Inside There Falls, on at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival this month, is the most inter-disciplinary art piece I have ever experienced, combining paper art, installation, sculpture, writing, spoken word, costume design, music and dance. The piece is an installation by UK-based artist Mira Calix, with dancers from the Sydney Dance Company and choreography by Rafaela Bonachela.
Dancers and installation as part of Inside There Falls. Photo: Penny Craswell
As an audience member, the experience begins by being led into a dark room and asked to wear white overalls or coat, and being given a scrunched up paper object to hold. The sound of a woman’s voice starts to emanate from the object, reading poetry on the body and identity, written by Sydney-based writer Brett Clegg and read by actress Hayley Atwell. Already the mood is set.
Did you know that the Horizon Apartments in Sydney by architect Harry Seidler includes two low-rise buildings, pool, tennis court, underground carpark and beautiful landscaping as well as the iconic tower? This was one of the many new things I learnt about the project on a tour organised by Sydney Living Museums.
The tower
Horizon Apartments is located in the inner city suburb of Darlinghurst surrounded by suburban housing and next to SCEGGS school. The site itself had previously been the location of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABC) Sydney office. Seidler’s intention was to create a tower that makes the most of incredible views to the harbour and city with a tall, slender tower that covers only one third of the block. The rest of the site is made of up two low-rise apartment buildings, while a beautifully landscaped garden, pool and tennis court provide serene grounds above an underground carpark. The building was originally designed in 1990 or 1991, with the building completed and tenants in residence in 1998. Read more →
A couple of years ago, I contributed a number of texts to the Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design which was my first book contribution and an amazing experience. The Phaidon editors selected every example they commissioned from me – from infographics, to fonts, to magazine covers – and as a result, I learnt so much about graphic design. Even though 26 of my entries were published, for some reason, a few stories I wrote on children’s books and toys were not published – they must have decided to leave these out. So, since it is just sitting there, here is one of the stories I wrote, on a beautiful book by Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari.
Circus in the Mist by Bruno Munari. Image via LOG.
Circus in the Mist – or Nella Nebbia di Milano – was created by Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari in 1968. With black illustrations printed on transparent paper, this is not just a children’s book, but an object of play. Read more →
At Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, a golden carousel has been installed in the forecourt, the latest version of a series of works by Belgian artist Carsten Höller that interrogate and confound human perception.
The work is clad in gold coloured mirror. Instead of horses, you sit on a gold seat suspended by gold chains. The usual dizzying ride of a merry-go-round is slowed here to a gradual revolution, with seats spaced so that, even while riding the machine, you feel solitary. The floor underfoot does not rotate, and the centrepiece rotates in the opposite direction, creating a gently confounding experience that is not only reflective in the sense of providing a series of mirrored images, but also reflective in that it inspires a state of reflection – a slowing down of the fast pace of life. Read more →
Art and About finished in Sydney on the weekend for another year. Performative works were big this year, including a wonderful work called “Bodies in Urban Spaces”. The concept is by Viennese artist Willi Dorner who enlists the help of acrobats, climbers and dancers to use their bodies in unconventional ways to fill and layer cityscapes.
Bodies in Urban Spaces as part of Art and About Sydney. Concept: Willi Dorner. Images: courtesy of City of Sydney
Dressed in colourful street clothes and hoodies, the performers find ways to insert themselves into the landscape, wrapping, layering, balancing, planking in and on the city, often choosing unremarkable structures or corners, in the process transforming the way we see them. Read more →
The societal value of architecture is not just about placemaking or city building, it can also be a powerful social and political symbol. My recent trip to Noumea included a trip to the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, a magnificent building by Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Tjibaou Cultural Centre by Renzo Piano, Noumea, New Caledonia. Images: Penny Craswell
Following the political upheaval in New Caledonia in the 1980s, during which indigenous Kanak leaders struggled for recognition from the French government, it was decided to build a cultural centre. The centre was named after Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the Kanak leader and activist who, during the struggle for independence, had recommended the government build a cultural centre for the local Kanak community. Read more →
Ligne Roset is one of those furniture brands in Europe with a long history, with roots in 1860s France, where the company was founded selling walking sticks and sunshades. Skip forward to the present day and the 5th generation Roset family are running the company, including Michel Roset who first looked at Melbourne designer Nick Rennie’s profile in 2011.
Roset liked what he saw, in particular the Saldo table, a geometric design in 8mm thick ‘crystal’glass that comes with self adhesive sliders. Within twelve months, the product was launched. Read more →
There is a wonderful profile of Andre Balazs in the latest issue of Porter magazine (Summer 2014), in which he discusses his latest hotspot in London, the Chiltern Firehouse.
A dynamic man who surrounds himself with celebrities (including a string of high profile girlfriends such as Uma Thurman and Pippa Middleton), the Firehouse restaurant is an extension of this magnetic personality – a Google search for Chiltern Firehouse turns ups Orlando Bloom, Kiefer Sutherland and Heidi Klum. It makes sense that Andy Warhol was a close friend.
Balazs takes a personal approach to every hotel and restaurant in his stable and comments in the article that he has slept in every room of the Firehouse: “I need to know what every room feels like.”
The restaurant interiors by French designers Studio KO make the most of the existing architecture of the building, a former firestation in red brick built in 1889. A large kitchen is completely open, while the dining room is in white, with grand white columns, high banquettes separating diners in booths and cane chairs providing a relaxed feel. There are a few great pics of the interiors at The Telegraph.
Design exhibitions have always played second fiddle to art exhibitions. Perhaps this is because, in order to sell their work, the artist must exhibit it, whereas the designer can sell it via a manufacturer who makes and sells it for them.
Jonathan Ben-Tovim’s Up-Down Light
However, the benefits of design exhibitions cannot be underestimated. Apart from online, an emerging designer may have no other way to show their work when first starting out.
For the second year in a row, Object Future gives emerging designers the opportunity to exhibit, this year at Allpress Studio in Melbourne. The co-curators of the show, emerging curator Suzannah Henty and emerging designer Dale Hardiman, have sought out some exceptional design from some great fresh talent this year. Read more →
Design and the sea are two topics that are not often connected. However, they do overlap. Design has allowed us to explore the sea, through the development of scuba among other inventions. And thanks to some recent designs, it is possible to design while on the sea, as well as for design to evoke the sea. I don’t want to be morbid, but the history of scuba has more than a couple of corpses. People have been swimming in oceans, lakes and rivers to find food and bathe for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that French Naval Officer Jacques Cousteau patented the Aqua Lung, allowing divers to breathe under water.
Still from Le Monde du Silence (The Silent World) via glimmerglassfilmdays.org/silent-world/
Cousteau’s influence on our knowledge of the sea cannot be underestimated. As well as developing the first Aqua Lung, he was responsible for marketing this device and bringing the sport of underwater diving to thousands. His books and films also brought the underwater world into the homes of people who had never seen anything like it before. While underwater photography had existed for nearly thirty years (National Geographic was the first to publish an underwater colour photograph – an image of a hogfish off the Florida Keys in 1928), Cousteau’s 1953 book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, and documentary film of the same name were hugely successful – the film won the Palme D’Or as well as the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Via Socks Studio
Cousteau was the inspiration for the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in which, like all Wes Anderson films, each visual element is carefully designed. In this case, the ship itself is a major character in the film, especially during a scene which pans across a cut section of the ship displaying each room. This was achieved by purchasing two ships, World War II minesweepers repainted in bright colours, and actually cutting one of them lengthways down the middle. Likewise, the costumes, suits, breathing apparatus, helicopter and submarine all undergo Wes Anderson-ification resulting in beautiful redesigns. A particular personal favourite is the yellow submarine and matching helicopter.
One of the most exciting sea-related designs is not for breathing or floating on the sea, it is a system that allows anyone with a boat to create furniture using plastics found in the ocean. Japanese Architect Azusa Murakami and British Artist Alexander Groves of London-based Studio Swine are behind the Open Source Sea Chair project. The chair is created by firstly collecting plastic found in the sea (there’s plenty of it), grouping these pieces by colour, then heating them up and using special moulds and tools to create a stool seat and three legs. These are bolted together to create the stool (all of which can be done on the boat), creating a second income for those who fish for a living as well as reducing plastic pollution. You can watch the process in action in a beautiful film they made here.
Sea Chair by Studio Swine
The quality of water is often an inspiration for designers and two particular products capture this extremely well, both shown at Spazio Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week 2014. The first is Bricola, created by Venice-based Andrea Forti and Eleonora Dal Farra of design studio Alcorol. This collection features repurposed timber from Venice’s canals, complete with holes from molluscs, that have been combined with a clear vegetable resin (clear like water) to make tables and a stool. The combination creates a sense that a sub-section of Venice’s canals, complete with historical poles and water – is made solid.
Bricola by Alcarol
The other outstanding piece related to water is Ripple by London-based duo Hanhsi Chen and Shikai Tseng of Poetic Lab. This floor lamp is made of mouth blown glass which slowly rotates, casting shadows on the walls made by the imperfections in the glass, like ripples on water.
Here it is not the object itself which is innovative, but the effect it creates, an effect which is as ephemeral and yet constant as the sea itself.
There is a certain circularity to the relationship between design and the sea. Design (of breathing equipment, submarines and so on) allows us to see under the sea in a way we never would have before. And this knowledge and understanding in turn inspires design. A nice loop.
