Inverta
A circular axle is able to rotate by the use of 36 universal joints hanging from perspex rods and transmitting their rotary motion onto the next. In between the joints, 36 stainless steel objects are attached that rotate at the same speed as the axle. One of the objects has a slightly thinner body, making room for two integrated timing pulleys and thin cogged belts that connect it with the drive mechanism situated on the upper circular frame. The objects are made from thin sheet material and are carefully balanced by placing several counterweights inside their hollow bodies and by perforating their tails, reducing the amount of material furthest away from the axle. During the entire revolution their centre of gravity perfectly aligns with the position of the axle so that a stable rotation is ensured.

Breed
Breed (1995-2007) is a computer program that uses artificial evolution to grow very detailed sculptures. The purpose of each growth is to generate by cell division from a single cell a detailed form that can be materialised. On the basis of selection and mutation a code is gradually developed that best fulfils this “fitness” criterion and thus yields a workable form. The designs were initially made in plywood. Currently the objects can be made in nylon and in stainless steel by using 3D printing techniques. This automates the whole process from design to execution: the industrial production of unique artefacts.
Computers are powerful machines to harness artificial evolution to create visual images. To achieve this we need to design genetic algorithms and evolutionary programs. Evolutionary programs allow artefacts to be “bred”, rather than designing them by hand. Through a process of mutation and selection, each new generation is increasingly well adapted to the desired “fitness” criteria. Breed is an example of such software that uses Artificial Evolution to generate detailed sculptures. The algorithm that we designed is based on two different processes: cell-division and genetic evolution.

Cloud Arbor
A 20-foot diameter sphere of fog forms inside a forest of stainless steel poles. High-pressure fog nozzles embedded in the 30-foot tall poles convert water into a cloud that appears and vanishes every few minutes. A collaboration with landscape architect Andi Cochran and the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. Completed in 2012.

Open Sky
Using giant sheets of mirror-polish stainless steel, Smith’s structure reflects the ever-changing sky. He describes that ‘Open Sky’ is “inspired by the constant shifts in light, color, and form that are presented in the natural and built environment.” The piece is designed to get visitors at the design week to interact with the natural environment and to spark a sense of adventure.

Fountain with Red
Stainless steel, water pump, red liquid, urethane paint. Ujoo+limheeyoung is the husband and wife team of media artists Ujoo and Limheeyoung. Since first working together in 2004 in preparation for design competition, they have been involved in projects that use a variety of means of visual expression – kinect expression sculpture, drawings, real-time interactive videos – to address the theme of absurdity of reality.

Electric Chair

The distinctive work of Sam Buxton is dominated by his innovative use of advanced materials and technologies. From his immensely popular MIKRO series (miniature fold-up sculptures, laser cut into thin strips of stainless steel through an acid etching process) to his explorations concerning interactive intelligent surfaces on the familiar objects around us, his work has continually managed to blur the lines between art, science and design.Through his work, which has regularly involved relatively common objects ranging from business cards to a dining table, Buxton has demonstrated an ability to see potential in what others take for granted. His on-going efforts in developing objects that can communicate, display information and react to the actions of the user, demonstrate his commitment to investigating the delicate relationship between the human body and its environment. Buxton’s fusion of art and science has resulted in a highly innovative and unique range of personal designs, many of which, have utilized the latest, most advanced materials and technologies available.

АЙРИС ВАН ЭРПЕН
イリス ヴァン ヘルペン
Autumn/Winter 2019
This season van Herpen collaborated with American kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe, whose pieces are powered by the wind. His spherical Omniverse sculpture had pride of place in the Élysée Montmartre venue. The designer said she was compelled by the way its arching vertebrae, spinning on a curving axis, simultaneously expand and contract. Her finale dress was made in the image of Omniverse, with rotating wings constructed of aluminum, stainless steel, and feathers.

Electro-cución
“I am fascinated with the physicality of low-tech manual devices and mechanical systems. I am aroused by their shapes, sounds, and gestures, which are beautiful descriptions of their own functions. Industrial materials—stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, plastics, and rubbers—seduce me. Artifacts of disappearing industry, I find strange and beautiful shapes in their debris that allude to sexual operations, violent actions, mysterious purposes. Their potential triggers my thought process.”

ZETTEL’Z 6
HOMAGE
R.I.P
Japanese paper, stainless steel, heat-resistant satin-frosted glass. Zettel’z Munari is a new limited edition of Zettel’z 5. With the illustrated alphabet by Bruno Munari, it is a perfect luminaire for rooms where children live, to be surrounded by creativity and the curiosity to explore language and learning. However, with its unique beauty, the limited edition is a pleasure for all ages. For Zettel’z Munari, Ingo Maurer received the permission of the publishing house Maurizio Corraini srl to use the alphabet by Bruno Munari.

АЙРИС ВАН ЭРПЕН
イリス ヴァン ヘルペン
Autumn/Winter 2019
This season van Herpen collaborated with American kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe, whose pieces are powered by the wind. His spherical Omniverse sculpture had pride of place in the Élysée Montmartre venue. The designer said she was compelled by the way its arching vertebrae, spinning on a curving axis, simultaneously expand and contract. Her finale dress was made in the image of Omniverse, with rotating wings constructed of aluminum, stainless steel, and feathers.

Flying Stone No.2
Zhan Wang’s most celebrated work to date is his series of “artificial rocks” – stainless steel replicas of the much-revered “scholar’s rocks” traditionally found in Chinese gardens. The mirrored surfaces of these often monumental objects absorb the viewer and its surrounding environment, enticing them to become part of the work, an abstraction and distortion of reality, thus creating a visual interplay between positions of tradition and modernity.

Tensegrity Sphere

Sixty-Strut Tensegrity Sphere by Buckminster Fuller is both a feat of engineering and an object of beauty. Wire individually snakes through sixty stainless steel tubes, suspending them in a icosahedral (20 face) form. Tensional integrity, or tensegrity – a term coined by Fuller – is a structural-relationship principle.

Джон Мак-Кракен
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
Star, Infinite, Dimension, and Electron

“The geometric forms McCracken employed were typically built from straight lines: cubes, rectangular slabs and rods, stepped or quadrilateral pyramids, post-and-lintel structures and, most memorably, tall planks that lean against the wall. Usually, the form is painted in sprayed lacquer, which does not reveal the artist’s hand. An industrial look is belied by sensuous color.His palette included bubble-gum pink, lemon yellow, deep sapphire and ebony, usually applied as a monochrome. Sometimes an application of multiple colors marbleizes or runs down the sculpture’s surface, like a molten lava flow. He also made objects of softly stained wood or, in recent years, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel.Embracing formal impurity at a time when purity was highly prized, the works embody perceptual and philosophical conundrums. The colored planks stand on the floor like sculptures; rely on the wall for support like paintings; and, bridging both floor and wall, define architectural space. Their shape is resolutely linear, but the point at which the line assumes the dimensional properties of a shape is indefinable.” Christopher Knight

Requiem

The robot Requiem is an interactive pneumatic exoskeleton made of aluminium sheets, stainless steel and nineteen pneumatic pistons enabling movement of the knees, thighs, groin, hip, shoulders, elbows, jaw and hands. The robot is suspended by the head from an iron support, hanging a short distance from the floor. As an installation Requiem has eight sensors located around the exhibition space and they can be activated by the spectators.

Sonic Mountain
As a unique site-specific commission for the Donum Estate, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken has created the ethereal work Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), three concentric circles of suspended stainless-steel pipes whose differing lengths form a wave at their base, mirroring the free Euler-Bernoulli shape that describes the chime’s frequency. Installed in the eucalyptus grove, measuring forty-five feet in diameter and twice human height, and comprising 365 chimes — one for each day of the year — Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) works with one of Donum’s most persistent elements, the Carneros breeze that cools the grapes and creates a temperate zone for growing Pinot Noir. Each day, the warm wind begins its soft whisper, rustling through the vines and trees, building in strength through the day until mid-afternoon, and then gradually diminishing in force. Known to have been used since at least the ancient Roman period in Europe and the second century in India and China, wind chimes create chance, inharmonic music. At Donum, Aitken has teamed up with his friend the composer Terry Riley to compose chords in the chimes to be played by the wind , depending on how it blows, so the lyrical work sounds throughout the estate, demonstrating the artist’s practice of making installations that synthesize many media and are never constrained by tradition.
video

Abb
A playful balancing act by a robotarm. This enormous machine balancing itself on a stainlesssteel semi sphere. When the arm moves, stretches, the balance point of the entire construction shifts which makes the whole machine lean over until it -almost- tips. The robot seems curious to find its tipping point, searching for the limits of balance without ever really being able to fall over. The machine is playing a children’s game with enormous power and robotic precision.

Luma Arles Tower
Atelier Vincent Hecht’s photos reveal the distinctive facade of the Luma Arles tower, which is finished with 11,000 aluminium panels irregularly arranged around its concrete and steel frame. Described by architecture critic Frank Miller as a “stainless-steel tornado”, the cladding was designed by Gehry to evoke the craggy limestone cliffs around the city for which it is known.