Optical Illusion

Recycled Sculptures

Deadlines

I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

“Street artists and muralists bring with them vibrant and a new perspective that architects or designers may not have. This does not mean that millions need to be spent to upgrade the buildings immediately, all you need is vision, courage, local creative talent and some colorful paint like these perfect examples here. Our subscriber list reads like the Who-is-Who of city councils around the globe. So here’s a challenge to you: You need to step up and change the face of your city. There are way too many ugly, run-down buildings, bridges, tunnels and walkways that can be completely transformed into exciting and fun environments with some creative input” (www.coolhunter.com)

I put my hands up in the air sometimes saying… No more drab concrete surfaces!

such bright sparks out there..;)

The Lilypad Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees is a giant floating city that people can live on when the world floods. The architectures behind the design believe we'll need these things by 2100 because half of the world will have disappeared underwater.
According to the less alarming forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate), the ocean level should rise from 20 to 90 cm during the 21st Century with a status quo by 50 cm (versus 10 cm in the 20th Century). As a solution to this alarming problem architect Vincent Callebaut came up with this ecotectural marvel that could serve as a luxurious future retreat for 50,000 inhabitants seeking refuge from rising waters due to global warming. He believes the world will be desperately seeking shelter from the devastations of climate change, and hopes the auto-sufficient amphibious city will serve as a luxurious solution. To bad that right now we are close to 7 billion people and this luxurious future retreat is just for 50,000 inhabitants ( just for rich people ).

Vincent Callebaut called this project “Lilypad“, but this ecotectural marvel is also called as “Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees”. The whole structure is covered in green walls and roofs, the top portion covered in grasses with the inner portion featuring a palm oasis, and the under portion serving as a bed for natural sea planktons and oceanic plants. inspirational, but scary;)

the power of colour

often considered a byproduct of design or creative thinking, colour is often not provided with enough.. well, respect or authority which it deserves. it is a life-changing, mood-altering, expressive, bold, subtle and broad-spectrum medicine we unconciously encounter and consume every day. from the smallest hints to the largest planes, colour affects us and, as these images of present design and architecture show from www.coolhunter.com, may share the front stage to create a happier and memorable environment for living:)just imagine what some colour could do to the strand street area underneath the flyovers of Port Elizabeth - it would transform that blearly area into a vibrant place and magnetic space

this is another amazing museum designed by Yad Vashem. The museum is designed to imprint itself on one's memory, just like the actual holocaust event did to the world. it is an awe-inspiring structure which i can only hope to visit one day.. definitely on the to-do list:)

A decade in the making, the new Holocaust History Museum combines the best of Yad Vashem’s expertise, resources and state-of-the-art exhibits to take Holocaust remembrance well into the 21st century .

The new Holocaust History Museum occupies over 4,200 square meters, mainly underground. Both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, it presents the story of the Shoah from a unique Jewish perspective, emphasizing the experiences of the individual victims through original artifacts, survivor testimonies and personal possessions.

Its 180 meters – long linear structure in the form of a spike cuts through the mountain with its uppermost edge – a skylight – protruding through the mountain ridge. Galleries portraying the complexity of the Jewish situation during those terrible years branch off this spike-like shaft, and the exit emerges dramatically out of the mountainside, affording a view of the valley below. Unique settings, spaces with varying heights, and different degrees of light accentuate focal points of the unfolding narrative.

At the end of the Museum’s historical narrative is the Hall of Names—a repository for the Pages of Testimony of millions of Holocaust victims, a memorial to those who perished. From the Hall of Names, visitors will continue on to the epilogue and from there to the balcony opening to a panoramic view of Jerusalem.

Designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the new Holocaust History Museum is a prism-like triangular structure that penetrates the mountain from one side to the other, with both ends dramatically cantilevering into the open air. The triangular form of the structure was chosen to support the pressure of the earth above the prism while bringing in daylight from above through a 200 meter-long glass skylight. The skylight allows gleams of daylight to contrast with darker areas required for multimedia presentations. Within the galleries, light enters through localized skylights varying from diffused to clear glass, depending on the requirements of each exhibit.

The entire structure of the museum—floors, wall, interior and exterior—are reinforced concrete. Throughout the prism, the triangular cross-section varies, becoming narrower at the center. The warped surface formed by this variation, amplified by a gently sloping floor, creates a changing sequence of spaces and gives the illusion of descending deep into the mountain. As the route nears its northern exit, the floor begins to ascend and the triangle opens up again, with the exit bursting forth from the mountain’s slope to a dramatic view of modern-day Jerusalem.

One of the basic guidelines for the museum’s design was to create a visitor’s route dictated by the evolving narrative, with a beginning, middle and end. A central 180-meter walkway (prism) was built with exhibition galleries on either side. Between the exhibition galleries are impassable gaps extending along the breadth of the prism floor. These gaps constitute a physical obstacle, guiding the visitor into the adjacent galleries, yet always enabling eye contact with either end of the prism. The prism is therefore a longitudinal axis of historical memory, crossed by the visitors as they move from one gallery to the next and from one subject to another. The displays, filled with original artifacts, documentation, testimonies, film, literature, diaries, letters, and works of art, emphasize the unique human stories of the Jewish population in Europe during those terrible years.

Presented in this section is an overview of each gallery including descriptions, views from the galleries and featured artifacts and art from each gallery. The New Museum contains some one hundred video screens showing survivor testimonies and short films. Directors:Reuven Hecker, Ayelet Heler, Noemi Schory. Producer: Liran Atzmor.

red location museum

The Red Location Museum starkly portrays the use of the above discussed factors which shape and ecosystem: relationships, pattern and form, networks, self-organisation, flexibility and diversity. It is a modern museum located in a favela, slum or ghetto, and is an important site of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. The design evolved from an unconventional approach, innovative use of space and materials, relativity to its vernacular and bold twist of the human experience in and around the building. By studying the Red Location Museum as a precedent, ‘Yeva’ could extract its unique characteristics and exploratory use of shape, form and function to assists guide and profile decisions.

The museum is designed deliberately to confront conventional views of museum design, drawing from the work of Andrea Huyssen, Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who has written extensively of the concept of memory versus history. Visitors are not treated as consumers but as active participants. The convention of representing history as a single story is challenged and turned on its head. The museum treats the past as a set of memories that are consciously disconnected yet bound together by themes through drawing together separate strands of the struggle that mark the attempts by different south African groups to free themselves. The lesson of the Red Location is that South Africa is a country with a tumultuous history marked by the striving of various groups to be free. However, the freedom of one group should never come at the expense of any other - to be free is to be able to offer others the possibility to be free.

In a similar way, 'Yeva' is a unconventional approach to the established education system, striving to bring new, fresh and living solutions to the existing ‘dead’ method primarily employed worldwide. Within 'Yeva', visitors, staff and students will also be treated as an active and integral part of the design. By employing interactive resolutions, spatial narrative and establishing an encouraging space, people become more than just consumers or experiencers of the design by facilitating to complete it. This help to shape a diverse and flexible design, imperative to an ecosystem to ensure its survival and adaptability to changing time and circumstances.

Neoro Wolf Architects used the idea of the Memory Box to put across the concept – twelve 6x6x12m tall boxes are housed in the main exhibition space. The boxes draw their inspiration from the highly treasured memory boxes that migrant workers used to fill with objects that documented the tragic, insecure quality of a life uprooted from rural areas and transplanted to the city to work on the mines - the only reference the migrants had to the past and families, now seen only once a year. As cultural objects, the boxes have become highly prized – decorated in different ways to represent the diverse cultural, religious and other reading of life in South Africa. The Museum of Struggle is effectively a series of twelve mute, unmarked, rusted boxes offering different and varies readings and memories of struggle in South Africa – undifferentiated from the exterior, but each one’s unique contents only revealed on entry.

No sequence exists – the contents and themes of the boxes are deliberately juxtaposed to create a total experience in each. The spaces between the boxes are spaces of reflection that bring one into the present time – called ‘the twilight of memory’ by Andrea Huyssen. The innovative use of objects and ideas deeply embedded into the people and environment surrounding the museum, as well as shaping its reason for existence, aid 'Yeva' in her quest for establishing a space which reflect the vernacular of the building, its history, its site, and its people. The quality of unexpected surprise are also drawn from the Red Location Museum and used to shape 'Yeva' into an unpredictable space which capture, enthral and provoke. In so doing, varied relationships are created between functions, materials, use of space and viewers – creating a network of elements which support, enhance and rely on one another such as in a natural ecosystem.

The Red Location Museum consist of an auditorium, library, art gallery and offices, a memorial space to commemorate local heroes of the struggle, and a tomb for Raymond Mhlaba, a national struggle hero. Formal design influences are drawn partly from documentary artefacts, such as artworks and posters depicting the struggle for freedom. The building’s saw-tooth roof is a recurring theme in trade union posters from the 1980’s.

Materials are chosen to reflect those used in the surrounding areas of the Red Location and New Brighton. The materials are given new dignity: standard steel windows are used in unconventional ways; the corrugated sheets on the Memory Boxes are intentionally rusted (whence the red colour inspiring the name ‘Red Location’); and the concrete blocks traditionally used in township houses have been used very precisely as ‘clay facebricks. The way in which the museum ‘grow’ from its landscape – experienced in the sophistication and solidification of the pergola from its furthest point towards the building – will be used to modify the facade of the existing 1950’s warehouse into a more open, embracing and integrated part of its exterior.

the inages and information could never show the unique quality of the design - only a visit will;)

recycled paper products

my btech proposal, yeva, will exist as an education and production facility. as and educator, the establishment will teach all aspects behind food and clothing - 2 of human's basic needs in order to help uplift and enhance the lives of underpriviledged as well as re-direct the lives of the priviledged - bringing individual independance and community involvement as part of the process.

from its productive side, the yevatree will specifically focus on the manufacturing of products from the waste produced by businesses in the area. the main waste to be recycled into products is the paper scrap from EH Packaging and The Newspaper House, the glass offcuts from 'Smartglass' and 'National Glass' and the polycarbonate roof sheeting off cuts from 'Modak'.

To guide the perception of the products i am blogging the 'soft wall' and 'love letter light' products from 'molodesign' - these are some of the type of products which the 'yavatree' will produce from its paper recycling department - as far as possible seeds are also incoporated into designs so that the product can biodegrade and bring forth greenery ;)

molo design, based in vancouver canada, is a collaborative design and production studio, led by stephanie forsyth, todd macallen and robert passut. the studio is dedicated to the research of materials and exploration of space. as a design and manufacturing company, molo creates and distributes its innovative products around the world.

the images and videos show their soft seating, walling and lighting products - for more information visit www.molodesign.com

recylced paper products

i stumbled upon magpie when visting my family in sedgefield - they had a beautiful recycled artpiece/chandelier hanging abve the dining table.

designer and style icon, Scott.B.Hart, founded Magpie in 1998 in the small town of barrydale, along with social entrepreneur Ashoka Fellow and architect Shane A Petzer. since then the group has grown to 6 members - who share a mission to 'reflect compassionate ethical philosophy and imaginative approach in the handcrafted items from design to execution.

his philosophy is shared by 'Yeva' and underlines the community work aimed by the design.

Magpie's products resonate a professional sophistication, originality and innovative approach which is shared by Yeva designers. all products are made from recycled or recyclable materials and are of international standard - obama's wife aparantly installed two magpie chandeliers in the White House last year. The images from their website http://www.magpie.co.za/ show some of their beautiful pieces

helo

recipe to master: take one chill pill, a friend, 2 cups of tea and sweeten with 5 tablespoons of heaped laughter before freeeeaking out this year : )