6/29/2012

Alighiero Boetti - Game Plan




Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan
July 1–October 1

The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor. The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor.

This retrospective, organized in collaboration with the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Tate Modern in London, is the largest presentation outside of Italy of works by Italian artist Alighiero Boetti (1940–1994) to date. Organized chronologically, the exhibition spans Boetti's entire career, beginning with his sculptural works, or "objects," as he preferred to call them, comprised of everyday materials including wood, cardboard, and aluminum. While Boetti is often chiefly affiliated with the Arte Povera moment, Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan considers Boetti beyond these brief years. In 1969, Boetti began exploring notions of duality and multiplicity, order and disorder, and travel and geography, and he initiated postal and map works imagining distant places. The exhibition brings together these and other works related to travel, geography, and mapping, many of which relate to his extensive trips to Afghanistan, where Boetti collaborated with local artisans to produce his most iconic monumental embroideries. This exhibition celebrates the material diversity, conceptual complexity, and visual beauty of Boetti's art, and his notion that the artist, rather than inventing, simply brings what already exists in the world into the work.

6/17/2012

Studio Albori, 179 luoghi


Layers: American Nations


Indigenous Peoples reserve the right to define how and where we are represented in popular culture. We know that stereotypes and cultural mockery harms our children.

Some of the Nation names are a little dated. Nations are missing.. But overall, we like this map, for demonstrating that we are all different Cultures....with our own languages, stories, songs, belief systems, and ways of being. The Colonizers have done a great deal of damage in lumping us into one group of "Native Americans" or "Aboriginals". We are many, distinct Sovereign Nations. This map, at least, hints at that reality.
We encourage our Indigenous members to give a shout out to their Nation - especially if they notice that it is not marked on the map.


Zones of Exclusion - Uranium Cells

PERPETUAL ARCHITECTURE: URANIUM DISPOSAL CELLS OF AMERICA


2393
Green River Disposal Cell, Utah. Image from CLUI Archive, with flight support from Lighthawk, 2012.


This exhibit features large glowing black & white LCD images, from the archives of the CLUI, of a selection of uranium disposal cells in the southwest. In addition, interactive touchscreen map displays have more images and information about these unique structures.
More than 30 of these disposal cells have been constructed over the last 25 years, primarily to contain radioactive contamination from decommissioned uranium mills and processing sites. They are time capsules, of sorts, designed to take their toxic contents, undisturbed, as far into the future as possible.

6/14/2012

Natural and Mud Architecure, Milan



L'incontro verte sul tema dell’Architettura Naturale, della sostenibilità ambientale e culturale e dei nuovi paesaggi che ne derivano, attraverso una selezione critica di opere e installazioni di architetti ed esempi di land e natural art nel rapporto tra autocostruzione, paesaggio e identità dei luoghi.

Intervengono
Alessandro Rocca (Politecnico di Milano)
Maurizio Corrado (direttore di Nemeton)
Alessio Battistella (Studio Arcò - Politecnico di Milano)
Modera Raffaella Colombo

A partire dall’idea del giardino come nucleo concettuale fondativo, il ciclo di conferenze intende indagare sulla complessità dell'Architettura del Paesaggio. L’analisi e lo studio del paesaggio moderno si aprono a nuove visioni, nuove relazioni e inedite scale di progetto che configurano scenari tecnici e culturali ibridi, nei quali si inserisce in modo nuovo il rapporto tra cultura e natura, tra paesaggio costruito e paesaggio naturale.

6/13/2012

Luigi Ontani, Grillo Mediolanum




“Invitato da Italo Rota a presentare un progetto per il comune di Milano, Ontani creò il ‘Grillo Mediolanum’. La scultura di ceramica raffigura un grillo con le sembianze dell’artista (n.d.r. come d'altronde lo stesso ‘Dante Grillo’) che tiene in una mano una copia dei Promessi Sposi e nell’altra l’uovo che rimanda alla ‘Pala di San Bernardino’, eseguita da Piero della Francesca e conservata nella Pinacoteca di Brera, e all’uovo di Fontana. Il busto è rivestito con un motivo che riproduce l’interno del teatro La Scala; sulla testa un panettone (il dolce tipico di Milano) con sopra una copia della ‘Merda d’artista’ di Piero Manzoni. Proposto come nuova mascotte della città, l’opera suscitò polemiche feroci e fu violentemente contestata in consiglio comunale fino alle dimissioni dello stesso Rota. Messa alla berlina in una piazza della città, una domenica, fu sottoposta a uno pseudo-referendum popolare (n.d.r e mi immagino fu fatta sparire)".
Tratto da 3d-in-2d


Il Grillo fu fatto, presentato e (ingiustamente) mandato a quel paese nel 1995.

6/10/2012

David Marsh, Patti Smith - Horses


British graphic designer david marsh has sent to designboom the newest additions to his pantone-constructed portfolio. Marsh's experimentation with swatch graphics in adobe illustrator results in artworks developed in as few colors and shades as possible, while still revealing an easily discernible famous image. His most recent abstract pantone-pixel series pictures iconic album art from the 1960's to the present day revealed through 1369 small color blocks set in a square shape. 
The original cover of Patti Smith Horses (1975) and the marsh's pantone-pixel version.









6/09/2012

Franco Purini - Torre Eurosky




 

La torre Eurosky ideata da Franco Purini si ispira alle torri d'avvistamento medioevali che punteggiano la periferia della capitale. Raggiungerà i 155 metri di altezza (grazie ad un'antenna installata sul tetto, che è invece posto a circa 120 m), diventando uno il grattacielo più alto di Roma e l'edificio residenziale più alto d'Italia.
Nei suoi 28 piani comprenderà appartamenti, uffici, negozi, ristoranti, bar, sale espositive e cinque livelli destinati a locali tecnici; sorgerà di fronte ad una grande piazza. La torre sarà articolata in due prismi verticali di calcestruzzo e acciaio e rivestiti in granito, collegati da ponti aerei.
In cima all'edificio troveranno posto una pista d'atterraggio per elicotteri, che si proietta a sbalzo nel vuoto, e una grande parete fotovoltaica.

6/03/2012

Zones of Exclusion - ZATO


ZATO – Secret Soviet Cities

from 

Design as Politics

The first Chair at the Architecture Faculty of Delft University of Technology, led by Wouter Vanstiphout.
The Harriman Institute in New York was recently exhibiting the exhibition: ZATO – Secret Soviet Cities during the Cold War on the dynamics between politics, urbanism, and cartographic manipulation. Unfortunately we couldn’t go there, but secret cities based on the communist ideology of ‘the Party’, for sure drew our attention.
These closed cities or so called ZATO sites (Closed Administrative-Territorial Formation / Zakrytoe administrativno-territorial’noe obrazovanie) were areas for secret military or scientific research and production in the Soviet Empire.Weapons were produced there and medical experiments took place on nearly 250,000 animals to understand how radiation damages tissues and causes diseases.
Built in the remote areas of the Soviet Empire, they followed a unique architectural program – inspired by ideal cities, based on perfect geometric plans, articulated by progressive modernist architectural language, reflecting the ideology of the Party. However, these “realized utopias” were camouflaged and blurred into the environment. The cities were not to be found on official maps and those who worked there had special passes to live and leave, and were themselves hidden from public view. Most of the scientists and engineers who worked in the ZATOs were not allowed to reveal their place or purpose of employment.
Today there are still 43 ZATO on the territory of the Russian Federation. Their future is uncertain: some may survive; others may disappear as urban formations within the context of Russian suburbs.