Softwalks by Howard Chambers and Bland Hoke. In a city that is known as the premiere walking city, isn’t it ironic that there is no place to SIT? The Softwalks seat is designed to attach to sidewalk sheds using a standard scaffold clamp. When not in use, it can be easily folded up and locked.
Centipede Cinema
The only way to watch a film at this unconventional cinema in Guimarães, Portugal, is by manoeuvring your upper body into one of 16 downward-pointing nozzles.
The project was conceived by Bartlett School of Architecture professor Colin Fournier, who teamed up with Polish artist Marysia Lewandowska and London studio NEON to build it .Open this week, the structure is named the Centipede Cinema because the protruding lower bodies of viewers give it a similar form to one of the many-legged creepy crawlies.
Viewers that have ducked inside the cinema can rest their arms on the base of the structure while enjoying a one-hour film made of of three-minute-long trailers.
he project was constructed to coincide with the city’s designation as the 2012 European Capital of Culture and was inspired by a controversial local cinema club that started up during the authoritarian political regime of Estado Novo in the 1950s. “The CineClube is one of the few groups that were able to offer a radical political critique of society and they survive to this day as a left-wing cultural club, said Fournier. “We wanted to create something that celebrated such an important contribution.”
(Source: dezeen.com)
Built in 2011 in London, Ridleys: Temporary Restaurant by Atelier ChanChan turned a void inside a market into a new food experience. Meals with “zero food miles’” were prepared at ground-floor level, cooking the market produce and then were raised by a mechanical table up to the guests on the first floor.
A wall painting with chairs. This project by Jensen Architects was developed as an adaptable tool kit serving new public programming and special events at the Oakland Museum of California. Sited in the museum’s terraced-concrete entry plaza, the project creates an outdoor living room for the community with simple metal garden chairs hung from hooks like chairs in a Shaker house. Initially projecting a strong graphic impression, the composition comes into three-dimensional relief and expresses itself as an interactive participatory piece where staff and visitors can create multiple seating arrangements in response to different events and gatherings.
Within the 2012 Salon exhibition curated by COAL, the collective Encore Heureux has presented Table-Hamac, the new outdoor temporary furniture designed for the Chamarande domain (France).
People rest and relax on public steps anyway, why not give them a comfortable way to do so? Stair Squares, a concept by Mark Reigelman, are little blue tables that fit perfectly onto steps to offer little tables for eating and reading. The stairs were installed on the front steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall in the summer of 2007.
Berlin-based architect and founder of of Hartz IV Möbel, Van Bo Le-Mentzel, has created the smallest house in the world.
Called the ‘One-Sqm-House’, the DIY wooden house measures only one square meter; but through a flipping mechanism, it can provide a cozy place to sleep. Le-Mentzel’s brainchild was harboured from spending much of his life as a refugee, moving around, dependent on social subsidies and social housing.
He decided to build a house that didn’t need to be big, but one he could bring with him, that he could put anywhere he wanted, anytime he wanted, and call it home—a house for everybody, a square meter of freedom. The structure of the One-Sqm-House can be assembled using everyday materials from the hardware store.
The Serpentine Gallery’s annual Pavilion is a staple of the capital’s summer architecture calendar and it rarely disappoints.
Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei have worked together to great acclaim before on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games but this is their first collaborative UK venture. And it seems fitting that their new project should open just in time for the 2012 Games in London.
Given the team’s combined reputation for innovation and creativity, it is no surprise that they flipped the pavilion concept on its head. Instead of creating a fully-fledged new structure, the team’s design puts the focus on the previous pavilions, in a near-archaeological fashion.
In a quest to ‘uncover’ the former pavilions’ foundations, the ground was dug up to form a geography of patterns, low walls and steps that the visitors can explore - and sit on. The whole surface is covered in cork, enhancing the space’s acoustics, as well as giving a tactile quality (and distinct aroma) to the interior. Above the excavation are 12 columns (one representing each pavilion, including the 2012 one) that support a large floating platform roof. It hovers 1.4m above ground and holds a shallow pool of rainwater.
Taking the visitor below ground level and within the intriguingly sculptural landscape of the excavation, Herzog & de Meuron and Weiwei’s design acts as an homage to the Serpentine’s whole Pavilion program, inviting the crowds to discover the hidden footprints of the new structure’s predecessors.
(Source: wallpaper.com)
Italian artist massimo bartolini has developed an expansive outdoor public library entitled ‘bookyard’ for belgian art festival, TRACK: a contemporary city conversation in ghent. Bartolini has employed his creative, mixed media talents to develop a set of twelve bookcases installed in st peter’s abbey vineyard, sint-pietersplein 14, the establishment originating in the middle ages. the sweeping shape of green shelves has been constructed upon a small grassy field, then moving up the gradual slope of st peter’s abbey in line with their vines.
The units are filled with books for sale by the public libraries of ghent and antwerp with the profits of these items to benefit the institutions. Visitors to the exhibition may bring home a piece of the artwork, an object housed in the shelves of ‘bookyard’ by leaving a donation of their choosing into a small box supplied by the artist and the libraries.
ghent’s intervention project, TRACK, officially ends on september 16th, 2012.
Ahmet Ögüt’s interactive carousel, Waiting for a Bus, was originally conceived as a playful and thought-provoking alternative bus shelter to be located in Victoria Square. Later relocated to Rolleston Ave, the gently rotating carousel provided an invitation for people to enter, sit, stop and observe the slowly unfolding view of the altered city surrounding them.
This sculpture reflected Ögüt’s interest in patterns of social and public movement through urban spaces, and encouraged us to consider the daily occurrence of waiting, taking pause between more apparently significant periods of activity.
Location - Rolleston Avenue, adjacent to Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand
Street Seats is a furniture project developed by Bade Stageberg Cox for the Pier 94 Coffee Bar at The Armory Show. The 50 chairs, found abandoned on the streets of New York, were repaired and given a new life with a coat of taxi cab yellow paint. Like the city’s residents, the chairs are an eclectic mix, migrating throughout the fair during its five-day run. The bottom of each chair is stamped and documented with the date and location it was recovered.
SKY DECK BY TORAFU ARCHITECTS in collaboration with Ishinomaki Laboratory
This is a small table made to hook onto handrails, and it uses just enough pieces of wood to do so. You can put your mobile phone or a radio on it while you hang out your laundry, or it can be used as a counter when you have a beer on your balcony on a nice day. Floating in the air, sky deck stretches a narrow balcony space out by just a little bit, into the city beyond.
Bird’s Talk by Vasily Kassab The shape of the nest was inspired from a horn loudspeaker, which gives the ability to extend the low frequency limit creating greater acoustic output. As a result, we can increase the sound of the birds. The nest designed in such a way that carrying it and mounting it becomes a matter of seconds.
the ‘share’ portable park chair, created by swedish designer thomas bernstrand for stockholm-based design manufacturers nola, offers an innovative design solution for the need of flexible public seating both indoor and outdoor.like shopping carts or trolleys used in many supermarkets and airports, the chairs are equipped
with coin-operated locks, nesting into one another for secure storage when not in use.
in this way the design lowers the risk of theft, as the chairs are collectively secured to an immovable base, as well as encourages everyday users to return the seat to the storage station after use, in order to recuperate his coin.
the piece is on exhibition with nola’s 2012 collection at stockholm furniture and light fair 2012.
(Source: designboom.com)
