Philippe Starck with his 'Play' series for DEDON

There are only a few designers who polarise as much as Philippe Starck does. After I saw his fantastic speach for Ted I decided to belong to those who love him.


Recently during this year’s Milan fair the Paris based designer presented his new outdoor furniture series ‘Play’ he created together with Eugeni Quitllet for the German manufacturer DEDON. The heart of the ‘Play’ family is the stackable lightweight chair which is composed of a moulded polypropylene frame and optional kinds of coverings: solid teak, mirror-finish aluminium or hand-woven synthetic fiber, the higly durable material that has made DEDON famous the world over.

'Play' chairs and dining table by Philippe Starck

“PLAY will be offered in several colour ways, combinations and melanges of chalk and carbon, stone and terracotta, and bronze. With or without armrests, ‘Play’ has inspired also ‘Play’ with DEDON, a collaboration that encompasses the ‘Bistro’ table, with its glazed porcelain ceramic tabletop that stands on a central pedestal made of moulded polypropylene, and ‘Dining’, a four-legged table in mirror-finish aluminium and profiled in aluminium, and which, thanks to the use of an inert compound of powdered bamboo and plastic, looks just like real wood.”

'Play' dining table by Philippe Satck and Eugeni Quitllet

'Play' chairs and bistro table by Philippe Starck and Eugeni Quitllet

Beside all this DEDON came up with a spirited ad campaign developed in collaboration with the famous fashion photographer Bruce Weber. The beautiful images of the photo shoot have been published in a limited edition book which is available on DEDON’s website.

DEDON 'Coming Home' coffee-table book with photographies by Bruce Weber

'Coming Home' photos by Bruce Weber for DEDON

more DEDON products @ Architonic

'Haus Rentsch' by Richard Neutra, 1964, © Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

He was one of the protagonists of modern architecture. In the 1920s Richard Neutra, born Austrian, moved to the US where he soon raised reputation with his light and airy structures. Museum MARTa Herford dedicated its recent exhibition to his less known European opus with an extensive selection of original designs, water colour sketches, building plans, models and photographs by Richard Neutra.

BEWO Quickborn, Quickborn, Germany, 1960-63, Eberhard Troeger © Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

“An international team of experts has been working on this project for over two years. While conducting research for the exhibition and the catalogue (to be published by DuMont in Cologne), they discovered unfinished projects by Neutra in his archive at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), which will now go on display at Herford…. The exhibition will shed light on the impact of this influential architect, who began his career in Europe, took the ideas of the Bauhaus with him to the USA, and then brought American modernism to Europe.”


The exhibition will be open until 1 August 2010.

'Haus Pescher', photo by Iwan Baan

Bewobau Walldorf Interieur, 1960 © Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

to the MARTa Herford website

'OBSERVATION I' by Richard Galpin

On May 7, 2010, a new artwork by Richard Galpin, entitled ‘Viewing Station’, will debut on the High Line, New York City’s elevated park built on a former freight rail trestle on Manhattan’s west side. Using a specially designed and constructed viewing apparatus, this commissioned artwork will offer park visitors an altered perspective of a particular view from the High Line. One of the wonderful experiences the High Line has provided to visitors is a new vista of Manhattan. Similarly, Galpin’s artwork will offer a novel reconsideration of our familiar surroundings.

'URBIS I' by Richard Galpin

Galpin is best known for creating altered photographs of cityscapes. His chosen method of manipulation is to cut and remove the top layer of the colored emulsion from his photographic prints, exposing the paper substrate. By eradicating part of the photograph, the imagery becomes greatly abstracted. Using clean lines and sharp angles, Galpin’s technique produces works with an emphasis on geometric shapes, recalling early twentieth century movements such as Constructivism, Cubism, and Futurism.

'OBSERVATION I' by Richard Galpin

'SPLINTER II' by Richard Galpin

read ‘Peeled Architecture’ about Richard Galpin @ Architonic

New York´s High Line turns into a green promenade

to the Richard Galpin webite

Section II, 2007, by Bas Princen

The Rotterdam based photographer Bas Princen was trained as an architect before he decided to focus on architectural photography. With his photographs of giant construction sites and apparently absurd human artefacts he describes the oddity of human ‘civilisations’.

Mokattam ridge (garbage city) Cairo, 2009, by Bas Princen

“I go out to find photographs [...] in which the artificial and the natural take each other’s forms and in which one is unable to see if things are being constructed or destroyed. I think that is the most interesting thing that can be said right now about the cities in which we live, and the landscapes in which we dwell (and vice versa).” Bas Princen explained in a conversation with Mark Pimplott.

Blvd, 2009, by Bas Princen

Valley (China), 2008, by Bas Princen

Future olympic park, 2007, by Bas Princen

to the Van Kranendonk Gallery website

Photo by Sven Hamann

Photographs are extracts, in the broadest sense close-ups of reality. And when documenting architecture the difficulty of making three-dimensional spaces seizable on a two-dimensional photo comes into play.

The photographs by Sven Hamann have a different origin. He doesn’t confront the beholder with intense perspectives, but shares with him the beauty of ‘everyday’ architecture, particularly by showing facades. Because his subjects are not the work of famous architects, but ordinary residential buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, it seems that he wants to sharpen the eye for the inconsiderable.

Photo by Sven Hamann

“The chosen frontal perspective dissociates itself consciously  from the common perspective. The goal is to inescapably freeze sight on architecture – to give sight no chance to escape towards perspective’s vanishing point and only vaguely perceive the architecture.”

Photo by Sven Hamann

Photo by Sven Hamann

Painting by Sven Hamann

to the Sven Hamann website

Michigan Central Station, built 1913, out of service since 1988

“Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension.”

The photgraphers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre focus on architectural vestiges of human civilisation and capture these traces with their silent but very dramatic photographs.

United Artist Theatre opened in 1928, it was part of the nationwide theatre chain, which was founded among others by Charlie Chaplin

One of their series is about the shrinking city of Detroit. Known as the ‘Motor City’ Detroit is still the centre of the North American car industry, but since the 1950s, when the models of the ‘Big Three’ (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) started to lose market share compared to foreign brands the number of inhabitants is constantly decreasing. Ruins of noble theatres and hotels still testify to the glory the former cultural and musical centre represented.

Farewell Building

“Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.”

Ballroom of the historic Fort Wayne Hotel

to the Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre website

Polaroid photography by Grant Hamilton

When Polaroid decided to cease the production of the SX-70 films, the material for the legendary folding single lens reflex camera, photographers all over the world started to panic. No other instant film offers the same charm and softness. In 2008, Polaroid announced that they would even cease production of their last instant film format. The prices on ebay for the last films are going sky high and groups of polaroid enthusiast are taking the initiative to save the instant film.

Photo by Grant Hamilton

The US photographer Grant Hamilton is one of the many apologists for Polaroid material. Before he bought his first Polaroid camera in 2006 he has been shooting abstract, geometric and minimalist photos with a digital camera.

“Although I felt like I was onto something, those images seemed sterile and lacked soul. I was introduced to Polaroid images through the internet and thought that the imperfections and characteristic colors perfectly suited the types of subjects I was interested in.[...] Through my photos, I strive to find beauty in the mundane. It is hard to describe to passers-by why, exactly, I am photographing the side of a bus or standing on a ladder on the side of a road, trying to reach a sign. Most of the time, however, people will see the beauty that I am seeing and will smile. Often they will remark that they never noticed that before.”

At the moment Grant is working on a documentary called Time Zero-the Last Year of Polaroid Film.

see the trailer here

to Grant Hamilton’s photostream

Siemens city, Berlin, 1931, Photo by Gerrit Engel

The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich recently opened an exhibition about the work of the Berlin-based architect and photographer Gerrit Engel.

'Sozialpalast' (social palace), Berlin, 1977, Photo by Gerrit Engel

Berlin – shaped by the political upheavals of the 20th century like no other city – and Manhattan, New York, the epitome of the big city, metropolis of the Modern Age. In the photographs of Gerrit Engel these two cliché-laden cities are to be seen in a new, completely unfamiliar light. He focuses on the buildings like a scientist researching exotic beings. Fascinated, yet at the same time with the distance of a scientist. With »vasculum-like dispassion«, but not without affection.

Waterside, New York, 1971, Photo by Gerrit Engel

Gerrit Engels photographs are portrait studies of houses, each with their own face, that join forces to create a portrait of the entire city – history of the city based on images of its striking, more or less attractive buildings, both large and small, spectacular or merely picturesque. These works form what is, in fact, the very first typology of Manhattan’s architecture and – 20 years after the fall of the Wall – that of Berlin.

The exhibition will be open until 1 November 2009

to the Pinakothek der Moderne website

to Gerrit Engel´s website

Photo by Christoph Morlinghaus

The German photographer Christoph Morlinghaus, probably best known for his architectural photography, has lived in New York since 2002, after leaving London where he worked before. His ’straight photography’ of empty spaces often leaves a mystical and surreal impression, even though Christoph declares that he doesn’t use any additional light – not to mention that he prints and contacts his own negatives without the use of computers. “I strongly believe that the beauty and clarity that is inherent in the traditional photographic technique is sufficient for everything that I shoot”, Christoph explains. Here you’ll find some examples of Christopher´s church series.

Photo by Christoph Morlinghaus

Photo by Christoph Morlinghaus

Photo by Christoph Morlinghaus

to the Christoph Morlinghaus website

an interview with Christoph Morlinghaus at feature shot

'Digital City' by Hubert Blanz

One focus of the Vienna-based photographer and visual artist Hubert Blanz is architecture and urban spaces. 

The template for his impressive series ‘Digital cities’ was old discarded CPU printed circuit boards. The structure and arrangement of the main boards and other hardware resemble a giant a modern urban space, especially through the eye of the camera – a digital landscape in a world of global networking.

'Digital City' by Hubert Blanz

The model has the size of 12 sqm

to the Hubert Blanz website