12/19/2011

Militaria - Castello di Rivoli



Castello di Rivoli

Arte Povera International
Curated by Germano Celant and Beatrice Merz
October 9, 2011- February 19, 2012

Militaria - Park Avenue Armory - Herzog De Meuron



see the all story here
New York Times
Archdaily
Herzog de Meuron

and the
movie

Militaria - Castelgrande di Bellinzona

Domus-magazine-75-june-1993Domus 750 June 1993













Aurelio Galfetti- restoration of Castelgrande, Bellinzona. Francesco di Giorgio Martini.




Aurelio Galfetti: Castelgrande, Bellinzona
(in German)
Frank WernerAurelio GalfettiStefania Beretta
Ernst & Sohn, 1992 - 59 pages
The notion of "building in historical surroundings" gained a whole new meaning from Alexander Mitscherlich's 1965 book Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Stadte, and the subject has lost none of its topicality today. The Ticino architectural scene is particularly interesting in this respect: it has attracted international attention since the sixties because of its programmatic tendency towards design rebellion.
Although Ticino architecture's considerable impact since then has come principally from new buildings, revitalization and conversion of historical architecture was always on a par with new building. Aurelio Galfetti is one of the leading lights of the Ticino scene, and his transformation of the ruined remains of the Castelgrande in Bellinzona into a contemporary museum and culture centre provides us with something like a provisional resume of decades of architectural reform effort. After a continuous series of typological corrections to Bellinzona's diffuse townscape, Galfetti was concerned mainly to sharpen public awareness of the genius loci and its history, but above all its future, when rebuilding the Castelgrande. These efforts produced what is without a doubt one of the most important conversion projects in recent building history since Carlo Scarpa's legendary work on the Castelvecchio in Verona.
Galfetti had neither restored nor conserved Bellinzona's "Acropolis". At the most -- as the Neapolitan architect Francesco Venezia would say -- he had joined pieces together to spaces in which light, objects and landscape hold silent communication. He was concerned in the first place to transform an extraordinarily damaged historical situation into an analogue reality that would make it able to speak again.



Alessandro Massarente
Castelgrande a Bellizona. Aurelio Galfetti
36 pp., ill. b.n. e colore

Questo progetto già oggetto di un ampio dibattito sulle più importanti riviste
di architettura, mette in luce il ruolo dei restauro come trasformazione, la necessità
di dare un esito formale al cambiamento dei modi d'uso per conservare l'edificio. In questo
delicato processo di trasformazione, il progetto conserva, gli elementi essenziali del
luogo (la roccia, le mura, l'acqua, il prato) donando loro un nuovo senso. Al punto che
questo lavoro appare come l'ultima delle trasformazioni subite dal complesso in ordine di tempo:
tale però da non precludere la possibilità di altre trasformazioni successive. 

ISBN9788881251988
AutoreAlessandro Massarente
EditoreAlinea Editrice (Ed. 1997)

Militaria - the Waterhouse

Chinese architects NHDRO have transformed this disused Japanese army headquarters in Shanghai into a hotel, maintaining the building’s stripped concrete and brick walls while adding a new Corten steel extension on the roof.

See the movie
See the complete story here
(from Dezeen)
see also on INTERNI

The WaterHouse at South Bund by NHDRO 1

12/18/2011

Nearly Human - Elfoid

Japanese researchers, in collaboration with Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro have invented ELFOID, a mobile phone in shape of a human being.
The phone incorporates a speaker in the head of the device and a light-emitting diode in its chest which turns blue when the phone is in use and red when it is in standby mode.
The creepy elfoid handset is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of a remote user.
(from Designboom)


12/14/2011

Animals: Chameleon

Wanderings through rural South Africa

Living the Bush

The men, of course, are free to take more than one wife, she explained. Though the women don’t like it, they must accept the practice. Mbali described a lot of pain, crying, and heartache, but if the man wants more than one wife, it is so. In traditional times, all the wives and children would live in the same compound with the man, but today it is acknowledged that there would be too much fighting between the women. The families live separately, and the man must divide his time between them. While the women must accept sharing their husbands, the men must ensure equality between their wives. “If she gets a watch, I get a watch,” Mbali said, “If you spend two nights with her, you spend two night with me.”

Alighiero Boetti, Autoritratto, 1994


12/09/2011

L'année dernière à Marienbad




L’année dernière à Marienbad
réalisé par Alain Resnais
Scénario: Alain Robbe-Grillet Photo: Sacha Vierney Musique: Francis Seyrig. Avec : Delphine Seyrig (A), Giorgio Albertazzi (X), Sascha Pitoëff (M), Françoise Bertin, Luce Garcia-Ville. 1h35. NB _ (1961)


Le film décrit le rêve d'un homme qui aime une femme inaccessible. Il vient la chercher. Mais le rêve est aussi cauchemar : la femme ne se souvient plus de lui. Il essaie de l'atteindre. Lorsqu'il croit l'avoir fait, elle s'est déplacée sur une autre pointe du temps, un autre souvenir : il faut la convaincre à nouveau. De nouveaux cauchemars se dressent devant lui : est il sur que c'est elle qu'il aime ? Est-il sûr de l'avoir rencontré ? Mais oui, c'est elle qu'il aime. Il l'emporte dans sa nuit. Fin du rêve, avant celui de demain.




     




Gradiva

  

IV Century BC.

Sigmund Freud's Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva


Sigmund Freud, "Delusion and Dream"
"Freud's long essay, an analysis of the German novelist Wilhelm Jensen's story Gradiva, is his first work to deal explicitly and systematically with literature and aesthetics, although he had commented at some length on Oedipus Rex and Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). In asserting that dreams have meaning, psychoanalysts are aligned with the ancients, a 'superstitious' public and creative writers. Through the close analysis of a story that Jensen termed a 'Pompeiian phantasy', Freud considers 'the class of dreams that have never been dreamt at all--dreams created by imaginative writers and ascribed to invented characters in the course of a story.'"--Scott Brewster, The University of Salford

12/05/2011

Corbellini Rocca Back Up


Wouter Vanstiphout

Tomorrow episode 4 in the Blame the Architect lecture series; LA riots '92: Rodney King, Crips vs. Bloods, Mike Davis' Ecology of Fear vs. Charles Jencks' Heteropolis. But look out!! instead of Room B, we are in Room C; and instead of starting at 12.45, we start at 10.45AM, BK City, tuesday dec 6


designaspolitics


11/22/2011

Zone of Exclusion: Obamas' Cadillac

Obama usa una Cadillac che è una specie di carro armato Abrams travestito da auto. Un mostro top secret che pesa 10 tonnellate e brucia un litro di benzina ogni tre km. Ha un sistema di visione notturna per viaggiare a tutta velocità con i fari spenti, una blindatura per resistere a qualsiasi tipo di proiettile, sistema anti missile, flash accecanti e la possibilità di sparare vari tipi di gas intorno all'auto. (la Repubblica)

11/14/2011

Moonscape, with an American Flag



Buzz Aldrin with U.S. flag on the Moon. (mission time: 110:10:33) Buzz salutes the U.S. Flag. His fingertips are visible on the far side of his faceplate. Note the well-defined footprints in the foreground. Buzz is facing up-Sun. There is a reflection of the Sun in his visor. At the bottom of Buzz's faceplate, note the white 'rim' which is slightly separated from his neckring. This 'rim' is the bottom of his gold visor, which he has pulled down. We can see the LEC straps hanging down inside of the ladder strut. In the foreground, we can see the foot-grabbing loops in the TV cable. The double crater under Neil's Lm window is beyond Buzz and the LM shadow.




Mies van der Rohe and the American Flag



Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Convention Hall Project, Chicago, Illinois, interior perspective. 1954. Collage of cut-and-pasted reproductions, photograph, and paper on composition board, 33 x 48" (83.8 x 121.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the architect

Maurizio Cattelan / the Elevator

from DOMUSWEB a cool non-conversative interview of Maria Cristina Didero with Maurizio Cattelan

It really seems that the time has come. But the time for what? To visit the latest Maurizio Cattelan exhibition. And why, you might say? Because he decided so. To close out in style, he thought of his venue in Frank Lloyd Wright's inverted cone thrust in the heart of Manhattan like a sword in the stone. All of his work—years of acrobatic production by one of the world's greatest and most internationally recognized living artists—can be viewed in this excellent space. And what will happen after the Guggenheim? No more Cattelan? We are sure that he will not cease to plunge more sharp blades into the heart of the art world, like Nona Ora, Him or the children hanging in Piazza 24 Maggio in Milan in 2004, a piece that is still widely discussed. What can we say? With barely suppressed anxiety, we look forward to the next move by this most unpredictable chess player.

But while we are waiting, we can go see All—the title of the New York exhibit—and revisit his story made up of composed whispers and breathtaking shouts; his work has always led people to stare at themselves mercilessly in the mirror and see human atrocities and weaknesses, breaking down the taboos of a society which Cattelan does not deny being part of, but which, like a modern-day jester, he has managed to expose with frozen tears and a barely suppressed smile.

At the center of the Guggenheim exhibition is the artistic life (because we know nothing about the other one) of a man who was able to penetrate the depths of our reality—a successful endeavor if we think about so many people who look presumptuously upon the surface objects, barely seeing anything they should see. But All is not merely an exhibit. It is a massive new piece unto itself; the exhibition design has all of Cattelan's projects hanging like salamis from the roof of the architecture, suspended as if to signify the fragility and futility of life always hanging on by a thread. It is only natural that his "last" show should only be astonishing, like all his shows that came before.

Maria Cristina Didero: Who is Maurizio Cattelan?
Maurizio Cattelan: Given the fact that I once referred to myself as an "imagination worker," retirement seems to be the most appropriate goal.

The number one rule in life?
Everyone has to die.

Number two?
Everyone wants to die as late as possible.

You have been called post-modern, post-studio ... do you identify with any art movement?
We all seek immortality.

What are your references?
My family.

What is an artist's fundamental quality?
To think of death as a resource and not as a limitation.

What tool is essential for you to complete a piece?
It was the phone.

Which of your pieces is your favorite?
All and none. Once they are out in the world, they follow their own paths and begin to walk on their own two legs.

And a piece that is not yours that you detest?
I detest only my work.

Your ideal home?
My house has always been completely empty.

Would your home be different if it were anywhere else?
Wherever it is, my house would always be empty.

Tell me a story about your home.
I sleep very well in my house. There are only two chairs and a table. A closet full of white tee shirts and black jeans. I also have shoes that I use every day because I have to.

What is your favorite corner?
The elevator.


Does art play a special role in your home?
No, but I think it has in my life, or so they say.

Do you love order or disorder?
Both, but well balanced.

Where do you relax?
At the park, like a good pensioner.

Is there a special place you design, think, write?
Also at the park, and never alone.

Are you a collector?
I collect lies that are more or less related to reality.

Leave or come back?
If you don't leave you don't come back; but there are some people that leave and never come back and others who have never left but always come back.

Dogs, cats or no animal?
All the animals that I have are already stuffed.

Do you have an object or work of art that you never part with?
I would never part with my jeans, otherwise I would have to go out in my underwear.

Which is your favorite European city?
Atlantis.

What other European cities do you like to visit?
I travel a lot but in the end I always prefer to bike around the neighborhood.

Which neighborhood, in which city?
The one I'm in at that very moment.

What European city would recommend to a creative person?
The answer is within you, and it's wrong.

The best time to work?
None in reality, but we always work until the day we retire, which for me seems to have finally arrived.

Where you would like to live?
In my house.

What trip do you dream of taking?
To discover a corner in my neighborhood that I don't know yet.

What are you reading now?
My unauthorized autobiography by Francesco Bonami. I am trying to understand myself.

Maurizio Cattelan: All
4 November 2011–22 January 2012
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

11/10/2011

T.I.R. - Maurizio Cattelan a Genova

T.I.R.

Installazione di Maurizio Cattelan nel cortile di un supermercato 
in via Donghi, a Genova.






11/04/2011

Il mondo appeso di Cattelan


Il mondo appeso di Maurizio Cattelan al Guggenheim Museum di New York

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: ALL

November 4, 2011–January 22, 2012







11/03/2011

Italian Design: when it was cool

1972: MoMA, New York

Gufram: Pratone

Pratone, design Piero Derossi. By Gufram

Flos: Taraxacum S1/S2Suspension lamp


Taraxacum, design Achille e Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. By Flos

Flos: Toio

Toio, design Achille e Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. By Flos