source: dezeen

London Design Festival 2015: David Adjaye, Alex Chinneck and Mischer’Traxler are among the designers set to create installations for this year’s London Design Festival, which will include an electricity pylon turned on its head and a courtyard filled with mirrors (+ slideshow).

A number of large-scale installations by Irish firm Grafton Architects, London-based designers Matteo Fogale and Laetitia De Allegri and Mexican architect Frida Escobedo were also announced during a conference at the V&A this morning.

They form part of over 350 events that will be held across the capital during London Design Festival, which will run between 19-27 September.

Referencing the industrial landscape of gas and oil works of the Greenwich Peninsula, London-based artist Alex Chinneck will construct a latticed-steel replica of an electricity pylon.

Rooted to the ground by its pointed top rather than its legs, the piece will appear as if shot into the ground. The 35-metre-tall sculpture weighing 15 tonnes will be tethered to lean at a perilous angle over an adjacent access road.

Named A Bullet from a Shooting Star, the sculpture will be illuminated, making it visible from Thames boat services, local stations and aeroplanes en route to the capital’s City Airport.
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source: bamboonet

Desde 2003, Londres é tomada, em setembro, por um dos festivais de design mais inspiradores do calendário internacional. A cada nova edição, os eventos se multiplicam, contaminando vários endereços com cerca de 350 ações, exposições e intervenções, nas quais designers dividem seu protagonismo com arquitetos e artistas.
Neste ano, a grande intervenção urbana será assinada pelo escultor inglês Alex Chinneck, que apresentará A Bullet from a Shooting Star – um poste de eletricidade com 35 metros de altura e 15 toneladas, fincado de ponta-cabeça na península de Greenwich. Conhecido por se inspirar em estruturas cotidianas para criar situações fantásticas, Chinneck referencia, com seu poste gigante, a história industrial dessa península, que acolheu no passado a maior refinaria de óleo e gás da Europa e ainda hoje tem sua paisagem marcada por seus resquícios.
Os projetos desenvolvidos especialmente para o festival terão espaço generoso no museu Victoria & Albert. Inspirada pela cidade asteca de Tenochtitlán, construída à beira de um lago, a arquiteta mexicana Frida Escobedo usará superfícies móveis de materiais que refletem os arredores na intervenção que criará em um dos jardins do museu, espaço reservado para eventos temporários do festival. Também no V&A, os designers austríacos da Mischer’Traxler exploram a transitoriedade da natureza e o art nouveau na instalação interativa Curiosity Cloud, um agrupamento de bólides de vidro soprado pendentes que acolhem, cada um, um inseto feito à mão que reagirá à aproximação do visitante. Já os designers italianos Laetitia de Allegri e Matteo Fogale escolheram se inspirar nos conceitos de perspectiva, surgidos no Renascimento, para criar um ambiente semitransparente e colorido que brinca com o ponto de vista do visitante na ponte acima das galerias de artefatos medievais e renascentistas.
Na Somerset House, destaque para a mostra 10 Designers in the West Wing, com nomes consagrados como Nendo, Faye Toogood e Ross Lovegrove, que criarão ambientações para as suas peças recentes.
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source: artdiscover

Alex Chinneck nació en 1984 y es graduado del Chelsea College of Art y diseño. Más recientemente fue nominado para concesión de becas de la Royal British sociedad de escultores. Usando métodos contemporáneos de fabricación, Chinneck encuentra aplicaciones nuevas y ambiciosas para materiales de construcción cotidianos, los saca de su contexto funcional para crear instalaciones lúdicas. Creando trabajo que es indiferente a las disciplinas creativas sus esculturas e instalaciones conviven a través de los reinos de arte, diseño y arquitectura.
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source: mixedgrillnl

Is Alex Chinneck een kunstenaar of een goochelaar? Met zijn nieuwste werk in Londen weet hij iedereen voor de gek te houden.

Het lijkt net of het bovenste deel van het marktgebouw bij Covent Garden is losgerukt en aan het zweven is. In werkelijkheid is het een kunstwerk van Alex Chinneck met de naam Take my lightning but don’t steal my thunder. De stunt die Chinneck uithaalt is zo goed dat het eigenlijk zonde is om te verklappen wat hij heeft gedaan met het 184 jaar oude gebouw.

Wat je hier ziet is een replica van het marktgebouw die in de studio van Alex Chinneck is gebouwd. Door een speciale constructie aan de binnenkant van het gebouw lijkt het bovenste deel te zweven. De grote grap is dat het echte gebouw nog helemaal intact is, maar aan de andere kant van de hallen te vinden is op een identiek gebouw. Ondanks dat dit kunstwerk op het verkeerde plein staat trappen mensen massaal in deze geniale grap.
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source: designboom

commuters and visitors in london this morning experienced a sudden suspension from reality, as a section of covent garden’s 184-year old market building had seemingly broken free from its foundations and remained hovering in mid-air. british artist alex chinneck‘s monumental installation ‘take my lightning but don’t steal my thunder’ manipulates the architecture of the historic site, transforming an ordinary view of the renowned london piazza into a mind-bending public art piece. the illusion results in the perception that the 40-foot-long building has cracked from its stone base and floated over 10 feet into the air with apparent weightlessness.

the illusion renders the idea that a 40-foot-long building has cracked from its stone base and floated into the air

in an interview with chinneck on the project’s cultural and historical references and themes of architectural manipulation throughout the breadth of his work, the artist told designboom, ‘art has the capacity and license to re-imagine, re-present and reinvigorate the world around us and so architecture is a brilliant canvas for creative exploration and distortion because it surrounds and contains us. I like how creative practice can make the everyday world feel momentarily extraordinary and by theatrically manipulating familiar architectural scenarios this is what I try and hope to do.’ read the full interview to learn more about the construction, development and conception of the installation on designboom.
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source: theguardian

Covent Garden has long been home to a diverse collection of living statues and fairground freaks, a levitating shaman competing with unicycling jugglers and motionless men in their silver-painted suits. But now, in a moment of jaw-dropping trickery, the architecture is joining in the fun: the Victorian market portico appears to have been ripped away from its colonnade, and left hanging in thin air.

This surreal stunt is the work of 30-year-old artist Alex Chinneck, master of architectural illusion, who has previously turned buildings upside down, pulled off their facades, and let them slither down in a heap on the pavement. A Uri Geller of bricks and mortar, this is one of his most ambitious works yet, fabricating an imaginary eastern entrance to the market hall that he’s then torn in half and jacked aloft, its Portland stone columns and granite walls left brutally severed.

“I wanted to play on the theatricality of this area, and make something physically extraordinary,” he says. In place for the next three weeks, it is already attracting crowds of gawping passers-by, as a visually arresting one-liner, seemingly made for the Instagram era.

The illusion of weightlessness is made possible by a lot of polystyrene and 16 tonnes of steel. A 12-metre armature hidden inside the structure is connected to the ground through an innocuous market cart, in which a 6-tonne counterweight stops it all from toppling over. The effect of weathered stonework has been immaculately recreated by Richard Nutbourne and his team of scenic artists – who usually work on stage sets for the opera and ballet next door. Covering the CNC-milled polystyrene blocks with plaster and granite sand, they have mimicked the neighbouring gnarled stone even down to the detail of moss, electrostatically flocked onto the surface.

“My work is usually very simple in its concept,” says Chinneck, “but it’s a nightmare in execution.” Eight months in the making, the Covent Garden installation is the product of a 100-strong team of architects and engineers, carpenters and set-builders, and more than 500 hours of digital carving. It follows previous commissions in the piazza from Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, Banksy and Sam Taylor-Johnson.

Gnomically titled “Take my Lightning but Don’t Steal my Thunder”, the piece is Chinneck’s fourth installation on show in London at the moment. It joins two facades on Blackfriars Road that have been entirely flipped upside down and a derelict warehouse in Hackney, which looks like any other abandoned building with broken windows, until you realise every pane of glass has been identically shattered. Last week he unveiled a house in Southwark made of 10 tonnes of wax bricks, which will be heated each morning over the coming month, until is is no more than a mushy puddle on the pavement.

Trained as a painter at Chelsea College of Arts (which he “couldn’t wait to leave”), Chinneck acknowledges his architectural illusions bear a debt to artists including Richard Wilson and Rachel Whiteread, although he admits there is no deeper message behind the trickery. “These pieces are not conceptually driven, or trying to deliver a particular message,” he says. “The aim is to astound people and just cheer them up a bit.”