NEWSUBSTANCE transforms an oil rig into a 35 meters tall public art installation in Weston-super-Mare, UK. The mega-platform features a 10- meter-high waterfall, a wild garden, and a 6,000-piece kinetic installation, including Ivan Black's work and Trevor Lee's art pieces. From 24 September to 5 November 2022, "SEE MONSTER" will welcome the public to inspire conversations about reuse, renewables, and the great British weather, as part of the festival UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK.
Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture the City, an ambitious artwork of an extraordinary size, will begin to accept visits from the public beginning September 2, 2022. The announcement was made by the Triple Aught Foundation, the not-for-profit organization responsible for managing the long-term oversight and maintenance of Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture. The artwork, a mile and a half long and nearly half a mile wide, is located in a remote stretch of the high Nevada desert. Work on the structure began in 1972 when the artist was 27 years old.
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei unveiled the Arch, a cage-like sculpture in front of the National Museum of Stockholm. The 12-meter-tall stainless steel structure features at its center silhouettes of two people holding one another, appearing to break through the steel bars of the cage. The artwork was created to symbolize refugee stories and is seen as an ode to freedom. The sculpture is installed outside Nationalmuseum national gallery on the Blasienholmen peninsula in Stockholm’s archipelago. It will remain there for one year, after which, it will be moved to a yet undisclosed location in the city.
Can architecture foster better relationships between people, creating an equalized and respectful use of space? Can tools be designed that strengthen the bonds between humans and objects? BAAG (Buenos Aires Arquitectura Grupal) studio explores the architectural elements that mediate between people and objects, the natural and artificial, public and private, individual and collective, and humans and other living things.
Etherea, the installation conceived by Edoardo Tresoldi for the Coachella festival in 2018, has landed in Rome for "Back to Nature”, an exhibition project curated by Costantino d’Orazio. The large transparent mesh sculpture will dialogue with the trees of the Parco dei Daini, in Villa Borghese, until December 13, 2020.
Studying the data that indicates a climate crisis that has been affecting the whole planet for the last decades, the reactionary attitudes may sound disappointing. However, at the same time that the news indicates a global average temperature rise, the political focus on the climate crisis is also intensified, according to the UN Environment report released in 2019, which is a reflection not only of the occurrence of manifestations and protests around the world but also of the so-called activist art expression.
Geometry of light, is a multimedia intervention by Luftwerk in collaboration with Iker Gil, exhibited in October, during the third edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, at the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois.
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On September 8, 2019, Austrian’s largest public art installation to date opened to the public. Titled FOR FOREST – The Unending Attraction of Nature, the artwork transforms the Wörthersee Football Stadium in Klagenfurt into a native central European forest. Conceived by Swiss curator Klaus Littmann and inspired by a dystopian drawing by Austrian artist and architect Max Peintner, the installation advocates for pressing contemporary issues such as climate change and deforestation. Through the structural containment of this massive forest, it suggests that nature may someday only be found in specially designated spaces, as animals are today in zoos. Landscape architecture was supervised by Enea Landscape Architecture.
OMA and Inside Outside have collaborated on the design of a vast monument in Dubai, titled “Ethar – Honoring Generosity.” The installation consists of a field of 1,680 triangular-shaped recycled aluminum columns arrayed like a magnetic field, engraved with stories from Arabic scholars, scientists, and thinkers.
The installation was designed to celebrate the “unique culture of charitable giving in the United Arab Emirates with a physical installation that is part of the urban landscape of Dubai.” Designed for a site on Jumeirah Beach, the monument’s character can also be adapted for various contexts, whether dispersed throughout the city or appearing in key urban locations as a symbol of Emirati culture.
19 installations have been unveiled across the California Desert as part of the Desert X international contemporary art exhibition. The second edition of the exhibition, running from February 9th to April 21st, 2019, is free and open to the public, and seeks to “activate the desert landscape through nineteen site-specific installations and performances by some of today’s most recognized international contemporary artists.”
Co-curated Amanda Hunt and Matthew Schum, the exhibition explores ideas of site-specificity, framing post-industrial art and the interactive possibilities it contains. The 2019 edition includes film projects and process-driven works, spanning 50 miles across the Coachella Valley into Mexico.
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Architecture as a profession today struggles with questions of relevance, with core questions surrounding the issue of whether it can create cultural vibrancy and meaning for the diverse world it serves. Within our own design community, we tend to give a lot of sway to an “exclusive tier” of architects who provide leadership and vision. While this leadership is critically important to the profession, it only corresponds to 2% of what gets built. Take it from Frank Gehry, whose 2014 comment still rings in our ears: “98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure sh*t. There is no sense of design, no respect for humanity."
If we embrace the importance and unique value of all things built on a wider range, we need to ask ourselves: how have we served and rewarded our peers responsible for creating this other 98%? Where should we set the bar for the emotional-artistic qualities of mainstream architecture?
Cristopher Cichocki's Root Cycle combines installation art with existing architecture in an effort to spark a discussion regarding the relationship between design, both contemporary and historical, and environmental sustainability.
Cichocki partnered with Geoplast, a local Italian designer and manufacturer dedicated to producing innovative sustainable design products. The artist uses a particular Geoplast elevator product and Aloe Vera plants as the main components for the artwork.
Amsterdam-based RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon have completed an imposing Dutch monument paying tribute to the country’s centuries-old flood defense systems. “Deltawerk //” appropriates the enormous decaying test models in the Waterloopbos national monument, a former Dutch Hydrodynamics laboratory.
Deltawerk //, which opened September 27th, is envisioned as a “tribute to the majesty and seemingly indestructible power of the Dutch delta works,” shedding new light on the “practice of preserving cultural heritage.”
Moscow-based designer Alex Shtanuk has launched an Indiegogo campaign for his 107,000-square-foot (10,000-square-meter) blanket woven from over 3000 NASA Space blankets, to feature at this year’s Burning Man festival at Black Rock City, Nevada.
“The Blanket” seeks to “bring the waves of the ancient Lake Lahontan back to Playa,” influenced by wind conditions to mirror surreal forms such as waves, mountains, or giant sculptures. With an exterior metallic coating, the blanket will reflect 97% of radiated heat, creating a cool, refreshing environment underneath for those seeking shelter from the hot Playa sun.
Every year in August, a temporary metropolis is erected in Black Rock City, Nevada. This is Burning Man, an annual event of art and architecture that attracts some 70,000 participants. The people who come to Burning Man come from all walks of life. What is incredible is that they come together to construct an ephemeral city that lasts for 7 days. These people assume the role of architects and construction workers and use the desert to build all sorts of shelters in a fast, sustainable way. The desert is so remote, and everything built in Black Rock City is packed and taken home at the end of the event, and some of the art is burned on site. This poses a unique architectural challenge. The people who have come to build these structures have to plan them way in advance to accommodate all the challenges of working in the desert, but the result is worth it - a striking, unique city, democratically built, set against a desert landscape, and for only one week.
We had the chance to interview Kim Cook at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin. Kim Cook is Director of Art and Civic Engagement at Burning Man. Kim Cook and her team are tasked with increasing the impact of Burning Man’s arts and civic initiatives. As part of her role, Kim engages with artists and community leaders to increase opportunities for funding, collaboration and learning.
MVRDV has won a competition for the design of an art installation in the Dutch coastal city of Den Helder, seeking to strengthen the connection between land and sea through a new public landmark. The “SeaSaw” consists of a viewing platform balanced in equilibrium atop the city’s flood defenses, a distinguishable structure praised by the jury for capturing “the energetic spirit of the city represented as an infinite form.”
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Artist Christo has released images of his proposed temporary sculpture for Hyde Park, London, to become his first major outdoor public sculpture in the United Kingdom. Titled “The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake)," the sculpture will consist of 7,506 horizontally-stacked barrels floating on the Serpentine Lake throughout the summer of 2018.
“The Mastaba” will coincide with an exhibition of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work at the Serpentine Galleries, featuring sculptures, drawings, collages and photographs spanning more than 60 years. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the exhibition will be the artists’ first in a UK public institution since 1979 and will showcase their long-running exploits with barrel forms, chosen initially for their sculptural effect and low cost.
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_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake).jpg?1522848242 "Courtesy of Christo")
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_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake)_(5).jpg?1522848162 "Courtesy of Christo")
_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake)_(4).jpg?1522848063 "Courtesy of Christo")
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