Valla claimed to have collected a series of 60 “surrealistic” images, or that, at least, give that impression, during a long period “playing” in Google Earth.“The images are a kind of mirrors for a fun house.They are strange illusions and reflections of the real ”Despite the strong distortions, which easily resemble a surrealist painting, the images of the work do not have any manipulation of tools like Photoshop, for example.”The images are screenshots of Earth with basic color adjustments”, “This is a construction of 3D maps on two-dimensional bases, creating these fabulous and unintended distortions”.

Replica
We begin with a tour of a virtual 3D model of the London house-cum-museum built by 19th-century architect Sir John Soane. The journey traverses the five floors of the museum’s meticulously restored rooms, each filled with original and duplicate fragments of antiquity. Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was one of the foremost British architects of the Regency era, a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, and a dedicated collector of paintings, sculpture, architectural fragments and models, books, drawings and furniture. Soane was awarded the Royal Academy’s prestigious Gold Medal for Architecture, as a result receiving a bursary (funded by King George III) to undertake a Grand Tour of Europe. His travels to the ruins of Ancient Rome, Paestum and Pompeii would inspire his lifelong interest in Classical art and architecture. As an enthusiastic collector, later in life he began to repurpose his home at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as a Museum for students of architecture. With a collection containing thousands of objects ranging from Ancient Egyptian antiquities and Roman sculpture to models of contemporary buildings, Soane’s house had become a Museum by the time of his death.

فرناندو روميرو
费尔南多·罗梅罗
フェルナンド·ロメロ
페르난도 로메로
Soumaya Museum

Museum buildings tend to be conceived either for maximum functionality – acting as neutral containers for art – or as iconic structures that represent a city at a particular historic moment. The Museo Soumaya was designed as both: a sculptural building that is unique and contemporary, yet one able to house a collection of international paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects dating from the fourteenth century to the present.The exterior of the building is an amorphous shape perceived differently from every angle, reflecting the diversity of the collection inside. The building’s distinctive façade is made of hexagonal aluminum modules facilitating its preservation and durability. The shell is constructed with steel columns of different diameters, each with its own geometry and shape, creating non-linear circulation paths for the visitor. The building encompasses 20,000 square meters of exhibition space divided among five floors, as well as an auditorium, café, offices, gift shop, and multipurpose lobby. The top floor is the largest space in the museum, with its roof suspended from a cantilever that allows in natural daylight.

Watertight
Over the past 50 years, the number of people in the average household has fallen drastically. For the first time in Western world history, the one-person household has become a dominant mode of living. In Manhattan, more than half of all homes have one occupant. For Watertight, we documented 12 New Yorkers and their home interiors with a 3D scanner. We used the Skanect software’s “watertight” function and a 3D printer to create a series of miniature portraits—egg-shaped sculptures the size of a hand. The series of portraits offers a cross-section of a contemporary demographic phenomenon, a form of present-day archaeology.

“Adam Ferriss is one of those technologically-minded creatives who is able to put his ever-growing knowledge of code and processing to use building aesthetically wondrous digital art for the rest of us to enjoy. His images make me feel like I’ve just taken some psychedelics and stepped into one of those crazy houses you get in funfairs, where there are giant optical illusions on every wall and the floor keeps moving under your feet, except these are made using algorithms and coding frameworks […]”

Psychoprosa

The exhibition PSYCHOPROSA focuses on mucus as a biochemical substance and sculptural material. The production of mucus takes place as a real process within the exhibition spaces, transforming the Frankfurter Kunstverein into an interconnecting ensemble of greenhouse, laboratory, walk-in refrigerator, cinema, and factory. Through tubes connected to one another, equipment and objects produce and transform their interior substances, refrigerators open and close automatically and transparent threads of mucus drip from expansive glass sculptures.

In close collaboration with biochemists, Thomas Feuerstein has developed the synthetic molecule Psilamin, derived from algae and fungi. In its production, large quantities of viscous biofilm are generated. If one were to take Psilamin, one would begin to feel psychotropic effects. Perception would liquefy, and objects in the room would appear soft and shapeless. Simultaneously, the flowing nature of the sculptural matter, which escapes solid form, externalizes an inner psychic process. At the end of the biochemical production process, which visitors can track in the different exhibition spaces, there is the expan-sive sculpture Accademia dei Secreti over whose glass containers vast amounts of mucus pour.

Kiesler’s longest-running project was Endless House, a single-family dwelling whose biomorphic form and lack of corners strongly contrasted with the hard geometric edges that defined most modern architecture of the time. He sought to design a structure responsive to the occupants’ functional and spiritual requirements. He developed his ideas for the house over several decades, creating numerous sketches and models. Although plans were made to build a to-scale model in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden in 1958, they did not materialize, and the project remains unrealized. Nonetheless, Kiesler’s Endless House concept was highly influential and stands as a strong expression of his bold statement: “Form does not follow function. Function follows vision. Vision follows reality.”

video

bombay arts society
sanjay puri architects have designed ‘bombay arts society’ as a mixed-use building on a 1,300 square meter plot. half the complex’s programs is composed of office spaces, while the other half caters to visual and performance arts displays and creative studio space. three lower levels encased in an undulating concrete form house galleries and their allied functions, the seamless transitions between vertical and horizontal surfaces continuing inside the building as well as on the exterior. thus, patrons tour the museum, moving fluidly through an occupiable sculpture. slightly detached from the public realm below, a four-storey volume contains the arts society’s administrative offices.

تويو ايتو
伊东丰雄
טויו איטו
伊東豊雄
도요 이토
Tower of Winds
During the day the perforated metal panels that cover the Tower of Winds reflect the city image and make the design appear humble and simple. But during the night, it gets lit up in an ever-changing combination of light intensity and colors. Using computer software, the lighting follows the wind speed and noise levels changing the Tower’s appearance accordingly. The Tower of Winds features more than 1300 light bulbs and 42 flood lights and neon rings (on each floor). The small lights change their colors according to the wind’s noise level and the rings change their intensity according to its speed.
Basically, the Tower of the Winds by Toyo Ito is a wind indicator in a constant relationship with the city and the natural environment, a junction between the two. It is placed at the train station area, welcoming the passengers arriving in Yokohama and its functional role is accommodating another natural element. Surprisingly the Tower of Winds houses the water tanks for the air-conditioning system of the underground mall below. The Tower is not a new construction, but a re-designing of an old concrete tower that already existed there since the ‘60s.

the liquid room

Elizabeth Ogilvie is a Scottish artist who uses water as a medium and as a research focus. Water is the obsession which returns in most of her works and it becomes experience through the use of installations and videos. Her work embraces universal and timeless concerns, offering her public an innocent pleasure and at the same time underlining philosophical and ecological issues.
Through her installations, the artist isolates water inside an artificial state, creating a process which highlights its fundamental qualities in order to return to its place of origin which is the natural habitat. Among her most important works there is Liquid Room realized in 2002. Inside a derelict warehouse the artist created basins with water which were crossed by a footbridge. By linking art, architecture and science, she realized an interactive installation where the visitor, walking on the footbridge, can touch the water, whose movement is reflected on the walls of the installation. In 2006 she created Bodies of Water, whose operation took over from her previous work.
Once again, through a series of installations, the public was able to share the experience of sensorial involvement within an environment dominated by water.

bio intelligence quotient house
Dubbed the Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House, the approximately €5 million building was designed by Splitterwerk Architects and funded by the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA), a long-running exhibition series showcasing cutting edge techniques and architectural concepts, for this year’s International Building Exhibition – 2013.
A total of 129 algae culturing tanks are affixed to the East and West sides of the building via an automated external scaffolding structure that constantly turns the tanks towards the sun. The plant cultures are fed through an integrated tubing system, CO2 is pumped in as well. According to Arup’s Europe Research Leader, Jan Wurm, who collaborated with Splitterwerk on the project:The algae flourish and multiply in a regular cycle until they can be harvested. They are then separated from the rest of the algae and transferred as a thick pulp to the technical room of the BIQ. The little plants are then fermented in an external biogas plant, so that they can be used again to generate biogas. Algae are particularly well suited for this, as they produce up to five times as much biomass per hectare as terrestrial plants and contain many oils that can be used for energy.Not only do these tanks provide shade for every level of the building during the summer and biogas for heating during the winter, the facade itself collects excess heat not being used by the algae, like a solar thermal system. That heat can then either be used immediately or stored in 80-meter-deep, borine-filled borehole heat exchangers located under the structure. Total fossil fuels used in this process: zero.

Augmented Shadow
File Festival

Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. Its goal is to offer a new type of user-experience. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy. Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem. In this installation, the shadows exist both in a real and a virtual environment simultaneously. It thus brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow is an interface metaphor connecting the virtual world and users. Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy. Augmented Shadow utilizes this unique interface metaphor for interactive storytelling. Maximizing the magical amusement of AR, it is embedding an ecosystem where imaginary objects and organic beings co-exist while each of them influences on each other’s life-cycle, even though it is not in use by users. Light and shadow play critical roles in this world’s functions causing chain reactions between virtual people, trees, birds, and houses. A set of tangible blocks allows users to participate in the ecosystem. Users can influence on the system by playing with the blocks or observe the changes of the shadows as if kids were playing with an ant farm.

Drama House
File Festival
“Drama house” is a house when the simple ring at the doorbell can have unpredictable consequences; event, one is stranger then another and in the same time all, what happens with habitants belongs to everyday life. Sometimes these circumstances are a little bit exaggerated. Spectator stands in front of low fence with a door-gate. There are 8 doorbells on it. The act of ringing provokes an action in an apartment window. Based on chance and the choices that viewers make, the project explores the contemporary trends in the construction of a narrative and the interplay between diverse informative sub-layers effected through the impact of digital, non-linear media. It also questions the very process of story telling and at the same time considers the way of audience reading. It investigates the differences of individual and collective perception. In other words, the sequence and choices that each viewer selects reflect his own perspectives and behavioral patterns, thus makes the viewer much more than an active participant. By interacting with the installation the viewer is engaged in the creative process: re-telling the ever-changing story through the utilization of the primary capability of the digitization: reshaping the information. Therefore, each participant walks away with a unique, slightly different vision, each shaped according to his own choices and directions. Interactive media and the digital environment of the DH and its narrative function through a recognizable metaphor that makes access to the information meaningful: a house as a conceptual society model and an apartment as a private space. This reference transforms the objects and stories in the project into the metaphors and reminds us of the art cultural function: as a site of memory of the social collective imagination and as a site of representation and power.