Almost the longest exposure

Making a pinhole camera can be pretty simple. But still, it can generate some astonishing images. Like the image above. It's made by Justin Quinell by means of a pin hole camera, and it documents the traces of the sun over the suspension bridge in Bristol over a six month period of time. That gives this image an exposure time of half a year! And the result is duely impressive: there's so much detail and subtlety in the image, and that without a complex and expensive camera!

This image has been called the photo with the longest exposure time in the history of photography. But that claim is simply false. The actual longest exposure times have been captured by Michael Wesely. In 2001, he documented the redevelopment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in single images, making photographs with an exposure time of up to 34 months. Surreal.

I found this through http://itchyi.squarespace.com/.

A slightly different view

Honestly, I don't know that much about Mexico City. I know it's large, it's crowded and it has issues with smog and pollution. That's about it. Looking at pictures gives some kind of impression, but mostly a very incomplete (and potentially enscanated) one.

That's what I like about the photographs by the helicopter pilot Oscar Ruiz. Granted, not every picture has a strong composition, but the images can give you a different feel for the city.
They just give you just that little bit of extra perspective of the life in Mexico City. Like the image above. It does look a bit like a rendering, but it's an actual picture of a part of the low income housing complex in Ixtapaluca, which has a whopping total of more than 10,000 houses.
Or the image below, showing Cerro Chiquihuite, where a wall was built halfway up the hill in order to stop people from continuing to build uphill.
Or, all the way at the bottom, the market at Barrio Tepito. The area is allegedly very criminal and (therefore) dangerous, but the market should be awesome.

All in all, sometimes having a little bit of an overview can give you a better sight of the city than eye-level images.

Photo-real graffiti

Most people associate graffiti to some kind of simply scratched tags, that you can find on pretty much every street corner anywhere in the world. But there's so much more to graffiti, also some things that are really taking things to a whole new level. In some instances, it's pretty much impossible to imagine such a piece being made with spraycans and flatcaps.
Take, for instance, a look at the work of the German artist Tasso, who does some amazing illusions within graffiti.



Or what about Maclaim? Another artist with a completely unique style of photorealistic graffiti. It's not just "scribbling on a wall", but I think it's safe to say that this is pure art. Made by people who definitely think outside the box.

Stop the chop!

Some advertisements are so powerful in their simplicity that they don't need a slogan or a payoff. The image tells it all. Like in these advertisements from a campaign for the WWF. I doubt it there's anybody out there who doesn't get the message this campaign wants to put forth about deforestation...

The afterlife of buildings

The curators of the Polish pavilion at the most recent Venice Biennale of Architecture, by Grzegorz Piątek and Jarosław Trybuś, took the theme of this years´ biennale ("Out there - architecture beyond buildings") rather literal.
For the exhibition called "Warsaw's Polonia Hotel. The Afterlife of Buildings", they let Nicolas Grospierre take pictures of six prestigious buildings that have been constructed in recent years by renouned architects.
The curators wanted to debate the durability of those buildings. The project is portraying how the usage of those buildings could change drastically -whether because of social or environmental issues.

Kobas Laska made photocollages, portraying this possible future of these six buildings. The result is not just highly speculative and funny, but also raises questions about the life-spans as such.

I found this exhibition on We Make Money Not Art. I've placed my favorite one here, you can find the rest on that website.

The image above is the largest church in Poland, called the Sanctity of our lady of sorrow, designed by Barbara Bielecka and built between 1994 an 2004. The question that is inherent in this picture is "what if Poles stopped going to masses?" The afterlife of this building is a whole new kind of gathering space: what if the church would be used as an aquatic park?

Pareidolia

In psychology, it's a common phenomenon: Pareidolia. It describes the instance in which a random stimulus is perceived as significant. For instance in hearing a hidden message (that's not really there) in a record played backwards (even though I am still really convinced that K3 sings about "grote massamoord - godverdomme leuk" if their song "Oma's aan the top" is played backwards - but that's a whole different story.)
The term could also signify interpreting clouds as animals or seeing faces in the moon. Even the famous Rorschach-test bases it's phychological analysis of someone's state of mind on Pareidolia.

Lately, I've come across two very distinct online-cases that are both working with the matter of Pareidolia.

The first one is the strange maps blog. I've already posted something about this blog earlier, but now they've coined the term "cartocacoethes" - which means as much as "the convulsion to see maps everywhere". And they have a small, but nice collection of just that: sh\tains shaped like the USA, a Milanesa in the shape of Africa, clouds shaped like Britain. And this remarkable puddle in the shape of Australia.


The second one is slightly less serious, but all the more hilarious. It's called "inanimate faces", if I'm correct. It's a term for objects that have a face - if you look at it the right way. Like with the one at the top of this post...

There's a nice collection up at boreme.com, and flickr.com has a huge collection of inanimate faces.
Thanks to this website, I've been eyeing my TV for the last couple of minutes, since it really resembles a face with a big smile...

Monochrome dreams

Sometimes, an architectural presentation really brings the question forth whether the project portrayed is really built, or the result of an extensive process of rendering and photoshopping. And the new swimming pool in Le Havre (France) by Jean Nouvel definitely made me look twice, because I thought my eyes were cheating on me. The baths, called "Les Bains des docks" (the baths at the docks, or something like that) could have passed as a really realistic 3D-rendering. I simply could not believe the fact that they really went to these extremes in a finished building. The sheer whiteness of pretty much everything in the baths have made for quite an unusual monumentality that one doesn't encounter all too often in a public swimming pool. The fact that the children's playing area is covered in really abrasive colours doesn't diminish the fact that the swimming pool's most remarkable feat is the fact that it's an almost impossible albino of a public bath.

And even though the building expresses a solid status of impressive strength, it doesn't become stale and unapproachable. The monchrome baths, which could have easily been considered as being "too austere" by many, seem to be inviting and welcoming. That's probably because there is more to this pool than just "being really, really brightly white".



What is more, is the spatial quality of the building (as far as one can judge from images alone). It seems robust and simple, but at the same time it reveals a playful complexity - with spaces intertwining, cutting into eachother, making room for surprising little see-throughs. The building seems to be very introverted, really creating a private little universe for the pool, away from the surrounding grittyness of the harbor. This might be the reason that hardly any images of the outside skin of the builing are published, anywhere.
Or, as a more skeptical person would say: "I think that the exterior is probably rather plain and cheap looking" (which is definitely my point of view, since I've seen images of the exterior. But for this building, it doesn't really matter. It make sense that the biggest part of the budget went into the interior, and that the interior is the most provocative and spectacular space. It's all about the use of the pool, about the experience of the water-world as something else than the surrounding city, and the contrast between inside and outside definitely plays it's role in this process. This also explains the over-abundance of white, making the pool appear to be other-worldly - both in the inside spaces and the open-air pool.



A building like this really depends on the strength of its details. The joints between the tiles should be durable, the edges between two material should be smooth, connections should be almost invisible. And it takes time before any faults in this to show, so it's hard to say beforehand if the spectacular image of this building will stand the test of time. But considering all the attention that went into the design of small details (like the lettering for the directions to the showers etcetera), I'm pretty positive that this place will still look awesome years from now.



Oh, and for a nice touch: I have the feeling that the office of Nouvel ordered all the people in the official presentation images to be dressed in black and white swimsuits, too - to even enhance the monochromatical interior. Or could it be that these are the architects of the office, celebrating the opening of this swimming pool among themselves, in correct style?

All images are taken from flickr.com, by the way.

Vitra House - Herzog & De Meuron

Stacking of shapes and/or volumes is a rather trendy thing in architecture at the moment, I'd reckon. I don't know who started the trend, but a lot of architects are into this concept. Some of the biggest names in architecture are doing it. O.M.A. does it a lot, lately (for instance, in their Bryghusprojektet in Copenhagen, or the Hamburg Science Center). Also JDS (Julien de Smedt) used this concept in his proposal for a Villa in China.
But also in the work of Herzog & De Meuron one can see a proliferation of this concept: for instance in their 56 Leonard Street skyscraper in New York, or the Projet Triangle in Paris. Or even the original proposal for the extension of the Tate Modern in London was based around this concept.

With that being said and done: I recently saw some photos of the construction of the Vitra Haus in Weil am Rhein, like the picture above (from flickr.com user Dom Dada). This project by Herzog & De Meuron looked as a simple schematic "stacking of typical house-shaped volumes" the first time I saw this project (on platforma arquitectura.
But the the construction photos show the actual physical quality that is achieved by such a simple concept. I think it's typical for many of the projects by Herzog & De Meuron: the renderings/drawings make you think "is that really all? It looks a bit dull..."; the construction phase makes you think "well, this appears to be more promising than I thought before, it seems to have some unexpected spatial qualities..."; and the materialized building actually leaves you awestruck. That's exactly what I like about their work in general (and this Vitra Haus specifically): in many architectural projects, the building is not nearly as sophisticated and elegant as the initial renderings; but for Herzog & De Meuron's work it's the exactly the other way around: the building is always better than the drawings.

Image Construction

Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin made a really intriguing series of photocollages under the title "image/construction". The starting point appears to be an existing building, which is cut up, sampled, mirrored, warped, distorted, cloned and appropriated to make a new structure, possible and impossible at the same time. It plays on the dichitomy of the image and reality. It questions the value of representation in many aspects. And it implicitly asks the question what a building is.

Other than this quasi-intellectual interpretations, these images just look great. So here's another one:

Interactive Mirror

At one time or another, I think that everybody has drawn on a mirror - for whatever particular reason, be it leaving a message to someone, or just to have some fun drawing a funny face.

It inspired the people from Lit Studios and Interference Inc. to delve a bit deeper into the so-called "HCI" (Human Computer Interaction), in order to create a layer of interactive overlays (buttons, images and more) over the reflection you'd normally see in it.

Giving directions

When working for Emery Studio in Australia, Axel Peemüller Design came up with a more graphic way of depicting the signs of the Eureka Carpark Tower. The letters of the directions one should go in the parking garage are distorted. They are smeared over the walls, floors and ceilings. Only from certain vantage points along the route, they are perfectly readable.

The bigger picture

When photographers play with the interconnection of the actual reality and a constructed illusion, it's nothing new. It comes with the turf, I'd say. But especially if it's large-scaled, and if it's an actual installation in the public realm, it can become a work that verges in of the concept of street art.

And the work of the photographer/artist Renate Buser (from Basel) is exactly that. She takes an existing situation and adds a distortion of reality to it. It could be a shifted perspective, a new layer of meaning or a new way of seeing things. Because of the reality of the image, mixed with the large scale, it ends up in a rather surreal setting, where all constructed realities can be questioned as being true and false at the same time. Other than that: it just looks really amazing!


I found these projects on wrongdistance.com

The photography of Martin Parr

I really like the humorous, tongue-in-cheek approach that Martin Parr has to documentary photography. He shoots ordinary - whether it's about tourism, consumerism, contemporary living or what not - scenes in such a way that makes you want to feel uncomfortable, and fascinated at the same time. Like in the books "bored couples book" (see image above), or "think of england" (below). Or in many of his other books, for that matter.

And the cool thing is that, on his website martinparr.com, you can browse through a great part of his books. It's all so british (in style and content), and yet very universal. Satire without trying. Compelling by keeping a distance. Fascinating by being normal.

A different perspective

I know that I should definitely stop mentioning the Euro 2008 football championship. And I'm sure that I would have stayed off the subject if I hadn't heard about this brilliant feature by Eurosport and Yahoo, called "Virtual Replays". You can watch every single goal from Euro 2008 from a bunch of different perspectives. But the most brilliant thing about it is that you can actually see the goals from the perspective of some of the players involved. My favorite ones: well, probably either the goal by Arjen Robben (Netherlands) against France, seen through his eyes. Or the goal by Nihat (Turkey) against Czech Republic, as seen through the eyes of the Czech goalkeeper? Anyway, it's really nice to have such a feature at hand that really takes advantage of computational powers available.

Writing on the wall revisited

So, yeah, I've written about this subject before, in a post called "writing on the wall". But recently, I've came across some texts scattered across walls, that are just to brilliant to pass up.



The top image was found on Eyeteeth, the bottom one on Hardcopy.

Fantasy architecture league

New York Magazine has remodeled itself into the client that most architects dream of: the one that doesn't pose any restrictions, but gives the designer freedom to do whatever they'd like to.

Well, that's almost true: they invited four architects to make plans for an empty lot in downtown New York. The rules were simple, and I quote "We required only that the result include a residential component and that it more or less meet zoning requirements."

It's nice to see the different approaches the invited architects took. Flank, for instance, came up with a concept to make affordable, middle class housing in this area - a type of dwellings that is not that well represented in the urban tissue of the area. Flank came up with a design, in which a corporate logo is integrated into the facade of the building. But it's not just a building with a billboard on the side of it - the billboard is fragmented to ensure that it's highly visible from a little distance, without interfering with the quality of the appartment as such.

But, if I were to decide which design should be built (if any of it would actually be built in the future), I'd definitely go with the proposal of Work AC, called The Locavore Fantasia. They went for a snazzy appartment building, with anurban farm on top. The whole is stretched to get a potential for maximizing farmland in the city - creating shorter lines of transportation, closer contact with nature, and all the other advantages of urban agriculture. The building is devised to have different crops on each floor. It might not only be urban agriculture, the building would also have potential for more recreational used green sites, such as golf courses, for instance. Also, art in the public realm is included in the proposal: the columns supporting the building (and leaning it to face towards the sun) are commisioned by artists. In the rather cute, Sim City-styled presentation drawing, they used a Brancusi to support the entire building...

Sculpting yet another museum

The Guggenheim Museum is a brand. It's a world-wide concept of museums. It doesn't even matter that much what is on display, it's about the brand of the museum. And a big part of the the branding exercise has to do with spectacular architecture. For instance, the Guggenheim in Bilbao is world-renowned, but that's mostly because of the spectacular building by Frank Gehry. Probably, more people know the building than the items on display. And the concept is expanding ever more, all over the globe. The latest addition is a plan for a new Guggenheim Museum in Vilnius (Lithuania).

Well, maybe calling it "a plan for a new museum is stretching the truth a bit. There has been a feasibility study for the establishment of a new museum in Vilnius, in a joint project by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage Museum. And as those things go: the organisation went for big shot, famous architects to come up with an awe-inspiring, iconic building. So they commissioned Libeskind, Fuksas and Hadid for this museum building. And the three of them came up with signature, impressive icons. Libeskind strayed from his regular "stacking boxes in a faux symbolic language", Fuksas went for a rather becoming "contemporary plastic-looking blobby animal", and Hadid... well, she just did the same as always. Organic, dynamic structures, very elegant with odd-shaped windows. I can understand why she won this competition. And I'm sure that it'll be an amazing building, if built.
But the thing is - and I never ever thought that I would say this - it's so damn safe! It's not so much a signature, it's just more of the same. Sure, it's spectacular and beautiful, but it's not that refreshing anymore. I've seen Hadid do this multiple times before. Not to mention the groups of followers and copiers who are doing lesser versions of this kind of stuff.

So, just for novelty sake, I'd rather have seen the proposal of Fuksas being built. It's slightly over the top, it's less elegant (and possibly less iconic), but it would've been a new direction. I'm not sure whether it would've been better, but any kind of experiment has the potential of failure in it. And I just applaud experiment - which the proposal by Hadid clearly isn't...





All the images are from The Architects' Journal

[C]space

For the 10th anniversary of the AA's Design Research Laboratory, a competition was held for a small pavillion to be erected on Bedford Square in London. The competition was open to all students and graduates of the DRL - and more or less the only given was that the competitors should make innovative use of Fibre C (glass fibre reinforced concrete).

And the design that won the competition (designed by the architects Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang) does just what one would expect from a competition entry by someone from the AA: it's all computer graphics, double curved, and smooth rendered elegant shape. Sure, there's a bit more to it, but I could never really been bothered with this kind of spectacular architecture for the sake of it. It means nothing, it just looks good...

I couldn't be bothered until I saw that the project is actually under construction. The two designers set up a blog about the project, on which they document the entire production. And I must say: in reality it looks amazing. It's still just showing off, but it's really beautifully done - one can just see that the architects pushed themselves as far as they could to realize the qualities of the virtual image. Just lovely.

It's all in the details...

I'm pretty sure that it isn't exactly what Mies v.d. Rohe was talking about when he said "God is in the detail", but this advertisements clearly show what a difference a detail can make. A detail in personal experience, that is. I found this advertisement for the Belgium optician Oogmerk via hardcopy, who got it, in turn, from what some would call lies.

Atmospheric renders

The noble art of rendering for architectural projects always seemed to steer towards a more and more photorealistic style. And quite likely, this result is closer than ever with the development in software-land. Even people that are not that skilled are able to compose a pretty decent 3d-image (for instance by mixing 3D Studio and Photoshop).

But again, there are people out there that take rendering images to a whole new level. Like the people of the French firmLuxigon. It's not about photorealism per se, but more about a poetic touch to convey the inherent characteristics of the project involved. You can compare it with "normal" photography: you could either choose to frame the reality as objective as possible, or to paint reality the way you perceive it. I simply love the slightly gloomy, but very atmospheric images that Luxigon produces.