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Tag Archives: arts

The Golden Ratio: Design’s Biggest Myth

21 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Y2DC© in Uncategorized

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architecture, arts, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, ChatresCathedral, DeDivinaProportione, Euclid's, Fuseproject, GoldenRatio, iPad, LeCorbusier, LucaPacioli, Michelangelo, Modulorsystem, MonaLisa, Mozart, RichardMeier, SalvadorDalí, Seurat, StanfordUniversity, Stonehenge, The Parthenon, TheSacramentoftheLastSupper, UniversityofArkansas

THE GOLDEN RATIO IS TOTAL NONSENSE IN DESIGN. HERE’S WHY.

In the world of art, architecture, and design, the golden ratio has earned a tremendous reputation. Greats like Le Corbusier and Salvador Dalí have used the number in their work. The Parthenon, the Pyramids at Giza, the paintings of Michelangelo, the Mona Lisa, even the Apple logo are all said to incorporate it.

The golden ratio’s aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don’t use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There’s also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam.

Flickr user Sébastien Bertrand

What is the Golden Ratio?

First described in Euclid’s Elements 2,300 years ago, the established definition is this: two objects are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. The value this works out to is usually written as 1.6180. The most famous application of the golden ratio is the so-called golden rectangle, which can be split into a perfect square, and a smaller rectangle that has the same aspect ratio as the rectangle it was cut away from. You can apply this theory to a larger number of objects by similarly splitting them down.

THE GOLDEN RATIO IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A LITTLE OFF.

In plain English: if you have two objects (or a single object that can be split into two objects, like the golden rectangle), and if, after you do the math above, you get the number 1.6180, it’s usually accepted that those two objects fall within the golden ratio. Except there’s a problem. When you do the math, the golden ratio doesn’t come out to 1.6180. It comes out to 1.6180339887… And the decimal points go on forever.

“Strictly speaking, it’s impossible for anything in the real-world to fall into the golden ratio, because it’s an irrational number,” says Keith Devlin, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. You can get close with more standard aspect ratios. The iPad’s 3:2 display, or the 16:9 display on your HDTV all “float around it,” Devlin says. But the golden ratio is like pi. Just as it’s impossible to find a perfect circle in the real world, the golden ratio cannot strictly be applied to any real world object. It’s always going to be a little off.

The Golden Ratio As Mozart Effect

It’s pedantic, sure. Isn’t 1.6180 close enough? Yes, it probably would be, if there were anything to scientifically support the notion that the golden ratio had any bearing on why we find certain objects like the Parthenon or the Mona Lisa aesthetically pleasing.

But there isn’t. Devlin says the idea that the golden ratio has any relationship to aesthetics at all comes primarily from two people, one of whom was misquoted, and the other of whom was just making shit up.

The first guy was Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar who wrote a book called De Divina Proportione back in 1509, which was named after the golden ratio. Weirdly, in his book, Pacioli didn’t argue for a golden ratio-based theory of aesthetics as it should be applied to art, architecture, and design: he instead espoused the Vitruvian system of rational proportions, after the first-century Roman architect, Vitruvius. The golden ratio view was misattributed to Pacioli in 1799, according to Mario Livio, the guy who literally wrote the book on the golden ratio. But Pacioli was close friends with Leonardo da Vinci, whose works enjoyed a huge resurgence in popularity in the 19th century. Since Da Vinci illustrated De Divina Proportione, it was soon being said that Da Vinci himself used the golden ratio as the secret math behind his exquisitely beautiful paintings.

One guy who believed this was Adolf Zeising. “He’s the guy you really want to burn at the stake for the reputation of the golden ratio,” Devlin laughs. Zeising was a German psychologist who argued that the golden ratio was a universal law that described “beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art… which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical.”

He was a long-winded guy. The only problem with Zeising was he saw patterns where none exist. For example, Zeising argued that the golden ratio could be applied to the human body by taking the height from a person’s navel to his toes, then dividing it by the person’s total height. These are just arbitrary body parts, crammed into a formula, Devlin says: “When measuring anything as complex as the human body, it’s easy to come up with examples of ratios that are very near to 1.6.”

IN MY OWN WORK, I CAN’T EVER RECALL USING THE GOLDEN RATIO.

But it didn’t matter if it was made up or not. Zeising’s theories became extremely popular, “the 19th-century equivalent of the Mozart Effect,” according to Devlin, referring to the belief that listening to classical music improves your intelligence. And it never really went away. In the 20th century, the famous Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier based his Modulor system of anthropometric proportions on the golden ratio. Dalí painted his masterpiece The Sacrament of the Last Supper on a canvas shaped like a golden rectangle. Meanwhile, art historians started combing back through the great designs of history, trying to retroactively apply the golden ratio to Stonehenge, Rembrandt, the Chatres Cathedral, and Seurat. The link between the golden ratio and beauty has been a canard of the world of art, architecture, and design ever since.

Ian Yen via Yanko Design

You Don’t Really Prefer The Golden Ratio

In the real world, people don’t necessarily prefer the golden ratio.

Devlin tells me that, as part of an ongoing, unpublished exercise at Stanford, he has worked with the university’s psychology department to ask hundreds of students over the years what their favorite rectangle is. He shows the students collections of rectangles, then asks them pick out their favorite one. If there were any truth behind the idea that the golden ratio is key to beautiful aesthetics, the students would pick out the rectangle closest to a golden rectangle. But they don’t. They pick seemingly at random. And if you ask them to repeat the exercise, they pick different rectangles. “It’s a very useful way to show new psychology students the complexity of human perception,” Devlin says. And it doesn’t show that the golden ratio is more aesthetically pleasing to people at all.

Devlin’s experiments aren’t the only ones to show people don’t prefer the golden ratio. A study from the Haas School of Business at Berkeleyfound that, on average, consumers prefer rectangles that are in the range of 1.414 and 1.732. The range contains the golden rectangle, but its exact dimensions are not the clear favourite.

Many of Today’s Designers Don’t Think It’s Useful

The designers we spoke to about the golden ratio don’t actually find it to be very useful, anyway.

Richard Meier, the legendary architect behind the Getty Center and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, admits that when he first started his career, he had an architect’s triangle made that matched the golden ratio, but he had never once designed his buildings keeping the golden ratio in mind. “There are so many other numbers and formulas that are more important when designing a building,” he tells me by phone, referring to formulas that can calculate the maximum size certain spaces can be, or ones that can determine structural load.

THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER NUMBERS AND FORMULAS THAT ARE MORE IMPORTANT WHEN DESIGNING A BUILDING.

Alisa Andrasek, the designer behind Biothing, an online repository of computational designs, agrees. “In my own work, I can’t ever recall using the golden ratio,” Andrasek writes in an email. “I can imagine embedding the golden ratio into different systems as additional ‘spice,’ but I can hardly imagine it driving the whole design as it did historically… it is way too simplistic.”

Giorgia Lupi of Accurat, the Italian design and innovation firm, says that, at best, the golden ratio is as important to designers as any other compositional rule, such as the rule of thirds: maybe a fine rule-of-thumb, but one that good designers will feel free to reject. “I don’t really know, in practice, how many designers deliberately employ the golden ratio,” she writes. “I personally have never worked with it our used it in my projects.”

Of the designers we spoke to, industrial designer Yves Béhar of Fuseproject is perhaps kindest to the golden ratio. “I sometimes look at the golden ratio as I observe proportions of the products and graphics we create, but it’s more informational than dogmatic,” he tells me. Even then, he never sets out to design something with the golden ratio in mind. “It’s important as a tool, but not a rule.”

Even designers who are also mathematicians are skeptical of the golden ratio’s use in design. Edmund Harriss is a clinical assistant professor in the University of Arkansas’ mathematics department who uses many formulas to help generate new works of art. But Harriss says that the golden ratio is, at best, just one of many tools at a mathematically inclined designer’s fingertips. “It is a simple number in many ways, and as a result it does turn up in a wide variety of places…” Harriss tells me by email. “[But] it is certainly not the universal formula behind aesthetic beauty.”

The Sacrament of the Last Supper, 1955, Salvador Dali

Why Does The Myth Persist?

If the golden ratio’s aesthetic merit is so flimsy, then why does the myth persist?

Devlin says it’s simple. “We’re creatures who are genetically programmed to see patterns and to seek meaning,” he says. It’s not in our DNA to be comfortable with arbitrary things like aesthetics, so we try to back them up with our often limited grasp of math. But most people don’t really understand math, or how even a simple formula like the golden ratio applies to complex system, so we can’t error-check ourselves. “People think they see the golden ratio around them, in the natural world and the objects they love, but they can’t actually substantiate it,” Devlin tells me. “They are victims to their natural desire to find meaning in the pattern of the universe, without the math skills to tell them that the patterns they think they see are illusory.” If you see the golden ratio in your favorite designs, you’re probably seeing things.

Dering Hall

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Y2DC© in News

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architects, architecture, artisans, arts, Dering Hall, design, finest interior designers, furniture, home furnishings, interior design, interior design companies, interior design consultants, london interior design, los angeles interior design, new york interior designers

386178-Ralph_Pucci_International_Volubile

Y2DC is now proud to announce their inclusion on the Dering Hall online marketplace. Here you will find the finest interior designers, architects, artisans, and design galleries to showcase their work and sell new, high-end home furnishings and accessories.

At Dering Hall they are passionate about design and broadening the audience for the best the industry has to offer. Their ongoing mission is to assemble a community of the world’s leading creators in one place and to connect them with other designers and savvy, sophisticated consumers.

They provide a roster of top talent with permanent storefronts, where they present a curated assortment of products to highly engaged shoppers. These customers, in turn, gain access to unique pieces previously available only to select designer clients. It’s an entirely new approach to furnishing a home—and one that makes hunting for that perfect bespoke sideboard a dynamic and enjoyable experience.

Buyers can effortlessly browse Dering Hall’s storefronts, search product listings, or keep up to date on favorite designers with our innovative “Follow” function. They also offer special Featured Sales as well as a range of compelling and inspiring design content. Welcome to the world of Dering Hall, from the best designers in the world!

http://www.deringhall.com

Design Days Dubai 2013 Fair

21 Thursday Feb 2013

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#ArtFactumGallery, #BasedUpon, #BritishCraftsCouncil, #BroachedCommissions, #CarpentersWorkshopGallery, #CarwanGallery, #ColetivoAmordeMadre, #ContemporaryArtPlatform, #Croft, #ErastudioApartmentGallery, #GaleriaMexicanadeDiseño, #GalerieDianedePolignac, #GalerieSofieLachaert, #GallerySeomi, #GazelliArtHouse, #IndustryGallery, #J+AGallery, #LaGalerieNationale, #MajlisGallery, #TwentytwentyoneGallery, arts, design, design days, dubai, furniture, interior design

BC Trent Jansen Briggs Family Tea Service 2From 18-21 March 2013, Design Days Dubai, in its second year, will offer exceptional rare design creations from 29 galleries, a 30% growth in participation over 2012.  As well as being the only design fair in the Middle East and South Asia, Design Days Dubai is now the world’s most diverse design fair globally. By featuring galleries from all six continents, the fair has further established Dubai as centre of discovery and as an international meeting place for the world’s cultural community.

Sarah Myerscough Fine Art _Anthony Bryant Holly Vessel 7 20 x 20 cm

Design Days Dubai further differentiates itself through unique design installations, an enhanced public programme of workshops, talks, and mentorship sessions supported by the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, the Emirate’s dedicated authority for culture, arts and heritage, in a unique, custom-built location at the base of Burj Khalifa, Emaar Properties’ iconic development and the world’s tallest building, in Downtown Dubai, the city’s thriving lifestyle destination, billed as ‘The Centre of Now.’

Erastudio_bookcase

“In less than two years, Design Days Dubai has become one of the world’s most diverse international design events, underscoring Dubai’s status as a meeting point for established and emerging collectors, gallery owners and designers,” said Cyril Zammit, Fair Director of Design Days Dubai.  “Design Days Dubai has enabled Dubai to rank among an elite group of cities – London, Paris, Basel, New York and Miami – which host fairs specialising in both art and design.”

R20th Century_Julia Krantz2

As limited-edition design becomes a more popular and safe investment both regionally and internationally, Design Days Dubai will feature never-before-seen contemporary works alongside vintage and classic design pieces from the 20th century.  With a strong return rate from previously participating galleries, Design Days Dubai will welcome leading global galleries including Carpenters Workshop Gallery (London/Paris), R20th Century (New York), and Gallery Seomi (Seoul) as well as newcomers to the international design sector, such as Broached Commissions (Melbourne) and Galeria Mexicana de Diseño (Mexico City).  The fair has also witnessed close to double the number of regional galleries participating, with galleries from Dubai, Kuwait and Beirut taking part.

2021 Gallery_miroir Champagne_Hubert le Gall

New for 2013, Design Days Dubai will feature a focus on sustainable works with a design lab, as well as a wider ‘Bespoke Design’ section, in which four design brands will showcase their insight, skills and creations.  Fostering the next generation of designers is the remit of Design Days Dubai’s mentorship programme, which is part of the four-day public programme of talks, presentations and workshops around current design issues.

The 2013 edition has again secured the generous support of sponsors including: the reputed French High Jewellery Maison, Van Cleef & Arpels, that will present a signature creative concept, showcasing many celebrated jewellery pieces that can be metamorphosed to be worn in more than one way; global property developer and provider of premier lifestlyes, Emaar; and leading German car manufacturer Audi; together with strategic partner Dubai Culture & Arts Authority. Design Days Dubai is a key element of Art Week, the Middle East’s largest and most diverse cultural event annually, which is set to welcome thousands of residents and visitors in March 2013.

Design Days Dubai – Participating Galleries:

Art Factum Gallery, Beirut

Based Upon, London

British Crafts Council, London

Broached Commissions, Melbourne

_Croft, Seoul

Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London/Paris

Carwan Gallery, Beirut

+Coletivo Amor de Madre, Sao Paulo

Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait

Erastudio ApartmentGallery, Milan

Twentytwentyone Gallery , Beirut

Galerie Diane de Polignac, Paris

Galerie Sofie Lachaert, Tielrode

Galeria Mexicana de Diseño, Mexico City

Gallery Seomi, Seoul

Gazelli Art House, London

Industry Gallery, Washington DC/Los Angeles

J+A Gallery, Dubai

La Galerie Nationale, Dubai

Majlis Gallery, Dubai

Mariam Al-Nassar 20th Century Decorative Arts, Kuwait/London

Nakkash Gallery, Dubai

Perimeter Art&Design, Paris

R20th Century, New York

Salon 94, New York

Sarah Myerscough Fine Art , London

Southern Guild, Wilderness

Stilwerk Limited Edition Design Gallery, Hamburg

Victor Hunt Designart Dealer, Brussels

 

Design Days Dubai – Bespoke Design Exhibitors:

PF Emirates

Tai Ping

Moissonnier

T Design

 

Design Days Dubai – Cultural Institutions

Tashkeel, Dubai

FN Designs, Dubai

Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA), Dubai

أيام التصميم – دبي» يعلن أسماء الصالات المشاركة لدورة العام 2013

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by Y2DC© in News

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#ArtFactumGallery, #BasedUpon, #BritishCraftsCouncil, #BroachedCommissions, #CarpentersWorkshopGallery, #CarwanGallery, #ColetivoAmordeMadre, #ContemporaryArtPlatform, #Croft, #ErastudioApartmentGallery, #GaleriaMexicanadeDiseño, #GalerieDianedePolignac, #GalerieSofieLachaert, #GallerySeomi, #GazelliArtHouse, #IndustryGallery, #J+AGallery, #LaGalerieNationale, #MajlisGallery, #TwentytwentyoneGallery, arts, design, designdubai, dubai, furniture, interior design, interior design consultants, style

BC Trent Jansen Briggs Family Tea Service 2دبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة،  17ديسمبر 2012:تقام الدورة الثانية من معرض «أيام التصميم – دبي» خلال الفترة بين 21-18 مارس 2013، وستعرض خلال الدورة المرتقبة 29صالة من حول العالم تصاميم وإبداعات فريدة بجودة أخاذة، إذ سيزداد عدد العارضين خلال النسخة الثانية بنسبة 30 بالمئة مقارنة بنسخة عام 2012. وبالإضافة إلى كونه المعرض الوحيد المتخصِّص في عالم التصميم في الشرق الأوسط وجنوب آسيا، يُعدُّ «أيام التصميم – دبي» أحد أكثر معارض التصميم تنوعاً في العالم، إذ يشارك به حشدٌ من كبار المصمِّمين ونخبة من أشهر الصالات الفنية من مختلف أنحاء العالم، الأمر الذي وطَّد مكانة دبي كملتقى سنوي لمشاهير عالم التصميم وكوجهة للباحثين عن أحدث مفاهيم التصميم من حول العالم.

R20th Century_Julia Krantz2

ويتميُّز «أيام التصميم – دبي» من خلال التصاميم التركيبية، والفعاليات العامة المرافقة التي تشمل ورش العمل الإبداعية والتدريبية واللقاءات الحوارية بدعم من «هيئة دبي للثقافة والفنون»، الهيئة المعنية بشؤون الثقافة والفنون والتراث في الإمارة. كما الهيئة الفنية التي تعمل على تعزيز مكانة الإمارة كمدينة عربية عالمية تساهم في رسم ملامح المشهد الثقافي والفني في المنطقة والعالم، كما يتميز هذا الحدث بموقعه الفريد عند قاعدة «برج خليفة»، أعلى ناطحة سحاب في العالم والذي يشكل عماد “وسط مدينة دبي”، المشروع الأبرز لشركة إعمار العقارية والذي يوصف بقلب العالم الحاضر.

Sarah Myerscough Fine Art _Anthony Bryant Holly Vessel 7 20 x 20 cm

وبهذه المناسبة، قال سيريل زاميت، مدير معرض «أيام التصميم – دبي»: “في أقل من عامين، بات «أيام التصميم – دبي» أحد أكثر معارض التصميم تنوعاً في العالم، ليساهم بذلك في ترسيخ مكانة دبي كملتقى دولي للمقتنين والمصمِّمين والقيِّمين والقائمين على الصالات الفنية، المخضرمين والصاعدين على السواء. وبفضل «أيام التصميم – دبي» وجدت دبي مكانها المستحق بين نخبة من مُدن العالم التي دأبت على استضافة معارض متخصِّصة تجمع بين الفن والتصميم في آنٍ معاً، مثل لندن وباريس وبازل ونيويورك وميامي”.

2021 Gallery_miroir Champagne_Hubert le Gall

وبعد أن باتت التصاميم محدودة الإصدار تعتبر من الاستثمارات الآمنة والواعدة على المستوى الإقليمي والدولي، تتضمن النسخة الثانية من «أيام التصميم – دبي» أعمالاً عصرية لم تُر من قبل، جنباً إلى جنب مع أعمال كلاسيكية من القرن العشرين. ومن أشهر الصالات العالمية التي شاركت بالنسخة الأولى من «أيام التصميم – دبي» وتعود مجدداً للمشاركة في الدورة الثانية يذكر كل من:Carpenters Workshop Gallery (لندن/باريس)، وR20th Century (نيويورك)، وGallery Seomi (سول)، ومن الصالات التي تستعد لمشاركتها الأولى بالدورة المرتقبة Broached Commissions (ملبورن) وGaleriaMexicana de Diseño(مكسيكو سيتي). كما تضاعفت المشاركة الإقليمية في النسخة الثانية من «أيام التصميم – دبي» وسط تنافس الصالات الإقليمية على المشاركة، لاسيما من دبي،والكويت، وبيروت.

ومن أهمّ ما تتسم به الدورة المرتقبة التركيز على التصاميم المستدامة، وكذلك توسُّع نطاق قسم «تصاميم حسب الطلب» حيث من المتوقع أن تعرض أربع دُور متخصِّصة رؤيتها وإبداعاتها. ولصقل اللمسة الإبداعية للجيل القادم من مشاهير التصميم تشمل النسخة الثانية من «أيام التصميم – دبي» برنامجاً لإثراء قدراتهم الإبداعية ضمن البرنامج العام الذي يستمر لأربعة أيام ويشمل لقاءات حوارية وورش عمل تنصبّ على قضايا التصميم الراهنة.

Erastudio_bookcase

وحظيت النسخة الثانية المرتقبة من «أيام التصميم – دبي» بدعم نخبة من أشهر الأسماء العالمية والإقليمية، منها دار المجوهرات الفخمة «فان كليف آند آربلز» التي ستعرض مفهوماً إبداعياً مميزاً سيسلط الضوء على مجموعة مرموقة من المجوهرات الأخاذة التي يمكن تعديل أفكارها بحيث يمكن ارتدائها بأكثر من أسلوب. بالإضافة إلى  شركة التطوير العقاري العالمية “إعمار”، وشركة صناعة السيارات الألمانية «أودي»، جنباً إلى جنب مع «هيئة دبي للثقافة والفنون» التي ستكون شريكاً استراتيجياً للحدث. يُذكر أن «أيام التصميم – دبي» ينضوي تحت مِظلة «أسبوع الفن»، التظاهرة الثقافية الإبداعية الأكبر من نوعها في الشرق الأوسط، حيث من المتوقع أن تستقطب في شهر مارس 2013الألاف من الزوار من الدولة والعالم.

«أيام التصميم – دبي» – الصالات المشاركة

  • «آرت فاكتوم غاليري» – بيروت
  • Based Upon – لندن
  • British Crafts Council – لندن
  • _Croft – سول
  • Carpenters Workshop Gallery – لندن/باريس
  • «غاليري كروان» – بيروت
  • +Coletivo Amor de Madre – ساو باولو
  • Contemporary Art Platform– الكويت
  • Erastudio Apartment Gallery – ميلان
  • «غاليري 21 20» – بيروت
  • Galerie Diane de Polignac – باريس
  • GalerieSofieLachaert,  – تيلرود
  • Galeria Mexicana de Diseño – مكسيكو سيتي
  • Gallery Seomi – سول
  • Gazelli Art House – لندن
  • Industry Gallery – العاصمة واشنطن/لوس أنجلوس
  • «جيه + أيه غاليري» – دبي
  • «لا غاليري ناسيونال» – دبي
  • «مجلس غاليري» – دبي
  • مريم النصار – الكويت/لندن
  • نقاش غاليري – دبي
  • Perimeter Design + Art Gallery – باريس
  • R20th Century – نيويورك
  • Salon 94 – نيويورك
  • Sothern Guild – جنوب أفريقيا
  • Stilwerk Limited Edition Design Gallery – هامبورغ
  • Victor Hunt Designart Dealer – بروكسل

العارضون المشاركون في قسم «تصاميم حسب الطلب»:

PF Emirates

Tai Ping

Moissonnier

TDesign

«أيام التصميم – دبي» – المؤسسات الثقافية

تشكيل، دبي

إف. إن ديزاينز دبي

جائزة حمدان بن محمد بن راشد آل مكتوم الدولية للتصوير

The Table

05 Saturday May 2012

Posted by Y2DC© in Design Ideas

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architecture, arts, ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT, DEMAKERSVAN, dreyfus, furniture, INGRID DONAT, interior design, interior design consultants, JORIS LAARMAN, MAARTEN BAAS, MARC QUINN, STUDIO JOB, THIERRY DREYFUS, VINCENT DUBOURG

Some innovative table designs from the Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT

INGRID DONAT

INGRID DONAT

DEMAKERSVAN

DEMAKERSVAN

STUDIO JOB

STUDIO JOB

MARC QUINN

MARC QUINN

JORIS LAARMAN

MAARTEN BAAS

THIERRY DREYFUS

VINCENT DUBOURG

VINCENT DUBOURG

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT

VINCENT DUBOURG

STUDIO JOB

MARC QUINN

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT

INGRID DONAT

VINCENT DUBOURG

INGRID DONAT

ANDREA BRANZI / TREES / PARIS

05 Saturday May 2012

Posted by Y2DC© in Lifestyle

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Andrea Branzi, architecture, arts, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, French finesse, furniture, interior design, interior design consultants

10 MARCH – 16 MAY 2012 / PARIS

“When birch tree forests are pruned or agricultural cultivations of fruit trees are picked, they are dispersed or burned. I have always been fascinated by these parts of nature, that continue to give off a grand expressive force, more powerful when they are combined with modern, perfect and industrial materials. They become mysterious, always diverse, unique, unrepeatable and somewhat sacred presences.
Trees, trunks and branches are part of our ancient culture but also of actual culture, because in the age of globalization, design searches to trace recognizable ‘anthropologoical’ platforms. The collection, ‘Trees’ consists to place simple, everyday objects, books, and images next to the strange presence of branches and trunks, like in the reality of the world.”

Andrea Branzi
In a short time, Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris has already treated us to a regular and rich demonstration of Design Art: in March, Andrea Branzi will be given space to express himself as a free and committed thinker with this new collection « Trees ».
In a space that was once the Galerie de France, a place where contemporary art flourished, Catherine Thieck will come back to pose a few objects from her own collection on the shelves of Andrea Branzi. Works by Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, Méret Oppenheim and Rebecca Horn will fill the shelves
of an artist whose personality and preoccupations have remained consistently at the avant-garde of the architecture and design world.
The Italian architect and designer Andrea Branzi, born in 1938, was ahead of his time in Florence in 1966 when he set up Archizoom associati, the first, internationally renowned avant-garde group. In order to define this remarkable character, one must use the vocabulary of projects: theoretical research, new
design, experimental laboratory, leeway, mass creativity, new organisation… He also knows how to share his battles, he coordinates and curates exhibitions, he regularly exhibits his personal work, publishes manifestos, teaches generations of students and participates in conferences all over the world. In fact, multiple spaces would be needed to cover all angles of the man: a screening room, an auditorium, a museum and more than a few metres of shelf space.
Andrea Branzi is passionate about the morphology of urban space; he breaks down the accepted codes and vigorously shakes the foundations of the ever-present conventions. Today more than ever, this insatiable troublemaker continues to disrupt the status quo and places humans and nature at the centre of his thinking.
« Trees » represents a continuation of his thinking on architecture. He creates a minimalist space of shelves, veritable pieces of micro-architecture made from aluminium that spread out in neo-plastic bursts like a Mondrian. However, through the splits in the frame, Andrea Branzi introduces trunks and twigs gathered in the wild. This strange encounter that began in the eighties with « Animali domestici », questions the duality of the nature-culture relationship.
With « Trees », he adds a dimension, an extra slice of soul, as nature becomes art, a contemporary icon, an emotional window linked to the knowledge of the vital importance of this precious, common heritage.
Pieces on show:
Seven shelves, in different shapes and formats, in aluminium and birch wood.
Trees 1-2-3-4, Trees 5, Trees 8-9

Lynn Chadwick: The Complete Candelabras 1953 – 1996

03 Thursday May 2012

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arts, Candelabras, Lynn Chadwick, sculpture, style, Willer

26 April – 26 May 2012

The Willer gallery is proud to present a unique exhibition of the complete series of limited edition bronze candelabras created by Lynn Chadwick, shown together for the first time.

Lynn Chadwick is one of the pre-eminent British sculptors of the 20th Century. During a career spanning over 50 years until his death in 2003 he secured an international reputation underpinned by major prizes, important commissions, and a lifetime of private and public exhibitions, culminating with a major retrospective at Tate Britain in late 2003. Represented in the world’s leading public and private collections, increasing recognition of his major contribution to British sculpture ensures that his reputation continues to grow.

Throughout his career, Chadwick’s work drew on the natural world in abstracted human and animal forms, and developed archetypal constructions instantly recognisable to those familiar with his work.

But even those well versed in Chadwick’s oeuvre are unlikely to be familiar with his fascination for a domestic object, the candle holder, which he returned to at regular intervals throughout his life. Never previously shown together, the candelabras, seen as a whole, undoubtedly reflect, and are a part of, all the elements being explored in his ‘pure’ sculpture.

Chadwick clearly did not approach the candelabras as an element apart requiring special treatment. They were as much a part of his life and work as the wonderful fire pit hood he created for the monumental main room at his home, Lypiatt Park in Gloucestershire. Some are forms into which holes were punched for holding candles, others were scooped out for the purpose, and still others harked back to his early career working in an architect’s practice and as a designer.

Like the well known sculptures, the candelabras are cast in bronze, a material that dominated his work. The working of their surfaces – in texture, relief, and patination – also mirrors Chadwick’s main body of work. Cast in the same foundry as his other sculptures, using the same methods which he rigorously managed and controlled.

The only tacit acknowledgement of any difference between the candle holders and his other creations may be found in the larger editions Chadwick authorised for these functional pieces, which he often used in dramatic large groups. In all other respects they can stand alone, with or without candles, as fascinating examples of his work, creations spanning virtually the whole of his working life.

For further information please contact: Tamasine Osher Tamasine.O@willer.co.uk
+44 (0)20 7937 3518

12 holland street | kensington | london | w8 4lt

AMAZING CARVED BOOK LANDSCAPES

01 Tuesday May 2012

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arts, interior design consultants, sculpture

If you have an old set of Encyclopædia Britannica and struggling to find a use for them why not give this a try…..

 

MORE THAN A STORE

23 Monday Apr 2012

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arts, Concept Store, fashion, Jil Sander, LN-CC, London Fashion, Martin Margiela, shopping, style

LN-CC OPENS IN LONDON

Hidden in an unassuming basement on London’s Shacklewell Lane lies LN-CC (Late Night Chameleon Café), an appointment-only concept store with a peculiar name and a very fashionable stock of premium designers.

After being channeled through a wild wooden tunnel created by London-based set designer Gary Card, visitors are treated to multiple showrooms, each designed to complement the labels carried within. The overall recipe is one that combines emerging designers with established ones: labels like Sasquatch Fabrics from Japan and Perks and Mini from Melbourne ensure customers with more daring tastes will find something unavailable elsewhere in London. On the more conservative end of the spectrum Jil Sander and Martin Margiela are safe bets for shoppers wielding AmEx black cards.

Beyond the clothing, LN-CC’s books and records room is not to be missed. Here you can sample Turkish psychedelic records and stumble across rare finds like a signed copy of Basquiat’s Drawings. Further adding to the store’s versatility is a gallery space and a club room, where friends and family get to live out the “late night” half of LN-CC equation.

LN-CC, 18 Shacklewell Lane, London E8 2EZ.

For an appointment or private event inquiries, contact +44 0203 174 0727 or send an email to appointments@ln-cc.com.

Monique Kawecki is co-editor of Ala Champfest magazine and lives in London.

Miracle Above Manhattan

21 Saturday Apr 2012

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architecture, arts, high line new york, interior design consultants, landscape design, nature, new york design, new york interior designers, new york landmarks, new york style, new yorkers, parks, Rudolph Giuliani, travel

New Yorkers can float over busy streets in an innovative park.

By Paul Goldberger

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

Parks in large cities are usually thought of as refuges, as islands of green amid seas of concrete and steel. When you approach the High Line in the Chelsea neighborhood on the lower west side of Manhattan, what you see first is the kind of thing urban parks were created to get away from—a harsh, heavy, black steel structure supporting an elevated rail line that once brought freight cars right into factories and warehouses and that looks, at least from a distance, more like an abandoned relic than an urban oasis.

Until recently the High Line was, in fact, an urban relic, and a crumbling one at that. Many of its neighbors, as well as New York’s mayor for much of the 1990s, Rudolph Giuliani, couldn’t wait to tear it down. His administration, aware that Chelsea was gentrifying into a neighborhood of galleries, restaurants, and loft living, felt the surviving portion of the High Line, which winds its way roughly a mile and a half from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street (a section farther south was torn down years ago), was an ugly deadweight. They were certain this remnant of a different kind of city had to be removed for the neighborhood to realize its full potential.

Never have public officials been so wrong. Almost a decade after the Giuliani administration tried to tear the High Line down, it has been turned into one of the most innovative and inviting public spaces in New York City and perhaps the entire country. The black steel columns that once supported abandoned train tracks now hold up an elevated park—part promenade, part town square, part botanical garden. The southern third, which begins at Gansevoort Street and extends to West 20th Street, crossing Tenth Avenue along the way, opened in the summer of 2009. This spring a second section will open, extending the park ten more blocks, roughly a half mile, to 30th Street. Eventually, supporters hope, the park will cover the rest of the High Line.

Walking on the High Line is unlike any other experience in New York. You float about 25 feet above the ground, at once connected to street life and far away from it. You can sit surrounded by carefully tended plantings and take in the sun and the Hudson River views, or you can walk the line as it slices between old buildings and past striking new ones. I have walked the High Line dozens of times, and its vantage point, different from that of any street, sidewalk, or park, never ceases to surprise and delight. Not the least of the remarkable things about the High Line is the way, without streets to cross or traffic lights to wait for, ten blocks pass as quickly as two.

New York is a city in which good things rarely happen easily and where good designs are often compromised, if they are built at all. The High Line is a happy exception, that rare New York situation in which a wonderful idea was not only realized but turned out better than anyone had imagined. It isn’t often in any city, let alone New York, that an unusually sophisticated concept for a public place makes its way through the design process, the political process, and the construction process largely intact. The designers were landscape architect James Corner of Field Operations and the architecture firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who joined forces to produce the winning scheme in a competition that pitted them against such notables as Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Their plan struck a balance between refinement and the rough-hewn, industrial quality of the High Line. “We envisioned it as one long, meandering ribbon but with special episodes,” Corner told me. “We wanted to keep the feeling of the High Line consistent but at the same time have some variations.” The design included sleek wooden benches that appear to peel up from the park surface, but also kept many of the original train tracks, setting them into portions of the pavement and landscape. Working with Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf, Corner recommended a wide range of plantings, with heavy leanings toward tall grasses and reeds that recalled the wildflowers and weeds that had sprung up during the High Line’s long abandonment. (The line, which opened in 1934, was little used after the 1960s, although its final train, carrying frozen turkeys, didn’t travel down the track until 1980.)

Early in the two and a half decades that the High Line was unused and untouched, an obsessive rail buff named Peter Obletz purchased the elevated structure for ten dollars from Conrail with the intention of restoring it to rail use. Obletz’s ownership was held up in a five-year legal battle, which he lost. He died in 1996 but is, in a sense, a spiritual parent of the High Line preservation effort. So is photographer Joel Sternfeld. During the derelict years he made striking images of the High Line as a ribbon of green snaking through an industrial cityscape. Widely reproduced, his photographs played a significant role in building a constituency for saving the line for public use. Sternfeld showed that this clunky industrial object really could look like a park.

But the real heroes of the story are two men who met for the first time at a community meeting on the future of the line in 1999. Joshua David was then 36, a freelance writer who lived on West 21st Street, not far from the midsection of the High Line. Robert Hammond, an artist who worked for start-up tech companies to earn a living, was 29 and lived in Greenwich Village a few blocks from the southern terminus.

“I saw an article in the New York Times saying that the High Line was going to be demolished, and I wondered if anyone was going to try to save it,” Hammond said to me. “I was in love with the steel structure, the rivets, the ruin. I assumed that some civic group was going to try and preserve it, and I saw that it was on the agenda for a community board meeting. I went to see what was going on, and Josh was sitting next to me. We were the only people at the meeting who were interested in saving it.”

“The railroad sent representatives who showed some plans to reuse it, which enraged the people who were trying to get it torn down,” David explained. “That’s what sparked the conversation between me and Robert—we couldn’t believe the degree of rage some of those people had.”

David and Hammond asked railroad officials to take them to look at the High Line. “There’s a legend that we snuck in, but it’s not true,” Hammond said. “When we got up there, we saw a mile and a half of wildflowers in the middle of Manhattan.”

“New Yorkers always dream of finding open space—it’s a fantasy when you live in a studio apartment,” David said.

Amazed by the expansiveness of the space, the two men were determined to keep the High Line from being torn down. In the fall of 1999 they formed Friends of the High Line. At first their ambitions were modest. “We just wanted to fight Giuliani to keep it from being demolished,” Hammond said. “But preservation was only the first step, and we began to realize that we could create a new public place.”

The organization crept forward slowly. Then came the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. “We thought no one would care about the High Line at that point,” Hammond said, “but the increased interest in urban planning and design with the ground zero design process paved the way for heightened interest in our project. People felt this was one positive thing they could do.” In 2002 Friends of the High Line commissioned an economic feasibility study, which concluded that, contrary to the Giuliani administration’s claim, turning the High Line into a park would help the neighborhood, not slow its development. Not long before, an abandoned rail line in eastern Paris, near the Place de la Bastille, had been turned into a highly successful linear park called the Promenade Plantée, which gave the group’s idea for the High Line a serious precedent. Although Parisian models don’t transfer easily into New York, the existence of the Promenade Plantée did a lot to increase the credibility of David and Hammond’s crusade. They began to think their idea of turning the High Line into a new kind of public place might be achievable.

Friends of the High Line may have been a grassroots group, but its roots were planted firmly in the world’s most sophisticated art and design community. In 2003 the pair decided to hold an “ideas competition”—not a formal architectural contest but an invitation to anyone to submit an idea and a design for what the High Line might become. They expected a few dozen proposals from New Yorkers. Their call brought 720 entries from 36 countries.

As New York recovered further from the trauma of September 11, Friends of the High Line continued to grow. It began to attract the attention of younger hedge fund managers and real estate executives with a philanthropic bent, people not established enough to join the boards of the city’s major cultural institutions but eager to make a mark. The High Line was tailor-made for them; its annual summer benefit became one of New York’s favorite causes and one of the few with a critical mass of supporters under age 40.

It didn’t hurt that Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani, had a sympathetic view of saving the High Line. Bloomberg, a billionaire who had long been a major donor to the city’s cultural institutions, offered support for the High Line plan. The city struck a deal with Friends of the High Line, working with the group to design and construct what would become a new park and offering $112.2 million toward the projected $153-million cost of the first two phases, with another $21.4 million from federal and state funds. Friends of the High Line agreed to come up with $19.4 million and pay the majority of operating costs once the park was open.

In 2005 City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden crafted zoning provisions for the area, setting rules for new construction that was cropping up. By the time the zoning was in place, the surrounding area had become one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods. Buildings by celebrated architects were in the works, including the IAC headquarters designed by Frank Gehry. In spring of 2006 the first piece of rail track was lifted off the High Line, the equivalent of a groundbreaking ceremony, and construction began.

From the day the first section of the High Line opened in June 2009, it has been one of the city’s major tourist attractions, and you are as likely to hear visitors speaking German or Japanese as English. Yet it is just as much a neighborhood park. When I joined Hammond for a walk along the High Line on a sunny day last fall, a section the designers had designated as a kind of sundeck was jammed, and there seemed to be as many locals treating the area as the equivalent of their own beach as visitors out for a promenade.

The sundeck area is one of the places James Corner likes to refer to as “episodes” along the High Line. There are more in the first section, because the route bends and turns, slips under three different buildings to become briefly tunnel-like, then opens up to offer vistas of the midtown skyline or the Hudson River. At the point at which the High Line crosses Tenth Avenue, it morphs once again, this time into an amphitheater-like space suspended over the avenue, allowing you to sit and watch the traffic glide beneath you.

The route of the elevated line straightens out in the second section, north of 20th Street, presenting the designers with a different kind of challenge. “It’s all wide open with views of the city, and then all of a sudden you’re walking between two building walls,” Corner said. “It’s dead straight, and we had to make it so you didn’t feel you were in a corridor.” He decided to start off the second section with a dense thicket of plantings, much heavier than anything in the first section, on the theory that if he couldn’t make the tightness go away, he should accentuate its drama for a block or so, then quickly downshift to a relaxed, open lawn. After that comes what the designers call the flyover: a metal structure that lifts the walkway up and allows a dense landscape of plantings to grow beneath. North of that is another seating area, this one looking down onto the street through an enormous white frame that alludes to the billboards that once adorned the neighboring buildings. Just beyond, a long stretch of promenade is lined with wildflowers.

On the day I toured the new section with Robert Hammond, much of the planting was already in place. Even though construction was still going on, it was strangely quiet. We walked the length of the new section; Hammond said the quiet reminded him of the way the High Line was at the very beginning, before the crowds started to pour in. “I thought I would miss the way it was,” he said. But the High Line’s overwhelming success, he has realized, has given him a satisfaction far beyond the pleasures of seeing the old steel structure empty.

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