nevermind the bricolage

Hippest Seminary?

A Spanish architectural company was given the task of restoring a 15th century building, housing a seminary. Rather than taking the familiar restorative approach they pushed the boundaries and took a different approach blending the medieval with the ultra-modern--ancient stone and contemporary materials--neon, plastic, sleek and non-linear shapes. The results are quite amazing and it definitely gives most seminaries a run for their architectural-money.

 

The Ascent of Darwin

My friend Gabri found these little plastic figures for me in honour of my class from a few weeks back--classic.

Krink Mini

 

Craig Costello, New York-based street artist and creator of Krink, has applied his singular silver line style to the Mini. His Mini Cooper S is on currently display, it's probably hard to see out of the windows, but the look is cool. You could also get  a matching laptop carry-case if you wanted to.

The Flowmarket

Flowmarket is a globe-travelling pop-up store that sells a unique brand of goods. What they sell are concepts--cans of aspiration, desire, and other aspects of our shared humanity. Their site declates that, "A change process begins with an awareness that something needs to change." The products, which are essentially, cool packages containing nothing, are designed to make us think twice about what we are buying. Flowmarket is the brainchild of Mads Hagstrom, a Norwegian designer.

Radio

These cross radios are from a Warsaw based design team called, Kosmos. They describe these pieces as "Object of everyday use that becomes cultic showing great power of media, loneliness in the contemporary society and the need of belonging to a community." So there you go, I wonder if you can get Christian radio on a Cross radio?

PS for Evian

Forget the water, it's the little things that Paul Smith says about his approach to life and creativity that are worth catching.

Sign

This sign is a left-over from a different era at the school where I teach. Right next to it are a series of very contemporary coloured plastic signs offering information in clear and concise terms, but there is something about this old piece that draws you in by its charm and its anachronistic presence in the sea of branded materials around it.

maxim velcovsky

Czech designer Maxim Velcovsky worked on the interior of a church in Bohemia called St. Bartholomew's--bringing in some wicked modern plastic chairs with crosses punched in the back, Persian rugs and rough crystal chandeliers--cool mix of ancient and contemporary if you ask me.

The Language of Things

Deyan Sudjic, is head of London's Design Museum, and a contemplator of all things design and architecture. He has been the editor of Blueprint and remains at the helm of Milan based Domus magazine, but his day job deals principally with objects. I was back at the Getty last night for another'r Zocalo-sponsored conversation entitled, Why Do We Lust After Things?, with Sudjic lecturing and leading a conversation on our responses to art and design and why perhaps we are attracted to stuff that we don't need.
'I have to acknowledge that I have been fascinated by the glossy sheen of consumption, while at the same time nauseous with self-disgust at the volume of what we all consume.' This quote from his latest book, The Language of Things, sums up much of the evening's direction. He spoke a fair bit about the false hierarchies that exist in the world of art and design, that we price the useless over the useful when it comes to art, and lamented the loss of our long-term attachment to things, noting that the life expectancy of a digital camera is about 20 months, rather than the usual twenty years life-span of a Nikon camera made a few decades ago. I am not sure that Sudjic really gave a firm opinion about the hows and whys of all this. There were allusions to the role of technology and some interesting comments about the illusion of 'luxury,' Sudjic positing that mass-produced cars actually have more invention and creativity invested in them than say a Bentley, which, because they only sell about 6000 a year, cannot afford the massive influx of developmental resources that a more familiar car would have--hence the luxury is in the parts of the vehicle that can be seen and touched and that allow for status to be conveyed--interesting a stuff. His presentation was witty and thoughtful, and definitely food for thought.

Info-Tales

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

A unique approach to a fairy-tale, and a student project nonetheless.