Clones

Brilliantly inventive work by artist Peter Funch. At first it's difficult to work out what he has done, but fairly quickly we can tell that there is some clever image manipulation. It offers a perceptive critique of city life by aggregating common themes, through which a typology of urban activity emerges.

Cartooning

Although he became famous (to me at least) through the LOLcats cartoons - his alleged 'discovery' of a 1920s source for the internet meme - Adam Koford has provided a constant stream of surreal, self-deprecating, sideways humour on Twitter. Always a joy. But here he is in illustrating action, mesmerising with penstrokes on a series of YouTube videos. Takes me back to the days of Vision On...

And find him on Twitter here.

Plans

For a long time it has seemed poor to feature interesting architecture in the media whilst assuming that the public would be 'confused' by floorplans.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find that Wallpaper has been publishing interactive drawings for some time, allowing you to alternate between an orthogonal drawing and photographs of the building concerned. It makes for an easier understanding of the project, whether you're an architect or not. Well done everyone.

Layering

Manhattan Transformations provides a visualisation of urban development on Manhattan Island. The highlight is the layered map, with the original settlements and farm patterns. It is limited in scale and scope, which is a shame as there is some interesting research within.

Games

Think of street games, and images of hopscotch and kerb-ball spring to mind. Using large-scale light projections and interactive techniques, KMA are bringing a new type of street game to cities across Europe.

My reservation is that it seems simply to project onto a plain surface. More innovative would be to use augmented reality techniques. In this version, real elements of the streetscape would be activated by interacting with sensors and projectors. In so doing, it would supplement the function of, say, a parkbench so that it became part of a winning move in a game, or a handrail as a defence.

Link here to UK events, but see earlier post on building projections.

Crutch

It seems a shame that a tabletop has two sides, but only one ever gets used. The ability to use both sides of a tabletop opens up many possibilities: the sides could have differing laminates, one could be wipeable, one could be 'Sunday best', and so on. A clever concept, called 'Crutch' uses a standard 'leg' and staps to create a stable surface. It should also be possible to use non-regular shapes, I guess.

Design by NicolaFromBern.

Update: Another variation on the theme here.

Wes

Just spotted this graphic project for Wes Anderson's Film Festival this year. Some of it is a little self-consciously whimsical (much like his films, actually), but there are some really fun ideas in there. Find it referred to at Behance, here.

GUI

A breathtaking yet gimmick-free re-imagining of the computer user interface by R Clayton Miller, all lovingly explained in this video. It's long, but worth watching in full for a glimpse of what we can hope is our mouseless future. Fingers at the ready - all of them.

(via)

Projection

OM Ungers remixed in a simply jawdropping architectural projection. It's surely what pixellated cubic postmodernism was invented for.

(via)

Bump

Our bodies don't change shape quickly - usually. So a dress that accommodates the relatively rapid change in body shape driven by pregnancy seems like an interesting design challenge. Marisol Rodriguez has designed a range of dresses called 'Skin' which allow the wearer to expand by having slits and pleats. Colour is revealed as the outer skin opens.

(via)

Post-war

As a former resident of a GKC building (albeit for just under a week, aged 0), I was sad to learn this Civic Trust Award winning building had been demolished. Add to this that I spent four years living in an Edinburgh towerblock has led to an affection for post-war Scottish architecture. Nice to see ILike provide a link to Historic Scotland's PDF guide to the genre.

The image here is of Langlee Housing Estate, Galashiels by Wheeler and Sproson from 1967 - crisp primary forms with asymmetric facade compositions which could be mistaken for something more recent.

Emptiness

Architectural representations of a particularly spare kind in the work of Khedoori, quoted in butdoesitfloat. Like Rossi's work, there is latent the invitation to populate the space, as though people will begin to give purpose to their chilly emptiness.

Sketch

Sketching has always seemed to me as much about slowing down my thinking as representing an idea. The question posed by a new computer interface posted here is whether it helps us think slowly and creatively in the same way as a pencil and paper. The demonstration of 'ILoveSketch' is obviously designed to show off its NURBS capabilities, featuring an excessively curvy building. Impressive, as long as it can do square things just as well.

(via)

Chairs

So many chairs, so little money. My favourite of many, the Lola, is featured in the beautiful joint detail shown here.

(via)

The Auteurs

Lovefilm is my rental service of choice, having supplied me with nearly 400 films over the last 5 years. New to the scene (to me at least) is The Auteurs, which focuses on the obscure and the cult, streamed online. Each is £3.00, though there seems to be only a limited selection of about 20 movies at any given time. It certainly seems worth a try - if only for those moments when there is nothing on TV, but there is an urgent need for some quality viewing.

It can be found here.

Inside

A gripping five minutes from the mind of Trevor Sands, directing a short film called 'Inside'. Recommended.

Objects

Why? Why not.

Daft fun as Dylan Chandler scrolls through the contents of his home at high speed (which weirdly seems to make a bleepy electronic noise in my head), like some crazy one-armed bandit.

Via on twitter.

Day

One of the best examples of interactive data presentation, as published by the New York Times. It compresses a vast array of data on how people use their day into a visually rich graph, which clicking allows you isolate and explore. Take a look at the comparison between black and white eating through the day, for example - and how having one child means you work more, it seems. Fascinating stuff.

Hands

An absolutely stunning clock design by SanderMulder. It reorganises the three hands (seconds, minutes, hours) so that they do not share a common axis. The video is well worth a look, to appreciate its sculptural effect. Only 20 will be made, it seems. (via)

Plates

What a nice idea. (via)

Power

How many times have we gazed admiringly at a great piece of mains-powered industrial design, only to find the ubiquitous and ugly UK plug on the end of it? US and continental consumers take for granted their compact and elegant version, avoiding unsightly bulges in their laptop bags.

Min-Kyu Choi has designed a three-pin plug which can be folded flat for travel. Thank you - about time. (via)

Superimposition

And so to the work of Bas Princen, a Dutch photographer attracted to abandoned urban settings with strong geometric character and their capacity for creating striking abstract images. Many photos deal with the collision of cartesian grids and natural forms, as idealised human form-making meets the real world. No surprise then to find an explicit reference to Superstudio in one of the captions - a micro-tiled concrete skeleton that could be the work of these 60s/70s visionary architects.

Tools

Some fetishistic shots of the specially made tools for the Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope.

"The EVA mini-workstation mounts to the front chest of an astronaut’s spacesuit and holds equipment needed during spacewalks." So, a toolbelt, then. The square hole on the left holds a carton of 'Um Bongo'.

Infill

Jan Vormann has injected humour into the idea of urban infill in Berlin. The artist, colleagues and friends set about filling the shelled and pock-marked facades of the city using multicoloured Lego pieces. The result is mildly provocative, but mostly just fun, as far as I can see.

Long

From days visiting the Tate on Millbank in London come memories of the work of Richard Long. Enigmatic strings of words in Gill Sans, perhaps a photograph - all that remained of artworks that consisted of using his feet, and walking. Later work became more tangible, geometric and gallery-friendly.

Over at the Guardian is a fine introduction to Long's peripatetic work, recognised as being at once conceptual and unpretentious. This can be ascribed to (literally) grounding his work. However, it is more than this - it is his respectful uncovering of the Englishman's primitive connection to the land and the marks made on it, whether through labour or ritual.

An architectural inspiration.

Things

Increasingly enjoying the sliced opinion and snapshots of Things magazine, and their regular posts. I might call it 'a sideways look at web presences' if it didn't sound cliched.

It's over here.

Kropilak

Branislav Kropilak's stunning large format photographs are now available at what an email confirms as 'affordable' prices. Last time direct contact with him was the only way to check prices, but they are well worth pursuing.

The photographs of everyday modernity have a distinctive graphic quality, taking in subjects as diverse as car parks, planes, trains and billboards. Explore the full set here.

Dialect

Assembled and published by the British Library a record of England's regional dialects makes fascinating listening. A Google map allows easy connection to the range of sounds and vocabulary of our people. The north has a noticeably denser concentration of flags, perhaps indicating the persistent, distinctive and subtly different intonations of our northern industrial towns, it seems.

Covers

Over at Flickr is a really well produced set of CD artwork by Littlepixel reimagined as 'Pelican' book covers. Proof that good graphic design, like a great piece of songwriting, can be reinterpreted and retain the key qualities that make it great.

A favourite? Probably Unknown Pleasures.

Short

Simple feelgood filmmaking. Signs by Patrick Hughes.

Thanks to SwissMiss.

Cinema

The Rio by 1:2:3 and Kristoffer Sundin consists of simple well-chosen materials assembled to create an intimate, distinctive space. Cleverly, the way they are put together - and in particular, the lighting - still seem to say 'cinema' without resorting to cliche. I loved this shot of the entrance in the rain.

Data

From Flowing Data comes an innovative and beautiful way of representing complex data. Like all graphs, it works because it converts the information from the numbers into visual form. The difference in the ribbon diagrams is in the ability to present multi-dimensional numeric values clearly. The example of hair colour preference is a good example, and all is clearly explained. Very clever.

Zumthor

One of my heroes, Peter Zumthor was announced as this year's Pritzker Prize winner. His work is formally ascetic, but materially rich, born of extended gestation periods completely unfeasible for the everyday architect. As a result, he produces subtle, deep architecture that is anything but everyday, yet whose textural properties resonate with human contact.

His sensual work is summarised by Dezeen here, and my favourite building - his mountainside chapel at Chur - is shown left.

Whitworth

I recently went to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, and caught the 'Subversive Spaces' exhibition. It draws together disparate fields of artistic enquiry, including situationism, feminist art and psycho-geography to create stimulating reflections. All fall into the category of art from the margins. Artists such as Sarah Lucas, Dali, Lucy Gunning and Guy De Bord are featured.

Magnets

A little old now, but just stumbled upon this again. It is a magnetic curtain, which allows for some striking sculptural possibilities, due to the way the grid of magnets engages when it is scrunched.

(via 3Rings)

Retro

The redesigned Architectural Review is available for pre-publication inspection over at Dezeen. I was immediately transported back by its masthead to the RIBA Library and browsing through mid-seventies (I think it was) editions of the magazine - probably looking for a brick housing scheme, or something by Peter Eisenman.

I have a worry that clean well-composed pictures will be disturbed by overlapping tabs and text blocks, though its generally retro feel paradoxically lent the spreads previewed a freshness.

Still Life

The Art School at MMU currently has some large format photos of scenes from its history on display. Amongst them is this photo of a still life class with a slightly surreal air. In the centre are (presumably) the objects set for them to work on, yet they are carefully posed facing away from the study. Furthermore, they are drawing childish outlines in chalk on their boards, which a colleague identified correctly as looking uncannily like the work of Michael Craig-Martin.

All in all, the scene has the signs of a dapper, very civilised protest perhaps against art - or the people teaching it.

Tumbler

Following Zaha Hadid's (empty) Chanel Pavilion last year, OMA have stepped up to create something equally frivolous for Prada. The Transformer is a pavilion that can be 'tumbled' onto each of its faces to create different layouts. It's like the recession isn't really happening.

However, the website explaining how it works it quite good. Check out the timelapse photography.

Trade

Learning a huge amount about trade associations and specialist magazines thanks to the good work of this blog.

Sample sentences capturing the wry tone of the observations:

"There's something kind of comforting about the idea that there's a whole industry dedicated to making sure that most of the time, most people find things easy to use, comfortable to use. It's like someone's taking care of us. And they're doing it with some numbers and a graph."

"Anyway, despite all this, and even only looking at the confectionery guide, I like learning all the specialist phrases used in industries like this. The 'hunger' 'needstate'. 'Multi-facings'. 'Impulse sub-section'. 'Pouch format'. 'Large-block'."

Tickets II

So here it is. After complaining about the incredibly poor ticket design which UK train travellers (and staff) have to put up with, here is a re-imagining of it. Taking the original orange-and-white format as a starting point, there are a number of key features which should improve the ticket in use.

Importantly, the destination is the most prominent information, enabling people to see at a glance where the ticket is valid for. Underneath is the permitted route. In this case, the ticket is a return for two adults, one full-price child, and one concession child, and incorporates a seat reservation (coach and seat numbers). Using the inspiration of the timeless British Rail logo, the ticket is reversible depending on whether it is to be used for the outbound or return journey. The orange bands remain the location for the punchhole check by the guard.

The departure time and date are also shown, with an analogue clock to help make the time more memorable. In this way, all of the information on the current ticket design is preserved, reorganised into a user-friendly format, and anything distracting discarded or diminished.

Clicks

An interesting piece of research recently posted over at blog Music Machinery, looking at evidence for the use of click tracks by drummers. They are the background electronic beats used as a guide (or perhaps, straitjacket) over which the drummer plays. Shown right is Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' - the higher the line, the slower the beat - and clear evidence of a creative human at work. Not a machine in sight.

Storage

The origins of Jonathan Ive's great product design for Apple lie in the work of Joe Colombo, Brionvega, and especially Dieter Rams. All were at their creative peak as the sixties turned into the seventies, and there can be little doubt where the iPhone calculator began. Alongside the Braun calculator, one of Rams' most famous innovations was the 606 shelving system he designed for Vitsoe, and now celebrating its 50th anniversary.

In a testament to its timelessness, anyone who bought the product in 1959 can still buy compatible components to extend their storage array in 2009. See how it works on Vitsoe's revamped website (by Airside).

Augmentation

Experiments in augmented reality have interested me for a while, and I remember a 'pop-up' picture book demonstrated a year or so ago. This demo from GE popped up today, and I had to share it with you. The possibility of sending a client a 2D plan which comes to life like this would be amazing - if only for short-term novelty value.

Polemic

It seems like a very long time since I've seen an architectural project with any degree of political content or a committed polemical position. Via BldgBlog comes information about a project by Viktor Ramos of Rice University consisting of a provocative architectural solution to the Palestinian-Israel impasse - a bypass.

His scheme proposes a series of spaces which weave under- and overground to form what he terms 'The Continuous Enclave'. The scheme reminds me of Lebbeus Woods' work from the 80's, but with a technocratic machine aesthetic in place of the steampunk feel of Woods. Great to see architecture used in this way again.

More hi-res images are available on Ramos' flickerset.

Rubbing

Rub-down Letraset people are now in the 'vintage' section of eBay, and I remember just how precious each person was on that thin sheet of plastic.

Taking a biro and laying the sheet over the drawing, we would rub over the image, then tentatively lift the sheet hoping that we did not amputate, de-hat or otherwise emasculate the individual concerned. By the time we were porting the last person into drafting immortality, we had a shrivelled and curled mess, from which it was frankly unlikely the character would transfer unscathed.

Happy days.

Cards II

The business card is to graphic design what the chair is to the product designer, or the house extension is to the architect: a testbed for new ideas. This site neatly condenses innovations as they arise and publishes them in a simple unfussy manner. Worth a detour if you are considering ways to catch someone's eye within the restriction of an 85x55mm rectangle.

Optimism

From an abandoned property in Wood Street, Liverpool, a strangely satisfying graph, complete with X- and Y-axis subdivisions.

The person who was given the job of boarding up the windows it seems couldn't be bothered to cut the timbers to the right length, especially as they were so close to being right. The job they are doing is simple - to make bill-posting too awkward to be worthwhile. Graffiti is erased in white to the extent of the highest batten.

Anyhow, the good news is that the graph appears to be based on an optimistic dataset, despite economic, empirical and visual evidence to the contrary. I guess that's Liverpool.

Fun

The usual misgivings about whether kitsch is an acceptable way for a seaside town to ply its trade on a trip to Southport today. In half-term week, it was bustling and lively, despite a February chill. The Ocean Terminal development seems to be a sad case of regeneration opportunism - a retail park flown in from somewhere, with wavy canopies applied to make the dull portal sheds appear 'contextual'.

However the fine Victorian iron canopies and the boulevard of Lord Street provide a memorable backbone for the town, and the recent public realm works show a commendable commitment to quality. With geography also in its favour when compared to Morecambe or Fleetwood, it is one of those seaside towns which with a fair wind (and on a clear day) we should see making a full recovery. I'll be back.

Conveyor

"A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." (Orson Welles)

I liked the everyday simplicity of this video - a couple of bored diners send their camera round a sushi carousel with a wistful song laid over the top.

Craft

Apparently, the key to knitting is knotting. Alternatively, it is finding the holes and tying wool around them.

This is a transformational process of taking beautiful 2d textural planes, folding and stitching them around a 3d form (me, if I'm lucky), using only 1d dyed filament. Magical.