After its premiere at the Barbican Centre in London in October 2012, Random International’s Rain Room is now installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Follow us inside: it’s raining, but you won’t get wet (promised).

Random International’s immersive environment Rain Room is a major component of the MoMA PS1 exhibition EXPO 1: New York. The installation is presented in the lot directly adjacent to The Museum of Modern Art. Simply put, Rain Room is a field of falling water that pauses wherever a human body is detected. Thus, Rain Room offers visitors the experience of controlling the rain. “The work invites visitors to explore the roles that science, technology, and human ingenuity can play in stabilizing our environment. Using digital technology, Rain Room creates a carefully choreographed downpour, simultaneously encouraging people to become performers on an unexpected stage and creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation.” Watch also our video covering the presentation of Rain Room at The Curve, Barbican Center and our interview with the founders of Random International, Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch.

Random International’s Rain Room turned out to be a lot of fun for the visitors, but it’s also a very complex installation. It consists of injection moulded tiles, solenoid valves, pressure regulators, 3D tracking cameras, wooden frames, steel beams, a hydraulic management system, and a grated floor. The system is controlled by custom software.

Random International are known for their digital-based contemporary art. The London-based studio creates artworks and installations that explore behaviour and interaction.

rAndom International: Rain Room. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. May 10, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay.

For more videos featuring Random International click here!

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Random International was founded in 2005 by Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch. They first met when they were students at the Royal College of Art in London. The studio is based in a converted warehouse in Chelsea, London. Random International have exhibited at art fairs, museums and biennials with works and installations such as Pixelroller, Temporary Graffiti, Audience, Study For A Mirror, Swarm Light, Self Portrait, Temporary Light Printing Machine, and Rain Room. The presentation of Rain Room at The Museum of Modern Art is the U.S. premiere of this environment. The piece debuted at Barbican Centre, London, in October 2012.

Photo set:

Ideas City is a four-day, biennial festival of conferences, workshops, and an streetfest in New York. Ideas City was founded by the New Museum in 2011. It’s a major collaborative initiative between hundreds of arts, education, and community organizations. Ideas City explores the future of cities around the globe with a focus on arts and culture. The 2013′s theme was Untapped Capital, focusing on resources that are under-recognized or underutilized in our cities. In this video, we attend the Ideas City StreetFest on 4th May, 2013 and have a look at what ideas artists, architects, poets, technologists, and other creative people have to shape their city.

Ideas City StreetFest, New Museum, New York. May 4, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay.

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Just in time for Basel’s important Baselworld fair, the new hall complex of Messe Basel was inaugurated. Designed by the Basel-based architects Herzog & de Meuron, the new hall building changes the character of Basel’s exhibition site considerably. The exhibition square is now clearly delineated towards the city. The key architectural and urban-planning feature of Herzog & de Meuron’s new hall complex is the so-called City Lounge. This is a covered-over public space that is intended to revitalize the exhibition square. Referencing Messe Basel’s iconic “Rundhofhalle” (Hall 2, designed in the 1950s by Swiss architect Hans Hofmann), the City Lounge’s most striking feature is a huge hole that breaks through the new hall 1 and brings light to the space below. As always with Herzog & de Meuron’s designs, the facade is an essential element of the design. This time, it’s a facade of articulated twisting bands (aluminum). The two exhibition floors are also offset from each other, to avoid the “big box” effect.

Herzog & de Meuron Architects: Messe Basel New Hall. April 25, 2013.

For more videos on Herzog & de Meuron, click here!

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Photo set:

The Architectural Ellipsis at Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco in Mexico City is a project by Ruth Estévez and Javier Toscano. It “explores the possibility of thinking through the consequences of an architectural reason that wants to go beyond both the ordering subjectivity of its creators, producers and critics, and the entire sphere of discourse that constitutes it.“ (excerpt from the exhibition text). The artists participating are Esteban Azuela, Tania Candiani, Jordi Colomer, Democracia, Jimmie Durham, Larissa Fassler, Luca Frei, León Ferrari, Enrique Ježik, José Jiménez Ortiz, Mark Manders, Matt Mullican, Erik Olofsen, Clarisa Tossin and Anri Sala. The exhibition runs until June 16, 2013.

The Architectural Ellipsis / Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, Mexico City. June 27, 2013. Video by Jacinto Astiazarán.

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Press release:

The constitution of the disciplines of knowledge and of action has grown up around the precise delimitation of their analytical categories, the identification of the problems they address, the determination of their goals and the concrete means of achieving these. In this regard, architecture does not escape any of the usual rules of discursive construction. Nevertheless, the real world is not parcelled up into ordered disciplines to the same degree as the epistemological imagination would have us believe.

This project explores the possibility of thinking through the consequences of an architectural reason that wants to go beyond both the ordering subjectivity of its creators, producers and critics, and the entire sphere of discourse that constitutes it. It is evident that this territory has no official existence, nor is it generated merely on the basis of negating the order architecture entails. A cue: given that we are not working in the field of a particular discipline, and not subject to the same logic, it may be evoked through the use of ellipses, analogies and chiasms, references and partial allusions that form an inter-disciplinary field in which other kinds of operations of analysis and experimentation are possible.

Following this idea, it may be thought that an ellipsis of this architectural logic might make visible phenomena from other perspectives that are blind spots for architecture itself. Certain forms of art—performance, conceptual and post-conceptual practices, archive interventions—may constitute creative forms of understanding this meta-architectural order, in order to explore architecture beyond function, beyond the generation of spaces, beyond the functions of the field. From this moment on, it is possible to rethink any construction as a symbol and model of organization, its territorial demands as political demands, and its understanding of notions of citizenship and the (dis)ordered activities of individuals.

At the same time, the exploration of the alternate, ex-centric use of architectural tools engaged in by these artistic practices may provide a platform to investigate other facets of what may broadly be called the foundation of experience—in this case through denatured forms of representation—of what sometimes comes to make up a major part of our everyday urban practice. Thus, the détournement of the arsenal of architectural tools serves at the same time to reveal aspects of an architectural knowledge that are not necessarily evident to the practice itself, as well as to examine, from the perspective of other cognitive tools, the possibilities for meaning and impact of a habitability that can only be grasped on a multiplicity of levels.

Participating artists: Esteban Azuela, Tania Candiani, Jordi Colomer, Democracia, Jimmie Durham, Larissa Fassler, Luca Frei, León Ferrari, Enrique Ježik, José Jiménez Ortiz, Mark Manders, Matt Mullican, Erik Olofsen, Clarisa Tossin and Anri Sala.

A book accompanies the exhibition. It presents a group of theoretical texts and other experimental pieces which, stemming from different disciplines—anthropology, geography, urbanism or architecture itself—and from international case studies, provide different cognitive approaches and perspectives. It includes original artistic pieces and research by Santiago Borja, Decolonizing Architecture (Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal & Eyal Weizman), Sarah Demeuse, Ruth Estévez, Chloé Fricout & Javier Toscano and James Zomighani.

During the exhibition, the uiui (unit for intensive urban imagination) will produce, in collaboration with the Laboratorio para la Ciudad, a series of tours around Mexico City, guided by Cecilia Barraza (art historian) & Luisa Cortés (cultural promoter), María José Freytes & Ana Nava (artists), Luisa Lacorte (social scientist), Pablo Landa (anthropologist) and Gustavo Lipkau (architect). After every tour, the guides will give public talks at the Centro Cultural España. For the complete program please visit www.uiui-urbanunit.net or www.ccemx.org.

For the 2013 edition of the international art fair Art Stage in Singapore, the architectural practice WY-TO Architects created the entrance and the VIP lounge of the fair. WY-TO has offices in Singapore and Paris. The key element of WY-TO’s designs The Skeleton for the entrance and The Whirl for the VIP lounge is the oversized loom theme. In this video, the architect, designer and WY-TO founding partner Yann Follain talks about the basic idea and concept of WY-TO’s work for Art Stage Singapore. He also speaks about his background and design philosophy, his ambitions as designer and architect, and the challenges of working between East and West. Finally he provides us with an overview of WY-TO’s projects and an outlook on future projects. The video above is an excerpt, the complete interview is available after the break.

“Combining functionality and dream to create spaces for everyday life as well as exceptional occasions” is WY-TO’s credo. As Art Stage Singapore’s Associate Architectural Partner, WY-TO was responsible for the design of the entrance and the VIP lounge of the fair. WY-TO is based in Paris and Singapore. It was co-founded by Pauline Gaudry and Yann Follain. Both graduated from the Architecture School of Paris-Belleville in 2005. Gaudry and Follain both have a rich multicultural experience. They worked in Hong Kong, Goa, France, and Singapore. Recent projects include the exhibition design for Singapore’s ArtScience Museum’s Andy Warhol Show, and the designs for the new Natural History Museum of Singapore and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires.

Interview with designer, architect, and co-founder of WY-TO Architects, Yann Follain at Art Stage Singapore 2013. January 25, 2013.

PS: Click here for our coverage of Art Stage Singapore.

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Complete interview (23:10 Min.):

Hands have no tears to flow. Reports from / without architecture is the title of Austria’s contribution to this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Commissioned by Arno Ritter, the Austrian architect Wolfgang Tschappeller has developed an exhibition that aims to shift the perception of buildings and concentrates on the people who live in them. The installation, realized by Rens Veltman and Martin Perktorld, doesn’t show buildings, but digitally animated bodies that are projected onto the walls of the Austrian pavilion.

Architect Wolfgang Tschappeller was born in Dölsach / East Tyrol in 1956. Following training as a carpenter, Tschappeller studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Since 2012, he is head of the Department of Art and Architecture of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Major projects include the European Cultural Center in Aachen (Germany), and the Science Center in Belgrade (Serbia).

Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Hands have no tears to flow. Reports from / without architecture: Austrian Pavilion at the Giardini, August 29, 2012.

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From the press release:

The installation shifts the perception of buildings and concentrates on those who live in them. No buildings are to be seen, but rather figures, digital figures or digitally animated body surfaces.

Taken as the starting point of the project was the accelerated technological development in the past decades and the associated scientific insights, especially in the “processing” and “forming” of the human body by medicine and in the natural sciences. As the “object” of research, the body and the so-called mind indeed entailed that scientific progress shaping our everyday lives which is, in reality, uncircumventable from a knowledge theory perspective, but leaves fundamental questions about the future of humanness open. The exhibition raises issues of the possible impacts of these developments on architectonic thinking and the production of space.

The projection shows an interplay of animated, digital figures and thus a social physics. If we continue writing the current technological and scientific developments in the context of the body as we have until now, the questions arises as to which role architecture will play under these preconditions. Will architecture and the handling of our bodies change to such an extent that both areas enter into symbiotic relationships and thus abandon or swap their traditional roles? Must one think of architecture in a more corporeal manner, like a “living” organism, or will our bodies be increasingly treated architectonically and technically so that spatial production will acquire a different meaning? Since the body is increasingly becoming a phenomenon of territorial and technological thinking, the human an eerie being, familiar and yet so foreign.

“Right from the beginning it was our intention to extend the Austrian contribution right to the limits of architectural discussion and to explore the topic of architectural exhibition,” said Commissioner Arno Ritter.

New York-based artist Sarah Oppenheimer is known for her spectacular architectural interventions with which she surprises the visitors of galleries, museums and art fairs. D-33 is Sarah Oppenheimer’s most recent piece. It transforms the exhibition space of the gallery P.P.O.W. in New York City by using aluminum, glass, light, and the existing architecture. Oppenheimer’s installation links the six discreet rooms of the gallery, playing with the visual and physical distance experienced by the viewer. This video provides you with an exhibition walk-through on the opening night, and Sarah Oppenheimer explains the concept of the work.

On September 28, 2012, there’s a panel at P.P.O.W. in conjunction with D-33 by Sarah Oppenheimer. The panel, which will explore the potential of a typology of architectural absence is called Typology of Void. The panelists are Nana Last, David Reinfurt, and Sarah Oppenheimer. It will be moderated by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss.

In late November 2012 another architectural intervention of Sarah Oppenheimer will open at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Upcoming exhibits include solo shows at the Wall House in the Netherlands; Duve Berlin, Germany, and Site Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Sarah Oppenheimer: D-33 at P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York. Opening reception and interview, September 1, 2012. For more videos about Sarah Oppenheimer go to Sarah Oppenheimer at VernissageTV.

Update (Oct. 15, 2012): Review of the exhibition by Roberta Smith at New York Times.

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Additional info from the press release:

In late November, Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking architectural intervention will open at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The installation will link the museum’s modern and contemporary collections through two apertures that traverse floor, ceiling and walls. Currently, Oppenheimer’s work can be seen in Factory Direct at the Warhol Museum and 610-3356 at the Mattress Factory, both in Pittsburgh. Oppenheimer’s upcoming exhibits include solo projects at the Wall House in the Netherlands; Duve Berlin, Germany; and Site Santa Fe, New Mexico; her work will be included in Against the Grain at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.

Oppenheimer was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in 2010-2011 and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2011. Recent exhibitions include D-17 at Rice University, Houston, TX; Automatic Cities at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA; Currents: Sarah Oppenheimer at the Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; and Inner and Outer Space at the Mattress Factory, in Pittsburgh, PA. Oppenheimer lectures extensively and was recently featured in a number of catalogues published exclusively about her work, including “Keunstler Kritishes Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst” with an essay by Ines Goldbach, “Sarah Oppenheimer D-17,” published by Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, with an interview and introduction by Kimberly Davenport, and “Sarah Oppenheimer MF-142” at Annely Juda Fine Art with an essay by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz.

i-land at Russian Pavilion is the second half of Russia’s contribution to the 13th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy. While the i-city part has a look into the future with the presentation of the innovation city Skolkovo, i-land allows the visitors to have a look at the secret science cities of the Cold War, the so-called Naukograds.

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale the Russian pavilion presents the innovation city (or i-city) Skolkovo. Skolkovo is one of the largest Russian projects of today. Many international architects such as David Chipperfield Architects, SANAA, and Herzog & de Meuron are involved in the project. The aim of the project is to combine science and modern technologies with human life.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Russian Pavilion at the Giardini, August 29, 2012.

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Play Mincu is the title of the exhibition at the Romanian pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. It pays homage to the legendary architect, politician and creator of the Romanian School of Architecture, Ion Mincu. The five curators of the Romanian pavilion – Emil Ivanescu, Irina Bogdan, Ana Costantinescu, Laura Iosub and Paul Popescu – have created a show that engages the audience similarly effective as the Russian pavilion does – but in a more analogue way: Visitors can produce an architectural stamp by choosing from embossing stamps that reproduce the most famous buildings designed by Ion Mincu or stamps that reproduce quotes from famous architects and artists. The stamps hint both at the art, but also at the bureaucratic hurdles an architect has to deal with.

Play Mincu: Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012. Venice (Italy), August 28, 2012.

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Architecture possible here? Home-for-All is the title of Japan’s contribution to the 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy. The exhibition in the Venice Biennale’s Japanese Pavilion deals with the devastation the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 caused in East Japan. It shows photographs of the earthquake by Naoya Hatakeyama and alternative housing solutions for the people who lost their homes by the young japanese architects Kumiko Inui, Sou Fujimoto, and Akihisa Hirata. The Japanese Pavilion – curated by Toyo Ito – has been awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Japanese Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2012. Venice (Italy), August 28, 2012.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Russian Pavilion at the Giardini, August 29, 2012.

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At the Venice Architecture Biennial 2012, the artist Olafur Eliasson showed his “Little Sun” solar lamp, that is also part of an installation presented in the main exhibition “Common Ground”. For the installation, Olafur Eliasson attached two Little Sun lamps to a fan. When the fan is on, the individual lights create a continuous ring of light.

The Little Sun lamp is a work of art / product of LittleSun GmbH, a company founded by artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen. LittleSun aims to make sustainable light available anywhere. In this video the Managing Director of LittleSun, Felix Hallwachs, tells us more about the little solar lamp.

Olafur Eliasson: Little Sun. Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Venice (Italy), August 29, 2012.

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At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale the Russian pavilion presents the innovation city (or i-city) Skolkovo. Skolkovo is one of the largest Russian projects of today. Many international architects such as David Chipperfield Architects, SANAA, and Herzog & de Meuron are involved in the project. The aim of the project is to combine science and modern technologies with human life.

The dominating element of the i-city exhibition at the Russian pavilion is the QR-code that covers the walls, floors and ceilings of the pavilion. When the visitors scan the lit QR-codes with the mobile devices supplied by the pavilion, they get access to more information about i-city.

The Jury of the Architecture Biennale has awarded the Russian pavilion a Special Mention for i-city.

The following architects are involved in the i-city Skolkovo project: AREP; SPEECH Tchoban/Kuznetsov; David Chipperfield Architects; Valode& Pistre; Mohsen Mostafavi; OMA; SANAA; Herzog& de Meuron; Stefano Boeri architetti; Project MEGANOM; MDP/Michel Desvigne paysagiste; BERNASKONI architecture bureau. Commissioner: Grigory Revzin. Curator: Sergei Tchoban. Deputy Curators: Sergey Kuznetsov, Valeria Kashirina.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Russian Pavilion at the Giardini, August 29, 2012.

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• Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground

The 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2012 is directed by the architect David Chipperfield. The show is titled Common Ground and takes place from August 28 until November 25, 2012 in Venice, Italy. 119 architects, photographers, artists, critics and scholars present 69 projects in the biennial’s Central Pavilion at the Giardini and in the Arsenale. Many of the projects have been specifically created for this exhibition.

The title Common Ground expresses that David Chipperfield wanted to put the emphasize on what we have in common:

“Above all, the ambition of Common Ground is to reassert the existence of an architectural culture, made up not just of singular talents but a rich continuity of diverse ideas united in a common history, common ambitions, common predicaments and ideals.”

Venice is itself an architectural exhibition. So every Architecture Biennale starts with the ride through the Grand Canal to the two venues Arsenale and Giardini. This video provides you with a tour of the exhibition on the professional day. Coverage of the national pavilions will follow soon. Among the participants are architects such as Zaha Hadid Architects, Norman Foster, Märkli Architekt, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, and OMA, as well as artists such as Thomas Demand, Thomas Struth, and Olafur Eliasson. The show runs until November 25, 2012.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2012: Common Ground. 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Arsenale and Central Pavilion at the Giardini, August 27, 2012.

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Swiss architect Peter Maerkli won the honorary award of the Velux Stiftung Daylight-Award 2012 for the archaic art museum La Congiunta in Giornico (Ticino, Switzerland). In this video, he talks about the concept of the architecture of the museum.

The Museum La Congiunta is dedicated to the Swiss artist Hans Josephsohn and houses reliefs and half-figures by the sculptor. Peter Märkli was born in 1953 in Zürich, Switzerland. Since 2003 he is professor at the ETH Zürich.

A video featuring the Daylight-Award 2012 winning project Kirchner Museum Davos by Gigon Guyer Architects is available on this page.

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Gigon / Guyer Architects are the winners of the Daylight-Award, which the Velux-Stiftung awarded for the third time after 2007 and 2010. The Daylight-Award is a prize that honors architecture projects, that systematically use daylight in order to increase quality of life and energy efficiency. The architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer received the award for their Kirchner Museum in Davos, Switzerland. The Kirchner Museum houses significant works by German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In this video, Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer talk about how important daylight is for their personal well-being, how they use daylight in their projects, and the challenges and solutions they found for the Kirchner Museum in Davos.

The reason why the Kirchner Museum was chosen by the jury of the Daylight-Award is that its lighting concept broke ground for other museum buildings, such as Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz: It’s “an innovative light-solution, adapted to the climatic conditions of Davos is the basic idea and simultaneously the architectural concept of the building. Hardly another art museum before emphasized the opus of an artist in a similar way. Its influence on further museum-buildings is therefore of an outstanding meaning.”

The prize is endowed with 100’000 Swiss Francs. The Honorary Award was given to Zurich-based architect Peter Märkli for his museum La Congiunta in Giornico (Ticino, Switzerland). Members of the jury are Prof. Andrea Deplazes, Architect, ETH Zürich, Chairman; Prof. Colin Fournier, Architect, Bartlett School of Architecture, London; Prof. Jean-Louis Scartezzini, Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory, EPFL, Lausanne; Prof. Dr. Anna Wirz-Justice, Centre for Chronobiology, University of Basel; Urs Wolf, architect, Zürich; Kurt Stutz, Chairman of the board of the Velux Stiftung; Lene Kann-Rasmussen, Member of the board of the Velux Stiftung.

Velux Stiftung is a non-profit foundation for the promotion of research on Daylight and in Medical Areas and for the Preservation of Ecological Stability. In 2007, the Daylight-Award went to Bob Gysin + Partner Architects BGP in Zürich for their Forum Chriesbach in Dübendorf; the Honorary Award was won by Bearth & Deplazes Architekten, Chur / Zürich, and Gramazio & Kohler Architects, Zürich for their Gantenbein Vineyard; and Cruz & Ortiz, Seville, and Giraudi & Wettstein, Lugano for their footbridge Basel SBB Railway Station. In 2010 Peter Zumthor won the prize for his Theme Vals. Honorary Awards went to James Turrell for the Skyspace Piz Uter; and Stürm Wolf Architekten for the Kunst(Zeug)Haus Rapperswil-Jona.

The Daylight-Award was awarded for the third time on 18th January 2012 in Basel in collaboration with the Department of Architecture of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (D-ARCH ETH), Zurich.

PS: Slideshow and video coverage of the award ceremony after the jump. Video featuring Honorary Award winner Peter Märkli’s Museum La Congiunta in Giornico (Ticino, Switzerland) coming soon.

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Velux Stiftung Daylight-Award 2012 Award Ceremony (Excerpt):

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• Museo La Congiunta, Giornico by Peter Märkli Architect

“Form is Process”. “Mass Customization”. “Infinite Infinities”. “Number is All”. “The Moral Justification for Modernist Standardization… is no more”. “Professor Lalvani is continuing to explore the fundamental principles of geometry where Fuller left off”. This is what Design Miami visitors could read on the walls of the booth of the design gallery Moss from New York. We wanted to know what’s behind the handwritings on the wall and what is so special about the aesthetic, shining white objects that were on display.

We had the chance to speak with Murray Moss, the founder of the gallery about the creative mind behind the objects, Haresh Lalvani, and his mathematical approach to design. In this video, Murray Moss tells us how he got to know about the person and work, and the reason behind the presentation of Haresh Lalvani’s work at Design Miami. He talks about the concept of Moss’s booth at Design Miami, and illustrates Haresh Lalvani’s ideas by explaining the design and production process of the fruit platter, that Moss presented at the design fair. Furthermore he hints at the implications of what the mathematics based mass customization might have for the future of design.

Within the framework of Moss’s exhibition entitled Dr. Haresh Lalvani: Mass Customization of Emergent Designs, two collections were on display: Morphing Fruit Platters 1D Series 300 and HyperSurface. The Fruit Platter series consists of 1,000 variations. Each plate is numbered and sold with a DVD showing an animation of the morphing that determines the design of the plates.

Dr. Haresh Lalvani is Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute, New York. He is architect, but also sculptor, inventor, and morphologist. For over thirty years, Haresh Lalvani has been working to identify the basic principles that define all forms, both those found in nature as well as those man-made.

Since its inception in 1994, the design gallery Moss has presented artist and designers such as Maarten Baas, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Studio Job, Tord Boontje, Gaetano Pesce, Hella Jongerius, Peter Marigold, Oscar Magnus Narud, Cathy McClure, Kiki van Eijk, Joost van Bleiswijk, Tokujin Yoshioka, Massimiliano Adami, and Andrea Salvetti.

Haresh Lalvani: Mass Customization of Emergent Designs at Moss Gallery, Design Miami 2011, in collaboration with Milgo / Bufkin. Interview with Murray Moss, December 3, 2011.

PS: See also Steven Mesler on Haresh Lalvani at Huffington Post. For more info use our custom search engine to find news, videos, and photos on Haresh Lalvani:

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Full-length video (09:05 Min.):

In celebration of Ferrari’s latest sports car, the car manufacturer commissioned video artist Marco Brambillo to create a Formula 1-inspired 3D video loop. The work was showcased on the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach at the Ferrari party at Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron’s unique 1111 Lincoln Road parking structure in Miami Beach.

RPM is a 3D video collage that was photographed by Brambilla at the Italian Formula One Grand Prix in Monza, Italy. He also used images from the Scuderia Ferrari archives and race broadcasts and film clips to create an abstract and kaleidoscopic series of images. Marco Brambilla: “I wanted to capture the sense of being on the very threshold of the limits of control – the feeling of euphoria and danger which are equally present in the mental state of a driver during a race”.

Marco Brambilla is a Milan-born, New York-based video artist whose work has been exhibited in major private and public collections including the Kunsthalle Bern, the Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His video installations have also been screened at Venice Film Festival (2011), and will be in the upcoming year’s Sundance and Cannes. In May 2011, Brambilla’s first major retrospective opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. He is represented by Christopher Grimes Gallery.

Marco Brambilla: RPM. Ferrari Party, 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. November 29, 2011.

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The Design Miami satellite exhibition Architecting the Future: Buckminster Fuller & Lord Norman Foster in Miami’s Design District is dedicated to two iconic inventions by architect, designer and inventor Buckminster Fuller: the Fly’s Eye Dome and the Dymaxion 4 car.

In 1961, the Fly’s Eye Dome was envisioned by Fuller as a fully functional, air deployable, low cost off-the-grid shelter. Though never fully realized in his lifetime, Fuller created three prototypes – a 12, 24 and 50 foot dome. A historic restoration of the 24 foot dome was recently completed in Bristol, RI.

Also on display is Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car. This ‘omni-directional transport system’ (patent 1937) was intended to fly, jump-jet style, when suitable alloys and engines became available. Three cars were produced in Fuller’s lifetime. Renowned contemporary architect Lord Norman Foster recently reconstructed Fuller’s Dymaxion Car in England – Dymaxion 4.

The 24 foot dome is a part of the Craig Robins Collection. It will be installed in a pedestrian plaza currently being developed in the heart of the Miami Design District.

Architecting the Future: Buckminster Fuller & Lord Norman Foster. Design District, Miami. Press reception, November 28, 2011.

PS: For a concept similar to Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, click here: Matti Suuronen’s Futuro – House of the Future.

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The High Line in New York City is a rather new place for New Yorkers to relax and enjoy the city. The pedestrian walkway and park was created by the non-profit Friends of the High Line along a former elevated rail spur in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The first section of the part, from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, opened as a city park on June 8, 2009. Phase two of the High Line redevelopment opened in June 2011. In this video, we take a walk on the second section of the High Line, running from 20th to 30th Street.

When all sections are complete, the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park. The High Line is not only a remarkable piece of landscape architecture, designed by James Corner Field Operations with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, but also a place where contemporary art is presented to the public.

The Public Art program of the High Line consist of presenting temporary artworks in all mediums in and around the High Line on a rotating schedule. Currently on view are Darren Almond, Kim Beck, Spencer Finch, Charles Mary Kubricht, Julianne Swartz, Sarah Sze. There’s a list of recent and upcoming commissions on the Public Art page of the High Line’s website. See also our interviews with artist Kim Beck and curator Lauren Ross.

The High Line is such as success, that it inspires similar projects in other cities, but there are also doubts whether its success is replicable.

A Walk on the High Line. High Line Park, New York City. September 24, 2011.

PS: Hit the jump for photo set and full-length video.

PPS: See also the review by James Golden at ThinkinGardens and an essay by Phillip Lopate at Places (Design Observer).

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Full-length video (16:50 Min.):

The Kunsthaus in Bregenz / Austria explores the architectural work of Ai Weiwei with a solo show titled Art / Architecture. While not as widely presented as his artistic oeuvre, Ai Weiwei’s work in the field of architecture is extremely important for the artist because of the collaborative – that is social and political – aspect of it.

On three floors of architect Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus building, the exhibition focuses on Ai Weiwei’s collaborative architecture projects such as the Beijing National Stadium (colloquially as the Bird’s Nest), developed in collaboration with the Pritzker price winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, but also numerous projects with lesser known architects.

This video takes you on a walk through the exhibition. The tour begins on the first floor with architectural models, plans, photographs and video documentations of specific projects, continues on the second floor with Ordos 100 (2011), a piece specifically created for this show, and finally culminates with the most abstract work of the show, Moon Chest (2008).

VernissageTV also met with the director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Yilmaz Dziewior, who talks about the idea behind the show, the concept of the exhibition, the significance of Ai Weiwei’s architectural work, and the supporting program.

Ai Weiwei: Art / Architecture at Kunsthaus Bregenz. Interview with Director Yilmaz Dziewior. Opening reception, July 15, 2011.

PS: See also: Ai Weiwei: Teahouse (2009) at the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin; Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London; and Acconci Studio and Ai Weiwei: A Collaborative Project / Para/Site Art Space Hong Kong.

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