Imagine a project that does not need to be constructed, because – being a tree - it grows by itself. Such a project only needs to be planted. Therefore the transportation of the materials for such a project is very energy efficient, because as a matter of fact, no major transportation of materials is actually necessary. The only materials to be transported are the seeds for planting. And the only energy spent is to prevent hastiness and impetuousness as such a project needs a lot of time and patience to grow. (source bustler) Read more...

How would an apartment look like if it was inspired by a painting of Karel Appel? Well, something like the one that follows! Dutch Architectural office DUS Architects recently designed the interior of the Karel Appel House which opened its doors in May 2010. The concept of the house is inspired by the idiosyncratic works of Karel Appel, who was characterized in his paintings by his phrase: “I start from my matter- the paint and the canvas.”  (source yatzer) Read more...

Nothing attests to humans’ instinctual love of making stuff and taking it apart more than the Lego brick. The plastic toy has been featured in films and music videos and is the basis of some serious modern art projects — including Jan Vormann’s ongoing “Dispatchwork” pieces in Berlin and Bocchignano, Italy. Vormann identifies damaged buildings and plugs the gaps with brightly colored Lego bricks. (source inhabitat) Read more...

There were over 75,000 visitors, in four days, to the two new museums in Rome: the MAXXI by Zaha Hadid (inaugurated with four major exhibitions) and the Macro by Decq Odile (which will begin activities from October). (source archiEurope) Read more…

Fountain of Toys, the new sculptural work by Los Angeles-based architect Greg Lynn, is sited in the Museum’s outdoor courtyard. (source arcspace) Read more... 

Not much rankles like large-scale urban development. Take, for instance, some of the more extreme claims regarding the plan for a sports arena at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards: ill-conceived, a waste of taxpayer money, a circumvention of the democratic process. But would anyone go so far as to indict it, or any other development, as a cause of death? (source architectural record) Read more…

Sound is an integral part of the way we understand the space surrounding us. Size, quality, timbre, texture and the atmosphere of a space can all be inferred by the way in which we experience sound. Based on ideas from the Suffolk island of Orford Ness, Ric Lipson’s acoustic theatre ‘Hear Here” has been developed over a preoccupation with the acoustic qualities of circular spaces and ambient sonic landscapes. (source interactive architecture) Read more…

In this installation, YesYesNo teamed up with The Church, Inside Out Productions and Electric Canvas to turn the Auckland Ferry Building into an interactive playground. Our job was to create an installation that would go beyond merely projection on buildings and allow viewers to become performers, by taking their body movements and amplifying them 5 stories tall. (source archinect) Read more…

Timm Suess was born and grew up in Basel, Switzerland, and shot his first photo at the age of five (on his first kindergarten day). An industrial psychologist by trade, he has been an avid photographer since the mid 1990s. After 2002, he started to specialize in urban decay photography. (source architonic) Read more…

An abandoned house in Detroit has been encased in layers of ice as part of an architectural installation and social change project. (source australian design) Read more…

LAVA’s latest architectural exploration features lightweight, lantern sculptures shaped like tigers. (source australian design) Read more…

This is a permanent pavilion for a net artist, Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam. (source spaceInvading) Read more…

The Ideal Theater competition is created and managed by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, that has held it for the last three years. The competition aims to involve theatre and architecture students in order to create professional theatre projects. (source Ymag) Read more…

New York-based painter Carmen Einfinger has won an international competition to transform Dolna Square in Gdansk, Poland, into a vibrant outdoor gallery. (source bustler) Read more…

As a way of thinking about space, “performance architecture” is based on the notion that the relationships between occupied spaces and occupying subjects are permeable. This is to say that a subject first perceives his or her environment and is then changed by that perception. (source alex schweder) Read more…

The ‘State Kremlin Palace’ in Moscow was built in 1961, under Nikita Khruschev, as a modern arena for Communist Party congresses and conferences, performances and concerts. The main part of the building is one of Europe’s biggest and finest auditoriums with 6000 seats, used mostly for concerts and ballet performances today. (source dailytonic) Read more…

A new voice in the emerging field created from the interdisciplinary overlap of architecture and the site specific art. (source leadpencilstudio)Read more…

Yesterday I went to the DVD presentation of "Le Monde de Jean Cocteau" in the culture café of the VUB, the University of Brussels. The DVD was presented by David Gullentops (VUB) en was shown full length (55 min).

The educative and scientific DVD « Le Monde de Jean Cocteau » focusses on the observation of connections between literature and other art forms based on the work of Jean Cocteau.  The DVD is produced in french but they are working hard on an english version. The DVD is not for sale yet, but will be offered for sale soon. If you want more information about the DVD you can contact the author David Gullentops at david.gullentops@vub.ac.be .

I was surprised to see how many talents Jean Cocteau had: poet, filmmaker, writer, playwriter, designer... I liked his drawings a lot. You can find more information about Cocteau here: www.jeancocteau.net .