Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Madrid-born artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s latest work, Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With, realizes one of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt projects–albeit upside-down. The installation is an inverted, replica of Mies’ 50×50 House project from 1951. The small, house is completely enclosed in glass, with black leather Barcelona chairs, glass-topped tables, and a wood partition, containing a kitchen with a small range, countertop and a French Press with a teaspoon.

Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With, by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Exhibition: Soviet Constructivism at ALVA

Recent graduates of the University of Western Australia have exhibited recent work, Soviet Constructivism. Each student selects a building which encapsulates a significant theoretical position in architectural history. In 2010 the Soviet Avant Garde of constructivism was picked as the epoch of exploration. A model of the chosen example will be made to an agreed scale, which will be accompanied by a written paper of not more than 2000 words. The written component is to be a critical analysis of the treatise or manifesto from which the built form is derived. The critical analysis also serves as a reference point for the realization of three dimensional forms of models.

Exhibition: Soviet Constructivism, The University of Western Australia Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts (ALVA).
via: designboom

Exhibition: Sunny Memories

Sunny Memories is the fusion of solar technology and industrial design. A project that involved more than 80 students from four leading design schools, this exhibit explores the broad new realm of technology, energy, and design that solar dye cells have heralded. Led by the EPFL+ECAL Lab, in Lausanne, Switzerland, the “Sunny Memories” workshops took place in collaboration with the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL), the California College of the Arts (CCA), the Royal College of Art in London (RCA) and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Creation Industrielle in Paris (ENSCI). Under the tutelage of design leaders like Yves Behar from San Francisco’s fuseproject, Jean-Francois Dingjian of Paris’ Normal Studio, Sam Hecht from London’s Industrial Facility, and Swiss designer Jörg Boner, students began their projects with the following challenge: how do we use energy to record our memory, heritage and knowledge? How can we employ solar energy to preserve history, while increasing autonomy, mobility, and sustainability?

The source of this solar innovation is the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne), the “MIT of Switzerland.” There, professor Michael Graëtzel began to use molecules from colorants to transform the sun’s light into electricity. Inspired by photosynthesis, he developed an award-winning technology that allowed solar dye cells to take all sorts of shapes, colors and forms. As industrial production of these solar cells has begun, it is now up to the design community to create products that meld this new technology with great design. Sunny Memories signals a new relationship between technology and design: designers have the freedom to explore the multiple meanings that a new technology can bring about.

Sunny Memories, with the Embassy of Switzerland, January 18 – February 8, Washington Design Center, Washington D.C.

Exhibition: Photographs by Ezra Stoller

Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bear Run, PA, 1971, Gelatin Silver Print
© Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

General Motors Technical Center, Eero Saarinen, Warren, MI, 1950, Gelatin Silver Print
© Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright, New York, NY, 1959, Gelatin Silver Print
© Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Johnson Wax Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright, Racine, WI, 1950, Gelatin Silver Print
© Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Seagram Building, Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson, New York, NY, 1958, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Seagram Building, Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson, New York, NY, 1958, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Manufacturer’s Trust Company, Fifth Avenue, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York, NY, 1954, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Chicago born photographer, Ezra Stoller’s (1915–2004) gelatin silver prints include images of architectural interiors and iconic landmarks. Based on his background in architecture and industrial design, Stoller used a large-format camera to photograph monumental 20th century buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum, the TWA terminal at Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), the Seagram Building, the Salk Institute, Yale Art and Architecture Building and Fallingwater. In addition to well-known photographs of these locations, the exhibition will include lesser-known photographs of small homes and guest houses which provide a fresh look at the masterful eye that established Stoller as the preeminent photographer of modern architecture.

A pioneer in the field of architectural photography, Ezra Stoller was commissioned by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, because of his unique ability to capture the building according to the architect’s vision and to lock it into the architectural canon. His photographs convey a three-dimensional experience of architectural space through a two-dimensional medium, with careful attention to vantage point and lighting conditions, as well as to line, color, form and texture.

Exhibition: Photographs by Ezra Stoller, January 6 to February 12, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, USA

Exhibition: The Fourth Wall

Initiated by N°111 with François Bauchet and Eric Jourdan, the Quatrième Mur was one of the ‘off’ exhibitions which spearheaded the event during the St Etienne Design Biennial 2010. In a former cinema and with this mysterious title, three ex- Saint Etienne students invited two of their ex-lecturers for a collective exhibition in the shape of ‘tribute-thanks-transmission’ with a result which lecturers and pupils alike can be proud of. The installation comprised everyday objects which, through their design and varying scales, gave rhythm and composition to the scenic space. The objective was to encourage the spectator to observe the objects from our domestic environment from a different angle and to reconsider the relationship between objects.

The Fourth Wall by François Bauchet, Eric Jourdan and N°111 , St Etienne Design Biennial

Bent Wood Objects by Matthias Pliessnig

Matthias Pliessnig creates objects made from steam bent white oak, sometimes oxidized or blackened with tar.

Tripudio Bestia, Insum Itineris, Occupo Orbis, by Matthias Pliessnig

Exhibition: Sculptures by Álvaro Siza

Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, best known for designing museums and galleries, has presented a series of wood sculpture.

Exposição Esculturas, by Álvaro Siza, Porto, Portugal, Photography by Fernando Guerra

Exhibition: Geotectonic by Arik Levy

After Rock and Absent Nature a new exhibition by Arik Levy stays in the continuity of the “natural non-natural”. The investigation, imaginary and interpretation of these issues, grow this time, around the concepts of “parallel” and “opposed”. By presenting the concretization of these ideas for the very first time, the exhibition illustrates various forms of expression related to geotectonic… Arik’s perception of such levels is not only geological, but also emotional, visual, social, architectural, as well as urban and genetic.

“What I feel and see are complete images of objects, buildings, mountain splitting into layers the same way an iceberg will detach from the North Pole creaking open and starting drifting in the space. Each element slides over the other in perfect harmony of total chaos. Construct to deconstruct, built to destroy, and constantly being on the borderline between balance and in balance, stability and catastrophe, magic and power.”
- Arik Levy

Exhibition: Geotectonic by, Arik Levy, 16 September – 6 November, at Mitterrand+Cramer, Geneva, Switzerland

D-17 by Sarah Oppenheimer at Rice University

American artist Sarah Oppenheimer was commissioned by Rice University Art Gallery, Houston to create an installation for their gallery space. D-17 took a year and a half in making the epic 65-foot, aluminum-sheathed white structure angles above the transom of Sewall Hall’s front doors, into the foyer and extends into floor of the gallery itself. Along the way the work seemingly passes through two walls of glass that act as filters, subtly changing the color of the structure as you look through them.

D-17 is a massive physical intervention into the building and gallery. Seeing it in bright daylight creates an entirely different experience of the installation. Approaching Sewall Hall in full sun, D-17 is essentially invisible; the wall of windows becomes a mirror reflecting the green leafy grounds of the campus. Your only real clue to what lies inside is the foot or so of the structure that pokes out from the opening above the doors. It is only once you enter through the doors that the rest of the massive construction is revealed, looming above you. While the daylight turns the building’s glass exterior into a mirror, the same thing occurs discretely inside. An overhead channel in the piece directs sunlight in from the outside, and when that channel of light hits the glass of the gallery wall, it creates a tiny mirror. Standing in the entry and facing the gallery, you can peer up into the open channel.

Inside the gallery is where you really feel the work’s energy. The expansive aluminum plane angles dramatically up from the gallery floor and soars out toward the courtyard beyond. That slender channel running along one side of the piece directs your eye out into the trees beyond the building.

D-17, by Sarah Oppenheimer, at Sewall Hall, Rice University Art Gallery, via: designboom

Exhibition: Bucky Fuller and Spaceship Earth

Curated by Norman Foster and Luis Fernández-Galiano, the exhibition features drawings and models including the recently completed recreation of the Dymaxion car. Foster worked with Fuller for the last 12 years of his life and explains that Fuller ‘had a profound influence on my own work and thinking’. The new Dymaxion car was commissioned by Foster based on Fuller’s own drawings and prototypes. The prototype was built in East Sussex by the car restoration company Crosthwaite and Gardiner.

Exhibition: Bucky Fuller and Spaceship Earth, Ivorypress Art + Books, Madrid, Spain, September 1 to October 30, via: designboom