in schools, this anticipation meant an overall skepticism, disbelief in the possibility of a career, and an increased interest in the Russian past and the Western present. When I started walking on the other side of the world, I couldn’t help observing the Paradox: there, in my old country, I experienced more freedom than the free one. The reason was the stage of the late decay of the dying empire with fewer people believing in the system and therefore less overall enthusiasm in supporting its conforming forces. People not buying into the official values felt less isolated, than in the realm of the “American dream.”
How does your knowledge of architecture effect your perception?
My tape paintings are part calculation, part accident. My training as an architect gave me a slightly different perspective on art, to think about art in a broader way, tied to an historical context, and considered also as a construction, and a piece of consumption culture.
What materials do you find yourself using?
For the last 5 -6 years I am concentrating on packing tape. Now I am starting to introduce tape works in video.
What relationship does photography have to your creative process?
In a way my art is not original, only the material is original. I see myself more as a performer than a creator. My works are image based. That’s why a photograph is usually my starting point.
Can you please explain what “Patternworks” is?
My Paternworks is a simple digital mirroring of selected slivers from found photographs, which transforms the original photograph into something very unexpected.
What is “Tapeworks’?
My tapeworks are large archetypal representational images, made from layer upon layer of translucent packing tape, applied to clear Plexiglas and placed in front of a light box to give the image shadow and depth.
Can you explain what you mean when you say you use an ‘anti-matter’ approach to the image?
I mean creating image out of packaging tape – Breaking the image into pixels, layers, converting matter into a visual illusion.
How accessible are your works to the average citizen?
I think that the interest in my works by popular culture publications, like yours for example, speaks for itself.
In what settings would you like to see your art displayed?
In MOMA.
What do you see yourself working on in the future?
Besides my tapeworks I am interested in videos, with the use of packaging tape as animating material.
Who inspires/d you to actualize your conceptions?
Good artists, also, pride, jealousy, mortality…
When do you think a piece is finally finished?
I feel that work is completed when I no longer understand how it’s done.
For some reason I’ve recently found myself reading Linda Holmes’ Monkey See, NPR’s media and entertainment blog, over at NPR.org. If you enjoy yourself a sort of 80’s-traumatized take on the 2000’s – and coincidentally there is whole a lot of MNP readers living that exact life – then you’ll probably enjoy it too. I can’t claim that it’s substantive, but, if you read this blog then you probably don’t care, now do you?
Maybe what I like about it is the wealth of fresh content which, like fresh bread, is a low price alternative to a perhaps more substantial snack (I really hope somebody writes about this site like that, one day).
OK, enough. The real reason why I posted this was because Glenn Weldon wrote an interesting piece about Supergirl. I happen to remember being in a bookstore (not that kinda bookstore, you dirty ninja) and seeing the new re-launched Supergirl series. It appeared at the time that the transition of Supergirl to glossy, booby, post-Image-comics era vixenage was complete. That’s not to suggest that all previous iterations of Supergirl weren’t contrived male-fantasies, I suppose.
While the Monkey See article mainly focuses on the cosmetic changes in the Supergirl costume throughout the years (the author finds himself clearly upset by what he calls the “vampy-trampy aspects” of Supergirl’s appearance), there is however a little something for any self-respecting geek/comic book lover. The article has some good links, including histories of costumes and the like.
The thing that really caught my eye and consequently forced me to post this for ART FRIDAY! was a link to a livejournal discussion started back in 2007. This thread, the author of which implores users to draw their own supergirl renditions, has since become somewhat of a collab-art sensation, I mean… at least kinda, with about 100 different links to different drawings. The photo above is my personal favorite interpretation, amongst the many others.
I think there is a certain level of fantasy involved in all art, even art that plays the “real-life” angle. Bottom-line, there is certain mental distance that one has to cross to relate to just about ANYTHING (the term “relate” being etymologically connected to “carry back,” ie. a carrying back of something originally not possessed with an implied distance or separation). On that note, looking at the panties on the outside of the costume, I found myself wondering ironically how as a child I so easily traversed the whole “undies on the outside” issue, like so many other young ninjas. I guess I was pretty much over Superman early-on though.
I’m pretty sure I saw this project in April’s issue of Dwell - but regardless, it’s sick and had to be on MNP [I couldn't risk any of you ninjas missing out - it would've been irresponsible of me]. Essentially an adaptive-reuse project, the project transformed a warehouse in a mixed-use neighborhood into a courtyard house [obviously, as the name suggests].
The Courtyard House was inspired by an ancient form of architecture and a new form of North American urban thinking – infill housing as an alternative urban typology.
By converting a contractor warehouse in a mixed-use industrial neighborhood, the ambition was to create a modern, affordable home and studio for a family of four – one which could successfully adapt to a mid-block or laneway situation, where there is no typical front or back. The design of the house is generated by an emphasis on the views and activities of the interior courtyards, where all the windows look inwards.
My question is this: why are courtyard homes not more prevalent in ‘urban’ areas that are more dense than our suburbs, but still not so dense that single [or 2 family] homes aren’t practical? So many communities – the one I live in, for example – are ‘urban’, yet have an abundance of 1 and 2 family homes with yards, etc. These homes are on narrow lots and are often-times pressed for space – yet they still opt to pull back from the street so as to make a gesture to the American lawn, while facing the street like so many suburban homes [regardless of street traffic, etc]. While the project featured here is obviously a converted warehouse, and seems like it may be a little too disconnected [internally] from the street visually – the typology obviously works and makes sense. Use the volume of the house to create private, outdoor spaces.
Coffee drinkers may have another reason to pour that extra cup. When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease were given caffeine – the equivalent of five cups of coffee a day – their memory impairment was reversed, report University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
Know somebody who loves their mac a little bit too much? …like, to the exclusion of normal social activities? …that talks about them constantly and belittles you for using anything else? Me too.
[UPDATE: This is a new documentary and its link got killed - sorry but, go buy it or rent it from Amazon!]
Thanks to the heads up by the folks at the boxtank, myninjaplease.com can now be visualized as a graph by an applet by Marcel Salathe- follow this link to make a graph of a site
:: click the image above to enlarge ::
--07.11.2009--
Collective Socialism
Are the open source populations really Communist? According to this Wired article, they could be. All I can say is that I'm in line, although I am strafing two and fro. Let's just hope that the State doesn't start controlling the lines.
--07.07.2009--
I, Avatar
Futurist Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute has posted a thought-provoking avatar roadmap detailing an increasingly critical and symbiotic relationship between man and this progeny of ours. via .::FutureBlogger->
--06.22.2009--
Manifestation
Nathan Coley : There Will Be No Miracles Here, 2006. click here to enlarge the photo
--06.05.2009--
Crowdsourcing
Using "crowdsourcing," Aaron Koblin was able to pay online workers from an undefined network of 71 countries, 6 cents to record their voice for his song "Bicycle Built for Two Thousand." .::neural.it via-> Bricolabs shared network
Scientists have found three spots in the brain that prove religion is not a special case of a belief system but that it evolved along with other belief and social-cognitive abilities. .::via -> asylum
--04.02.2009--
LIFE is LIVING
LIFE is LIVING is a national campaign that uses a new form of green spoken story telling — one that represents the diverse and changing perspectives on what it means to be environmentally just. This campaign seeks to inspire people to take the value they see in their LIFE, and establish it powerfully as a new voice to define what it means to be logistically and psychologically included in the new, clean and green economies.
--04.02.2009--
Flash Mobs
12,000 people gathered at Liverpool station to simultaneously dance and listen to their headphones at the same place at the same time. Start a group and convene with others for little to no reason..
“someone who travels wherever they want at any time. It’s all about travel hacking, creative international travel, Round-the-World planning, and how to spend less money while traveling more.” Buy the guide from the the Art of Nonconformity via ::Vagablogging::
--03.09.2009--
DIY Screenplay
Having a hero, a love interest and a quest are some ingredients to writing a successful screenplay. Don't forget the final twist. via ZoomStart
--03.02.2009--
Better World Books
Listen to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's on her book, My Stroke of Insight. Capacity, hemispheres and potential. How her medical disaster led to new realizations .:: blog.betterworldbooks ->
--02.22.2009--
A New America
While the Obama administration in D.C. is doing its best to resuscitate a dying economic system, people on the ground have begun to create another America.
That is the huge difference between today’s response to our interlocking crises and yesterday’s to the Great Depression. keep reading by clicking here
If there is any advice to be given for 2009 it is to be visible. It is so imperative in this uncertain economy to remain on the radar of your existing clients and potential clients. more tips from in good company .:: thoughts and findings for women entrepreneurs and small business owners ->
--02.18.2009--
Number 47
In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.
--02.18.2009--
Nanogenerators
A research team led by Zhong Lin Wang of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech have developed for the first time a nanogenerator that can be driven by irregular, low-energy biomotion, including the tapping of a human finger and a hamster’s erratic running and scratching .::video and more -> MaRS blog
--02.18.2009--
Think Again
Sydney Finkelstein covers his four red flags of how leaders can work to make the right decisions at the right time. (Listen from the Harvard Business Review by clicking here)