'Morild' light installation by Astrid Krogh

Astrid Krogh, educated textile designer, creates the most sophisticated light installations using sources such as neon lights, LEDs or optic fibres. Her newest piece is this delicate ‘light tapestry’ which is currently exhibited within Astrid’s solo exhibition at Galleri NB in Viborg, Denmark. ‘Morild’ consists of a perforated wooden wall with illuminated spots – the endings of  fiberoptic threads which are arranged in fragments of an ornament. The light source can be programmed to switch coulor and intensity in fast or slow intervals.

The exhibition LYS(T)VEJ will be open until 18 september 2010.

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'Kitchen Monument' by raumlabor berlin

The Berlin based architectural collective raumlabor traveled with its ‘Kitchen Monument’ to Venice to provide some space for various events, discussions and talks during the opening days of this year’s Biennale. ‘Kitchen Monument’ is a collaboration of raumlabor and Plastique Fantastique – Berlin based specialists for pneumatic structures.

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'The Dwelling Lab' for Kvadrat and BM

Together with Giulio Ridolfi the Milan based designer Patricia Urquiola was assigned to create a conceptual installation for the Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat and the German carmaker BMW. The result of this fruitful collaboration are these huge cone-like structures that seem to be growing out of the car’s body.

The installation will be showcased during this year’s London Design Festival 22nd – 26th September 2010 at The Tramshed Event in the old disused electricity power station for the Shoreditch tram system. Beside ‘The Dwelling Lab’ there will be 25 exclusive international design brands exhibiting at this bold new venue.

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'Huts' on the facade of Centre Pompidou in Paris by Tadashi Kawamata, photo by Hervé Véronèse, Centre Pompidou, 2010

The Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata is well known for his architectural installations made from humble, sometimes recycled materials such as cardboard boxes or disused timber. One of his newest creations are wooden huts hanging like wesp’s nests between the beams and pillars of the structural facade of Centre Pompidou in Paris. With their look of improvisation the small parasites build a strong contrast to the highly technical appearing “Refinery” – this is how Parisians call the Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building from 1977.

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'Beetle's House' by Terunobu Fujimori, located in the Medieval & Renaissance Room; commissioned by the V&A, © Terunobu Fujimori

There’s a scene in Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy ‘Zoolander’ where the eponymous male supermodel smashes up an architectural model of a new school that’s due to be built in his honour upon seeing it for the first time. ‘How are we supposed to teach kids to read, when they cannot fit inside the building?’, rages the intellectually challenged fashion celebrity. His unfortunate misreading of scale is our comic delight.

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'Re-loved' Panton Chair by Chris Bosse / LAVA

Chris Bosse, co-director of the innovative architectural firm LAVA, realised this homage to the 1967s Panton Chair within the ‘Re-loved – designer stories’ exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum. The sliced up icon is on display from 31 July – 30 September 2010 during this year’s Sydney Design Festival.

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'Free Entrance' by osa

Summer break – the vanguard Berlin theatre Volksbühne closed its doors barricating the iconic limestone facade with five additional columns. The international architectural collective osa – office for subversive architecture realised this meaningful temporary installation on the front of the historical building.

Planned and built in 1913 by the German architect Oskar Kaufmann the Berlin Volksbühne became one of the first political theatres under the management of the famous artistic director Erwin Piscator in the 1920s. Today the provocative stagings of directors such as René Pollesch, Christoph Schlingensief or Frank Castorf still grab the headlines and are definitely worth a visit!


16 July – 28 August 2010, Volksbühne, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin

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'CORNER NO. 2' by Ron Gilad, photo with courtesy of Wright

With strong black outlines made from enameled brass Israel born and New York based artist Ron Gilad defines spaces of miniature architecture. Sometimes only a corner, sometimes a whole facade, the spatial fragments of his series ‘SPACES ETC.’ seem to question our relationship with the architectural environments. Trained as an industrial designer at the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem Ron Gilad primarily worked on furniture, products, and tabletop objects. Today he obviously moves with between disciplines and materials.

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'autoR' by Carsten Nicolai, photo by René Zieger, Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig/Berlin and PaceWildenstein

Designed by the Austrian architect Krischanitz the ‘Temporäre Kunsthalle’ (temporary art hall), one of Berlin’s major venues for contemporary art, is situated on one of the most prominent sites at the heart of Berlin, the Schlossplatz. The hall is conceived as a wooden construction with open-web girders. The surrounding strip foundations form a stable basis for the wooden elements that emerge from them. The surfaces of the exterior skin and the inner walls in the three main rooms (foyer, exhibition space, café) are made of fibre-cement panels.

Recently Berlin based artist Carsten Nicolai was invited to re-design the plane facade temporarily. The project ‘autoR’ is a self-organising process based on the visitor’s intervention. Graphical stickers designed by the artist can be applied randomly. The result is freely designed forms, clusters, and structures.

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'Auto Défense' by Stephane Malka

With his impressive visionary project ‘Auto Défense’, a parasitic transformation of Defence in Paris, the French architect Stephane Malka received this year’s NAJAP prize, a distinction given by the French Cultural Ministry.

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