Kinetic Art of the Future
Like Time Lords, the boffins have regenerated… and this time, they’re artists! That’s one conclusion to draw from the Kinetica Art Fair , (4 – 7 February), dedicated to kinetic, cybernetic, electronic and light art in the Kinetica Art Fair , (4 – 7 February), dedicated to kinetic, cybernetic, electronic and light art in the [...]
Whiteness, Emptiness, Simplicity
In the prologue to his book, White, Kenya Hara writes: ‘it is my hope that, by the time you have finished reading this book, “white” will look differently to you.’ It certainly does that, perhaps more so for the English speaking readers, as Hara also notes.
This simple essay is filled with reflections on Japanese history [...]
Industrial Craftwork
It was fate that bought together Japanese furniture brand Maruni and London furniture showroom Viaduct at the Milan Salone del Mobile in 2005. The director of Viaduct, James Mair, stumbled upon Maruni’s stand at the show and was impressed by its 2004 Nextmaruni series, a range of furniture by Japan’s leading contemporary designers.
Unbeknown to Mair, [...]
Architectural Sweets
Architect Souhei Imamura is always busy on several projects at once. Apart from teaching at Waseda University, he runs an architectural practice, Atelier Imamu, and collaborates with overseas architects on projects in Tokyo, most recently on a house with Felix Claus (see Blueprint March 2008). One of his more unusual collaborations has been with the [...]
Ghostvillage
In the January issue of Blueprint, we included graffiti artist collective Agents of Change in our list of 25 who will change architecture and design in 2010. For its Ghostvillage project in October 2009, the group created paintings on the walls throughout the abandoned village of Polphail in south-west Scotland. The project was carried out [...]
Farshid Moussavi in Conversation
Architect Farshid Moussavi will be joining Blueprint’s assistant editor Peter Kelly in conversation next Tuesday at Asia House, London. Iranian-born Moussavi is co-founder of award-winning architecture practice Foreign Office Architects (FOA), professor of architecture at Harvard University and author of the books The Function of Ornament and The Function of Form.
FOA’s past work includes the [...]
A Life Drawing
This evening, architect Nicholas Grimshaw will give a talk at the Royal Academy on the the important role that drawing plays in his design practice. The event is part an ongoing exhibition at the RA, entitled Capturing the Concept: The Sketchbooks of Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, which is also accompanied by the publication that features a [...]
Typeface Architecture
‘If You Could Collaborate’, an exhibition that opens tomorrow night at the A Foundation Gallery in London, features work that marries the creative talents of industries that do not normally have an opportunity to interact. As part of the show, graphic designers Praline, who have worked with clients including Coca-Cola and ICI, chose to work with the model shop of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Architects.
The Hammer and Sickle Canteen
In spring 2007 I went to Samara, a city some 500 miles south east of Moscow on the Volga River, to look at the Maslennikov factory canteen (1930-1932) by one of the few female architects of the Soviet avant-garde, Yekaterina Maximova. It has a ground plan in the form of a hammer and sickle and, [...]
New Year, New Order
Back in 1999, lots of people were afraid of the Millennium Bug. They thought (or were being told by the computer industry) that at midnight on 31 December, all the systems would crash and our world, totally dependent on computers as it is, would come to a halt. That didn’t happen. Most of us also [...]
Less is Less
The second floor of London’s Design Museum is currently occupied by two exhibitions: Ergonomics: Real Design, and Less is More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams. The first one takes up about one quarter of the floor space; the second extends over all the rest. This disparity is immediately striking. Is it intentional? Is there some [...]
Change in 2010
In the run up to the general election, the term change will be much used and abused at Westminster. As Brendan O’Neill, editor of the independent political site, Spiked, points out, Gordon Brown used the word nearly 50 times in his speech to the Labour Party Conference; Peter Mandelson used it 38 times, and David Cameron has claimed to be launching a ‘movement for change’.
The Expert View
In addition to our own choices, Blueprint asked three experts in the fields of Technology, Architecture and Urbanism and Product/Furniture design to look ahead and make recommendations for the people they think will make a difference in 2010.
Search for a Condemned Building
Following on from the success of Seizure, Roger Hiorn’s Turner Prize nominated blue crystal cave in a one-bedroom council flat in Elephant & Castle, London-based arts producer Artangel is searching for a very particular type of building for its next project with an internationally acclaimed British artist.
The building Artangel needs is ideally a large – [...]
What is British design?
The futile search for a contemporary ‘British’ national design identity provided a quaint theme for this year’s London Design Festival (LDF). This was accompanied by some soul searching in the broadsheets on what exactly constitutes British design and whether it has lost its mojo.
Whatever Happened to Ergonomics?
Allusions to ergonomics abound: human factors, user-friendly, usability engineering, human-centred design and heuristic evaluation. We are confronted by clumped initials: GUI (graphical user interface), HMI (human-machine interface) and, if you can believe it, TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it). Any comprehensive design initiative inevitably requires such bed companions, and the more [...]
Supersonic Design
Marc Newson is considered by many to be the leading light of contemporary design today. He describes his work as instinctive, creating what he believes to be a ‘representation of fantastical objects’. His work flows from design concepts with artistic connotations to designs that are functional and mass-produced.
Man and Machine
In a recent lecture at the Barbican in London, American designer/artist James Wines declared that the Age of Industry, in which we were fascinated by machinery, is over and that we are now beginning an Age of Ecology, where we will rediscover our relationship with nature. It’s a widely held view that humanity lost touch with the natural environment during the 20th century, and that industrial development has damaged the planet almost to the point of no return.
Young Photographers’ Opening Shots
For the January 2010 issue of Blueprint, our Opening Shot was provided by Chris Greenaway, a third year photography student at Winchester School of Art. Blueprint’s art director Patrick Myles set a brief asking the students to capture strange, new or critical aspects of the built environment. Presented here are the series of photographs taken by the students with an explanation of their shot.
Urban Utopias
A city of artificial hills, with towers peaking above the clouds in permanent sunshine, is the vision drawn by Anna Boldina, winner of Blueprint and the Royal Academy’s Paper City competition. Boldina, who is an urban design graduate from Moscow, has lived in London for one year and was inspired to draw her idea after seeing [...]
