Edited by Terri Peters, "Experimental Green Strategies: Redefining Ecological Design Research", Architectural Design, John Wiley & Sons, November 2011
"Bøger: Fabricate Making Digital Architecture", Arkitekten, October 2011 (Published in Danish)
"Bøger: Transformation: 22 Nye Danske Projekter", Arkitekten, October 2011 (Published in Danish)
Mellem 'arkitekturen' og Kroppen, Arkitekten, December 2009 (Published in Danish)
terri_peters_arkitekten_vol3_nr15_2009.pdf | |
File Size: | 786 kb |
File Type: |
Architecture for the Five Senses, Metropolis, December 2009
Highlights from Stockholm Furniture Fair 2009, Clear Magazine May 2009
BIG in Denmark - Yes is More at DAC Copenhagen, Archnewsnow.com, March 2009
Like stepping into Koolhaas’s 2004 comic book Content, the work on show at “Yes is More” is certainly more Simpsons than Semper, but it’s difficult to deny the optimism and vibrancy that characterizes the work of Danish design office BIG. BIG Architects is led by Bjarke Ingels Group (hence BIG), formerly a partner of PLOT Architects, and before that a project architect at Office for Metropolitan Architecture/OMA. His Copenhagen-based office has about 80 staff and a penchant for brightly colored physical models, a brilliant website, and imaginative computer visualizations….The layout and graphics of the show are very much the message – even without understanding Danish it is evident that BIG’s work promises a new, youthful, and fun approach to architecture. Yet even if BIG had decided not to communicate its designs with so much personal branding, the work would still stand out from its contemporaries on its own design merit. The fact that many of the fictional-looking designs have been built and are successful buildings, such as the VM Housing in Copenhagen (stunning design, quirky pointy balconies, and small but functional flats), and the Mountain housing project (which boasts a lovely stepped green roof providing private gardens for residents above a multi-story car park), here risks being overshadowed by the over-the-top graphics.... Read more here.
'The Capital of Reinvention'- Recycled Design from Tokyo, NEO2 Magazine February 2009
Highlights from Tokyo Design Week included Japanese designer Nosigner’s handmade lights made with reassembled eggshells, UK-based Raw Edges Studio’s lightweight paper Pull Lights and Tokyo based designer Jurgen Lehl’s wild woven bamboo and steel stools. Japanese designers Eding Post showed a quirky concept for making recycling more fun with their POPET dolls made of colourful plastic bags stuffed with trash. Maruja Fuentes’s recycled plastic ‘Leaning Molds’ would make a colourful and practical solution street furniture in public spaces. The grounds of 100% Tokyo were home to village of cargo shipping containers with diverse works exhibited inside each one, from big name brands such as Levis and Gstar to student works from Musashino University to multimedia installations by Creative Cluster Digital gallery. Inside the 100% Design show, held in a series of big white tents, young UK designer Max Lamb demonstrated how to make his DIY Chair, a low cost and easy to assemble ‘designer’ chair produced as a series of step by step instructions on how to make it.. Download the PDF below to read the Spanish version, translated and published in NEO2 February 2009.
tokyo_design_week_neo2_feb_2009.pdf | |
File Size: | 411 kb |
File Type: |
Show Report: 100% Design London 2008, Azure Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009
London’s annual Design Festival encompasses three big shows: 100% Design (the largest curated furniture and interiors show in the UK), Designers Block (typically younger, unsigned talent) and Tent London (a trendy, accessible, consumer-oriented show). But the rest of London also fills up with dozens of off-site installations, one-day events and pop ups during the festival’s 11-day run. This year a number of venues and parties focused not just on furniture but also on fashion, technology, industrial design and architecture. 100% Design remains the most influential of the bunch, with groundbreaking works in the fields of sustainable design, new materials and innovative lighting. One exhibition highlight was Lighten Up, a sustainable lighting show from [re]design, that featured UK design such as Lula Dot’s colorful ‘CAPtivate’ which is a build-it-yourself light made of recycled bottle caps that light up, allowing the user to customize the quality and colors of the light by adding bottle caps to create a personalized light sculpture. Hulger’s low energy Plumen light reinvents the normal lightbulb, with a twisted, tubular design that reflects the innovation in energy savings with a reinterpreted form. Known for challenging material conventions with her cowhide furniture, Julia Lohmann’s ‘Nesting Lamp’ lights are made of re-hydrated and lacquered kelp, stretched into geometric lampshades, inspired by her recent visit in Japan... Read more in Azure Magazine Jan/Feb 2009.
Show Report: Tokyo Designers Week 2008, Metropolismag.com, November 2008
Inside massive white tents in the grounds of Meiji Jingu Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo, the main show was devoted to cutting edge furniture, interiors, and lighting. Japanese design brands such as Hoya Crystal and Taschen Japan were side by side with up and coming collectives such as Dutch designers Created In Holland. Highlights from local talent included Japanese furniture designers Cozy and Cozy, whose work with ‘plant designer’ Atelier Yukiyanagi looked like plastic bag trees. Jewelry designer Heigo debuted a new collection of minimal, industrial-looking wearable art. Trade Council of Iceland landed the prime spot at the main entrance, and Scottish Enterprise had a host of friendly designers on hand to chat about the diverse works on show... Read more here.
Show Report: Venice Architecture Biennale 2008, Archnewsnow.com, October 2008
The two straight days of thunderstorms did little to dampen spirits the opening weekend of the 11th Annual Venice Architecture Biennale, which runs until November 23, 2008. This year’s show is curated by architect and writer Aaron Betsky, the former head of NAI Rotterdam, who now lives in Cincinnati where he is director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. He says “buildings are buildings; architecture is something different. Architecture is everything that is about building. It is how we think about building, how we draw buildings, how we organize buildings, how buildings present themselves, through façades, interiors,” he explains. “These days, buildings are designed not by architects, who make architecture, and not to be architecture, but to be cheap and easy and efficient.” You can almost imagine architects around the world cheering. "Architecture is very difficult to find.”... Read more here and here.
Kelly Mark's Letraset drawings at Wynick/Tuck Gallery Toronto, Art Review Magazine
Kelly Mark's Letraset 'drawings' are compositions of meticulously arranged transfer lettering on mount board. The black and white designs are ambiguous and suggest an unseen source material such as aerial matting, sewing patters, or a convoluted text-based code. Mark, one of Canada's leading conceptual artists, best known for her Hiccup video and Glow House installations, considers these doodles her 'guilty pleasure'. More graphic and formally driven than her other work, they allow her the pleasure of making and designing in a dynamic and architectural way... Read more here.
'Horizon' by David Adjaye, Albion Gallery, London, Oyster Magazine
In the few years, 40 year old designer David Adjaye has become known as the up-and-coming designer of some of London’s most swanky private houses, as well as some a handful of less published, yet significant public buildings. He first attracted critical attention for his surreal ‘Dirty House’, a converted East London furniture factory where he famously painted the existing brick façade all black, and in the repetitive façade with big, square, punched windows at high levels, he substituted the glass with mirrors at street level. His ‘windowless’ Electra House, also in East London, is similarly surreal, but even more controversial, presenting a black, blank, ‘screen’ façade to the street, a study of surveillance and privileged views, a common theme in his work. Adjaye’s designs are multidisciplinary to the extreme, and his recent collaborators and clients reads like a who’s who of the world of fashion, art and design. Since Adjaye/Associates was formed in 2000, he has worked on everything from a sculptural, timber dress that looks like it has exploded and frozen in place, (designed for Vogue with fashion designer Boudicca), to a glowing timber pavilion with artist Olafur Eliasson at the Venice Biennale in 2005. He has designed two library buildings called ‘Idea Stores’ that look absolutely nothing like libraries-- colourful, dynamic buildings, the ‘flagship’ store in East London rising to 5 stories with a café and yoga den. And now people are realizing Adjaye’s ambitions and quiet confidence are well founded. A major newspaper last week dubbed him “David becoming a Goliath’ for his imminent takeover of the British architecture scene... Read more in Oyster Magazine Issue 63.
'The Show Must Go On', A Review of End of Year Architecture Student Shows, Architects Journal Magazine, July 2004
After an unsettling year in architectural education, structurally, and financially, Terri Whitehead visits the leading schools and students at their summer showcases to examine the effects, good and bad, of collective uncertainty. It has been a turbulent year for the students of the 36 validated architecture schools in the UK. With talk of top-up fees, student loans spiraling out of control, and proposed modifications to the course structure, there can be no doubt that architectural education is in transition. Visiting a selection of schools, I was curious to see how these factors would impact on the end of year shows. Architects and students alike were stunned last year when Cambridge said it would not be recruiting more Diploma students for Part 2, and the Bartlett, widely regarded as one of the top schools, received a disappointing result in its RIBA assessment this year. Current students of architecture are gaining an awareness of political and economic issues relating to their education. They will probably find that it helps prepare them for their career in practice—if they go there at all. With allied fields such as computer graphics, information technology, visualization, film-making, teaching and management having more sociable hours and better pay, many students will not look to qualify for their Part 3…Read more in Architects Journal Issue Number 3, Volume 220, July 2004.
'Skyliners' Doug Aitken at Barcelona Pavilion, Spain, Art Review Magazine, September 2004
...‘Skyliner’ is an extraordinary piece for Aitken --it is not linked to an image. It is entirely dependent on the visitor to participate and interact with his work. It is positioned in the pavilion at a junction between spaces, creating a dynamic point of material and spatial collision. The area is bordered by a frosted glass screen, next to a marble wall, and opens both to a rear garden and the reflecting pool of the formal courtyard. Standing underneath the speakers, visitors are mirrored in the glass screen and this unique spatial arrangement allows for unexpected reflections and complex ambiguity. Visiting the pavilion in a heavy summer rainstorm, the absence of Aitken’s trademark video screens to ignite the narrative, encourage the viewer to include everything in the experience: sounds of passing traffic, the rain off the roof and conversations of other visitors. There is a strangeness in the displaced voices emanating from the speakers: sounds seem to come and go, moving closer to and backing away from the microphone. Some speakers emit noises that sound like wind, and rustling movement. The result is a sort of chaotic jumble creating a dynamic interaction between visitor and installation. Aitken promises ‘We’re safe as long as everything is moving’... Read more in Art Review September 2004.
Jorn Utzon at Louisiana Gallery, Denmark, Blueprint Magazine, June 2004
The Louisiana Museum is located less than an hour by train from Copenhagen with views to the Oresund waterway separating Denmark and Sweden. Utzon has spent time at the gallery and has said that this view inspired his work, including the Sydney Opera House. His philosophy of working ‘on the edge of the real’ was illustrated in this building. When he designed it, he had almost no idea how to build it and that was one of the reasons there were so many delays and costs spun out of control. The technology lagged far behind his imagination. As the most significant project of his career, the Opera House has remained with him, even when he was no longer on the project, “I see it every night when I close my eyes.” In 1998, The Sydney Opera House Trust asked to return to the project to complete his original vision. The exhibition is inspiring and satisfies the viewers desire to see background design studies and drawings of the Opera House, which, aside from being a modern icon, set a new standard for landmark cultural buildings. Utzon wisely doesn’t try to discuss the politics surrounding the Opera House—he leaves that for everyone else and lets the work speak for itself. In 2002 he revealed to startled Australian journalists “My soul is in the building. I think about it all the time. I will haunt it when I go.” ... Read more in Blueprint Magazine Issue 220, June 2004.
Show Report: 100% Design London 2006, Azure Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007
While 100% is still the main draw, there were more than 150 smaller venues that drew crowds across London during the two weeks of London Design Festival. The program of ‘fringe’ events became the main draw for an increasing number of visitors that enjoyed a program of film, fashion, art and design around the city. At [Re]design’s debut show of eco-friendly furniture and lighting, the Boiler House venue in East London saw innovative works from more than 40 young designers. London’s Play design exhibited a kit to make your own milk jug light, complete with customizable graphics for the outer plastic shell. Giles Miller of Farm design collective showed his elegant and surprisingly sturdy recycled cardboard rocking chair, and designers Cohda presented a series of stringy, sculptural, recycled plastic chairs. At nearby 100% East, a highlight was PD Design’s biodegradable Green Day furniture series. Using a patented, recyclable material, OJO+, (which is a kind of paper yarn) the works are more than just curious to look at, they are functional and suitable for use in public spaces. On opening night the installation was crowded with curious visitors taking off their shoes and padding around the small ‘garden’. As expected, the September design shows in London drew in the crowds (estimates place attendance at 100% Design alone at more than 35,000) but the real attraction was the diversity in the range of shows across the capital. Rather than choosing one over the other it seemed that visitors were happy to traverse the city exploring new venues and broadening their perceptions of design. Exhibitors developed innovative ways to draw in new audiences, emphasizing creative overlap in the various design disciplines, perhaps hinting at a more interactive future for design... Read more in Azure Magazine Jan/Feb 2007.
'Louisiana Manifesto' by Jean Nouvel, Louisiana Gallery, Denmark, Blueprint Magazine, September 2005
Visiting Louisiana Museum, a truly unique, Modern art park and gallery on the picturesque North Zealand coast in Denmark, it is hard not to feel inspired by the genius loci ‘spirit of the place’. Here French architect Jean Nouvel presents his architectural ‘Louisiana Manifesto’ as a meditation on the architecture of this place with reference to his own recent works. Set in a grand, stepped landscape dotted with modern sculpture (featuring Calder mobile sculptures) and hidden architectural gems (including a tiny pavilion by Finnish Alvar Aalto), the museum features delightful double height rooms and the lower, sky lit circulation spaces that double as smaller galleries with views to the landscape. Louisiana regularly celebrates the links between art and architecture and often exhibits architectural work, including recent shows by Utzon, Foster and Gehry. Nouvel has taken an unconventional approach in Louisiana Manifesto with a total absence of architectural drawings or physical models. The first, ‘Manifesto’ room is a very serious, colourless space, plastered with large, floor to ceiling text about architecture. ‘Whatever the scale of the transformation, of a site or a place, how are we to communicate the unpredictability of the mutation of a living fragment?’ It seems a bit lost in translation for this French architect writing in English in a Danish museum. Perplexed visitors leaving this large room, devoid of images or drawings, will be more at ease in the adjacent space where lightboxes are mounted along a long curved wall presenting the viewer with a photographic journey through decades of built work. While the projects are expertly photographed and slickly presented, perhaps visitors could do without Nouvel reading aloud from French philosopher Rene Descartes at low volume along the way…. Read more in Blueprint Magazine Issue 234, September 2005.
'Trees, Water, Rocks' Henna Nadeem, London, AN Magazine
Returning from a research trip to India, I visited the ‘Platform for Art’ exhibition by Henna Nadeem at Piccadilly Circus Underground in the ticket hall and station. Nadeem designs swirling, stylised stencil designs overlaid on vast photographic images of landscapes. I saw her work in the ‘Pattern Crazy’ show at the Crafts Council in 2002, where it was smaller scale and influenced by Islamic designs and motifs collaged on top of various landscape and travel scenes. ‘Trees, Water, Rocks’ is somewhat different. The title, playfully referring to the game Rock Paper Scissors has varied cultural references and iconography. In these new works, the origin of these designs are less clear, more muddied but rich with multicultural motifs and patterns. Nadeem explains she is expanding her references to include images that she finds formally pleasing, with less emphasis on their geographic and cultural origin. In my studies and travels in modern India, I find the culture embracing modern design, technology and lifestyle and mixing it deftly but sometimes awkwardly, with tradition and history. Here Nadeem combines Japanese, Moorish and Islamic motifs, together with natural landscapes and wilderness from around the world, with great success.
Her work looks digitally produced, but the collage is cut by hand... Read more here.
Jean Prouve at Design Museum London for Clear Magazine
Known for his experimental, lightweight, Modern buildings and his elegant furniture designs, French designer Jean Prouve (1901-1984) is one of the most important innovators in Modern design. While his name might not be as recognizable as Le Corbusier or Mies Van Der Rohe, his influence has been just as significant. Ranging from innovative metal clip-on building facades, to timber flat pack houses, to welded industrial components and bent wood and metal furniture, his work is unbelievably ambitious and hard to characterize. Even his background was unconventional--he wasn’t an architect (although he collaborated with architects including his brother and later, his son in his building projects) and he trained as a blacksmith. Prouve believed in a limited palette of materials, such as sheet metal and timber --he loved the industrial aesthetic and environment calling himself ‘a factory man’-- and creatively using standardized building components to ease production and costs. For Prouve, Modernism should transcend aesthetics --he was passionate about the physical and social context of his designs. The happiest and most prolific period of his life was when he had a manufacturing factory, 1947-1952, where he could test his mass-produced Modernist principles….Read more in Clear Issue 25.
'Blinded by Light' James Turrell at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Oyster Magazine
Maverick American artist James Turrell’s work is entirely about light, something free and accessible to all, yet he produces work that is magical, original, engaging and surprising. “My art deals with light itself, not as the bearer of revelation, but as revelation itself” he says. With his long white beard and soft spoken explanations of the spirituality behind his art, Turrell is a mythical character, unconventional and eccentric, with a past that includes daring feats such as piloting helicopters shuttling monks out of Tibet fleeing Chinese invasion, and varied academic pursuits such as training in mathematics, psychology and astronomy. His most famous and internationally known work is his 25-year obsession with Roden Crater in Arizona, where he has been working to transform the 300,000 year old volcanic crater into a ‘skyspace’ gallery where he hopes to invite visitors to admire the heavens when he completes the project in about 2010. His work challenges perceptions of what most people would think of as ‘art’ and most people wouldn’t see the potential of a dormant volcano in Painted Desert Arizona as a gallery space. In parallel with his work on Roden Crater, Turrell has built several ‘skyspace’ installations in Japan, Ireland, Holland, France, the UK and the USA. The Kielder Skyspace at Cat Cairn, UK, at a rural, rocky outcrop near the Scottish Border, is a buried cylindrical viewing chamber, entered through a tunnel and capped by a roof with a 3m diameter circular opening in its centre. Light Reign (2003) at Henry Art Gallery, UK, is a small freestanding enclosed chamber where visitors sit on a bench and view the sky and atmospheric changes through an opening in the roof. Read more in Oyster Magazine, Issue 63.
'Beneath the Roses' Gregory Crewdson at White Cube London, C Magazine
The opening of Gregory Crewdson’s “Beneath The Roses” exhibition in London’s trendy Hoxton Square had an atmosphere of carnival as more than a thousand revelers swarmed the pavement in front of White Cube Gallery. Following on from his hugely successful “Twilight” series (2002), this new series is a collection of twenty large format colour portraits, fourteen of these exhibited at White Cube, characterized by their technical complexity, intense cinematic and dramatic qualities and obsessive attention to detail. Crewdson believes these new works benefit enormously from the higher production budget that allowed him to make use of cinematic lighting techniques in these stunning panorama images. The photographs, all untitled, are enigmatic portraits of angst-ridden citizens, in anonymous American vernacular townscapes. In one, a shocked looking middle-aged woman sits on the edge of a bed clad only in a soiled nightgown. She is covered in earth, her body scratched by the tangled leaves and thorns she holds in her lap. Has she been doing some midnight gardening or tearing up the neighbour’s rosebushes that are visibly tracked from the door to her bed? Mysterious and ripe with double meanings, Crewdson’s rich visual narratives include theatrical includes and psychologically charged motifs such as mirrors, doorways, and windows. Read more in C Magazine Fall 2005.
'I Really Should', Lisson Gallery, London, C Magazine
Kelly Mark’s ‘I Really Should’ sound installation is mounted discretely in the long entry corridor at the Lisson gallery in London. Entering the space, visitors hear Mark’s quiet monologue: ‘I really should try to absorb all I can, I really should take a walk on the beach, I really should focus on my career, I really should have cropped it a bit closer…’. The sound loop of obligations, personal notes and stream of consciousness is delivered in an even monotone, listing various tasks, a mantra for self-improvement. She sounds lonely, isolated, even bored. Varying between mundane chores such as ‘I really should clean out the litter box’ to more inspired and grand personal goals such as ‘I really should take more chances, I really should rediscover my heritage.’, the Toronto-based artist has exhibited this piece variously in Toronto, Vancouver, Buffalo, Connecticut, Birmingham and now London. It is provocative, humorous and has a resonance with its listeners. It is difficult not to become involved in the piece, to look for a narrative, to think of more lists. Mark’s work nearly always has a political and conceptual focus, making the viewer examine the mundane rituals of everyday life and engaging with current events. She challenges the visitor: what’s on your list of things to do and what’s preventing you from carrying out these tasks? As a society, are we so burdened with things to that we do nothing at all? Read more in C Magazine Winter 2005.
'The Diminishing Present', Photofusion Gallery, London by Edgar Martins, Canadian Art Magazine
Over a period of 2 years, Edgar Martins photographed landscape and suburban life within a close radius to his current home in Bedford, UK. He felt challenged by his proximity and familiarity to his chosen photographic locations, after years of travelling, seeking to analyze urban and suburban landscapes around the world. ‘It’s easier to photograph places we haven’t seen’ Martins explains ‘we take for granted places we see everyday’. In this series of new work, he sought to document the ‘city as a movement of isolation’, guided by rigorous, self imposed rules to allow him a critical distance and way of looking at familiar places anew. He kept in nightly contact with the local weather bureau, to ensure he didn’t miss an overcast, foggy evening or early morning, his ideal shooting conditions. The mundane and isolating experience of photographing the series is reflected in the moody, atmospheric and enigmatic landscapes. This series represents a journey of self-discovery for the artist.‘For me, home is a tricky notion’ Martins explains, referring to being born in Portugal and spending ages 1-20 in Macau, China before moving to the UK. His complex personal history does much to explain his interest in investigating issues of contemporary city and rendering images of the familiar, strange... Read more here.
'Vertiges' Printemps de September festival, Toulouse, France, Art and Architecture Magazine
Artistic director of this year’s Printemps de September, Jean Marc Bustamante, explains ‘vertiges or vertigos is a selective, subjective examination of the many ways in which contemporary art can appear as an exploration of psychological landscapes as well as visual or, more generally, perceptual landscapes.’ In selecting which artists to show in this prestigious, themed, three week exhibition held in various venues along Toulouse’s picturesque river promenade, he sampled widely from various age groups, (such as Piene who is in her early 30’s, Cindy Sherman and Philip Taaffe in their 50’s and James Rosenquist in his 70’s), locations (although all in Europe or the USA), and styles (from graphic artists such as Fred Tomaselli, to hand drawings by Virginie Loze, to installation from Bjorn Dahlem). The artists are, what the Bustamante calls ‘singular figures’ that don’t really belong to any particular movement in art. Each of the 25 international artists represented shows only a small amount of work, and the focus does rest firmly on the overall theme of the show....Read more in Art and Architecture Winter 2005/6.
Non-Standard Architectures, Paris, Blueprint Magazine, Feb 2004
Non-Standard Architectures is organized through an interpretation of the Weierstrass mathematical function, and the result is a three-dimensional ribbon that curls and slices through the space, leaving 12 similar exhibition areas. The visitor is guided by this sculpture through the space, which displays a collection of historical illustrations like open references to a more mainstream modernism. Both literally and figuratively, the non-standard models and images are marginalized, and separate from their predecessors. A common theme is shared: that of the computer not as a digital drafting board-to do tasks that would otherwise be done by hand-but as a key method of design generation. Read more in Blueprint Magazine February 2004.
Light artist and architect James Turrell, B-Guided Magazine, Spring 2006
“My desire is to set up a situation to which I can take you and let you see” explains American light artist James Turrell. “My art deals with light itself, not as the bearer of revelation, but as revelation itself.” An unconventional blend of art, architecture, landscape and atmosphere, Turrell’s work is difficult to describe because it depends on an interactive relationship between the visitor and the work that must be experienced to be fully understood. Turrell’s ‘skyspace’ landscape installations are conceived of as monumental, yet intimate, viewing chambers, often designed for only a dozen visitors at a time. These installations have been built around the world, in environments and cultures as diverse as Japan, Ireland, the UK and the USA. There is an eternal and timeless quality to his work: everyone, everywhere, can identify with light. An example of one of his skyspace installations is the Kielder Skyspace at Cat Cairn, UK, located at a rural, rocky outcrop near the Scottish Border. Here Turrell has designed an underground cylindrical viewing chamber, accessed by tunnel and capped by a roof with a 3m diameter circular opening in its centre. Another skyspace in the UK, at Henry Art Gallery, is a small freestanding enclosed chamber in the landscape where visitors sit on a bench and view the sky and atmospheric changes through an opening in the roof. Read more in B-Guided Spring 2006.
"Red + White: Canadians in Design", Canada House, London, Archnewsnow.com
The future of Canadian design on show in London features rocket suits, tea pots, leather boots, and more from Canada's hottest young talent. Organized by BARK Design Collective, a Vancouver-based community of designers that promotes Canadian design both at home and abroad, this exhibition is its third major project this year. BARK enjoyed critical success at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo with their “No Apologies Necessary: Design From Canada” exhibition last November. At Canada House in London, nineteen designers are exhibited and the objects range from Molo Design’s “Floating Tea Lantern and Teacups” to John Fluevog’s iconic footwear designs to Loyal Loot Collective’s “Coat Hang,” a stylish and modern wood coat hanger. The work is installed in a surprisingly small space – one small room off a corridor of offices and banquet halls. However, on entering the room, clever lighting and exhibition design creates a sense of verticality. The works sit on an elevated plinth – an arrangement that guides viewers into a centralized viewing area, rather than walking around the projects in a traditional wall hung environment. The most eye-catching object is the “Exosuit” designed by Dr. Phil Nuytten, whose high performance futuristic deep-water dive suit hangs suspended over the room... Read more here.
Saucier + Perrotte's Canada Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2004, Montreal Gazette Newspaper, October 2004
...At the Canadian Pavilion at the Giardini, at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Saucier and Perrotte's installation combines indirect reference to their architecture using the abstract sculptures, with direct reference to their buildings in the photographs and small video screens that show still images of their work. Giles Saucier says he finds his inspiration in ‘nature and the reinterpretation of found objects in the landscape’. Entering the pavilion, the first image is an enigmatic photograph he took while visiting Finland of a sculpture in the frozen landscape, not a building as would be expected. He takes his inspiration from what he calls ‘memory landscape’. In designing ‘Objets Trouves’, he says ‘I wanted to first give back a sense of space’. The pavilion previously had the windows and courtyard covered up to allow an artificially lit viewing pavilion for exhibitions. By uncovering the building, a fantastic dialogue emerges between the architecture-for-viewing and the architecture-as-building as the space becomes integrated into its surroundings once again. Their hard work has paid off. Saucier and Perrotte’s thought-provoking vision for the Canadian pavilion has been well received amongst visitors and their peers in Venice. Giles Saucier estimates that on opening night, he welcomed over 100 visitors at an opening party in the small pavilion. A transformation is taking place in contemporary architecture, and it is exciting to see Canada contributing to dialogue and debate at an international level... Excerpt from Montreal Telegraph Newspaper Print Edition, Arts Section Page H2, 9 October 2004, also published online.
"The 1960's: Montreal Thinks Big", Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Archnewsnow.com
The disappointments of 1960s urban developments offer important lessons: the initial schemes were often right, but didn’t work when realized only in part or with key elements incomplete or ill-maintained. Many of the ideas were great, but the final results were somehow out of scale and out of sync. Some were neither great nor sympathetic to the urban fabric, but all are well documented in this thorough exhibition. Two of Montréal’s major built developments – Place des Arts and Place Bonaventure – are put into architectural context. Even to the untrained eye, it is easy to compare projects and notice trends in urban planning. For example, the scheme for Place des Arts initially looked like New York’s Lincoln Center with large buildings facing each other in a “U” shape around a courtyard. But the plan was not executed completely and the results were disappointing. One building, key to the scheme, was not built at all and an ill-used park was put in its place. The controversial Radio Canada office tower, begun in 1966, devastated a large Montréal neighbourhood to make yet more car parking and commercial space. In an essay “Learning from Montréal” in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, American architect and critic Michael Sorkin argues for the selection of Montréal as a case study of the 1960s: “The astonishing thing is that every single standard-issue piece of mid-century modernist strategizing happened here.” Read more here.
Venice Biennale 2004 "Redesigning Representation: From 3D Models to Rhizomic Arrangements", Art Fairs International Magazine
More than 100,000 visitores toured the massive installation of photographs, physical models, animations, and building prototypes that represented 170 architects, 200 projects, and 44 countries at the 9th annual Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. The exhibition was curated by Kurt Forester with the theme ‘Metamorph’, with an aim to showcase the changing nature of both design and representation in contemporary architecture. The projects were arranged in themes: Atmosphere, Concert Halls, Episodes, Hyper-Projects, Surfaces, Topography and Transformation. Each project was represented in conceptual physical models, photography, as well as in drawings or animations. In Hyper-projects, British firm Alsop Architects exhibited the Greater Middlehaven master plan that is under development in North East London. This is part of a major regeneration proejct in a part of the UK that Alsop says will benefit from “striking architecture and bold planning”… Read more in Art Fairs International Issue Jan/Feb 2005.
"The City That Never Was- Imaginary Architecture in Western Art", Bilbao Spain, Blueprint Magazine
With an enigmatic and dramatic title, ‘The City that Never Was’ produced in collaboration with the Barcelona Contemporary Cultural Centre, promises to show fantastical cities. There are no architecture drawings or sketches, or even any realistic urban plans. In many ways, the exhibition fulfils this expectation of novelty and fantasy, beginning with examples of a little-known genre of 16th century paintings of architectural caprice. These are incredibly detailed, small-scale works representing imaginary cities that are not bound by reason or truthfulness in design. The quirky, distorted perspectives show a fascination with bridges, thresholds, and impossible lighting and shadows, which have inspired centuries of representations of urban life. Read more in Blueprint Magazine March 2004.