Icon: Easter Island Moai Kavakava Sold for $614,500

The modern home is the perfect venue for displaying tribal art. A recent auction of the collection of Frieda and Milton Rosenthal, at Sotheby’s yielded a very rare and significant sculpture.

This Wooden figure from Easter Island (one of the most remote islands in Polynesia, some 2000 miles from the nearest landmass) representing emaciated, sometimes almost skeletal, men locally called Moai Kavakava are named after moai for the monumental monolithic human figures found on Easter Island and the word kavakava meaning “ribs”. Little is known about their cultural context.

Moai Kavakava are said to represent spirits or ghosts (Aku Aku) as well as deceased ancestors. German Expressionist Max Ernst, was inspired by these figures and their rituals and they can also be found in the collections of the French surrealist André Breton.

Moai Kava Kava, Sold at auction, $ 614,500 USD, at Sotheby’s New York, USA

Alila Villas Uluwatu and Hotel in Bali

While Designing Alila Villas Uluwatu, the architects wanted to create more than the usual stereotypical ideas of Bali, creating a design that worked with the dry Balinese Savannah vegetation and gently sloping site, not against it. The 14.4 hectare development offers three-bedroom contemporary Balinese villas for sale, as well as a hotel for those on holiday in Bali.

Alila Villas Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia, by WOHA
via: Contemporist

Five-Euro Commemorative Coin by Stani Michiels

The Dutch Ministry of Finance organized an architecture competition to design a five-euro commemorative coin with the theme ‘Netherlands and Architecture’.
When someone looks closely at the portrait of Queen Beatrix, it becomes clear that her portrait is constructed with names of important Dutch architects. On the outside the names are clearly readable, while they slowly get smaller to the center.

Five-Euro Commemorative Coin, by Stani Michiels.
Find out how it was done: How to make money with free software…

Exhibition: Enzo Mari The Art of Design

GAM Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art will dedicate an extensive anthological exhibition to the works of Enzo Mari, eminent Italian designer with an intense artistic career since the 1950s, when he stood out as a prominent figure of Programmed and Kinetic Art. In 1963, Mari coordinated the Italian movement called Nuova Tendenza, and in 1965 he organised its participation in the Zagreb Biennial Exhibition. In parallel with his artistic career he worked as a designer, engaged at first in individual formal investigation and subsequently in collaboration projects with various enterprises involved in the fields of graphic design.
Organised in its entirety by the Enzo Mari Studio as “global project” (curatorship, arrangement and catalogue), the exhibition evolves in a chronological order that deliberately makes no distinction between Mari’s artistic production and the objects he designed for industry.

Exhibition: Enzo Mari The Art of Design, October 29 to January 6, 2009 at GAM, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy

A Night at the Guggenheim Revolving Hotel Room

Spend the night at the Guggenheim. Guests can reserve an overnight stay in a Revolving Hotel Room, a work of art created by artist Carsten Höller. Revolving Hotel Room is an art installation comprising three outfitted, superimposed turning glass discs mounted onto a fourth disc that all turn harmoniously at a very slow speed. At night guests can roam the museum alone all night, during the day the hotel room will be on view as part of the Guggenheim’s theanyspacewhatever exhibition.

Exhibition: theanyspacewhatever, October 24, 2008–January 7, 2009, Guggenheim, New York, USA
more: New York Post

Villa 1 by Powerhouse Company Wins Best Private Interior Award

Villa 1 is a woodland house in the Veluwe Zoom area near Arnhem in the Netherlands, has won an award as the ’best private interior’ at the Dutch Design Awards Set in the woodlands of Holland, the house is oriented optimal towards the views on the terrain and the sun. Half is pushed below ground to meet local zoning regulations. This creates a clear dichotomy in the spatial experience of the house - a glass box ground floor where all mass is concentrated in furniture elements and a ‘medieval’ basement, where the spaces are carved out of the mass.

Villa 1, Arnhem, Netherlands, by Powerhouse Company

Marc Newson Orgone Lounge up for Auction at Sotheby’s

“The form is one that I was striving for when I made the ‘Lockheed Lounge’ but, in those days, I didn’t have the knowledge or the resources to make it.”
- Marc Newson

Designed in 1993, the Orgone Stretch Lounge, made of aluminium and enamel, is the second artist’s proof from an edition of six plus two artist’s proofs produced by Pod. Orgone is expected to fetch up to a million dollars at auction at Sotheby’s in London this month.

Orgone Stretch Lounge, 400,000 - 600,000 GBP, by Marc Newson for Pod.
Auction at Sotheby’s, London, UK, Saturday, October 18th

Auction: Five Garden Chairs by John Risley

We are charmed by these very 60’s enameled steel chairs by designed by John Risley.

Set of five chairs, 1965, by John Risley, at Auction (Estimate: $5,000–7,000), Wright

Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid to Move to China for Expo 2010

BIG’s latest project is the Danish Pavilion for Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The exhibition takes the best of living in Copenhagen and placing it in China for visitors to experience. This includes the The Little Mermaid as the center piece, a statue that has become a symbol for Denmark, this time, it will be moved temporarily to China.
“it is considerably more resource efficient moving The Little Mermaid to China, than moving 1.3 billion Chinese to Copenhagen”
- Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG

Denmark Pavillion for Shanghai Expo 2010, by BIG, in collaboration with Arup and 2+1
via: Arc daily

Exhibition: Eero Saarinen at Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts jointly present this first major museum retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen’s short but prolific career. Saarinen was one of the most celebrated, unorthodox, and controversial masters of 20th-century architecture. In many ways he was the architect of what has been dubbed “the American century,” the post-World War II era when the United States emerged as an influential world superpower.

Exhibition: Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, September 13 - January 4, at Target Gallery The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA