The Zero Star Hotel concept is using a bunkers that have given up on waiting for emergency guests. As we can read on the project’s web site, the whole concept is an antithesis to the mundane megalomania and luxury of the hotel business. The Null Stern Hotel is the work of Swiss twin artists Frank and Patrick Riklin that proves that art can exist in the middle of life and not in the museum. If you understand German, you can watch and fully enjoy this video here.
“I believe that human effort can bring the work, a novel, a poem or string quartet to life. When it succeeds, this creates a specific world, a cosmos and this gives rise to a particular understanding, an emotion that forms whole. I enter it when I feel like it. As wonderful film, I enter a specific world that bears the imprint of someone who invented it, fought and felt it for me. That’s fine definition of architecture, it provides freedom.”
Peter Zumthor
I know I used this quote on my blog before but all the other ones I poses are in Polish so I won't dare to translate them. They are very personal to me as those words inspired me once to look deeper into what architecture really is and not fear to have a very personal approach to this discipline. That is why I am really happy that Peter Zumthor became this year’s laureate of The Pritzker Architecture Prize!
I know I'm posting this late but I hope it will be forgiven as I was away...
I discovered this installation by JDS through a lecture that Julien De Smedt gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. You can watch it here. Le Passe Muraille was inspired by a collection of short stories by Marcel Ayme in which the main character of Mr. Dutilleul has a power to walk through walls. JDS team created installation that made that possible for the viewers opening up the walls of the gallery and streets of New York. I don't know how I missed that as it was exhibited in NY in 2006? Amazing!
“Chicago” is a fake Arab town built by Israel in the middle of the Negev desert to train its military forces in urban warfare. It was called that because of its bullet-ridden fake walls that recall the punctured real walls of Al Capone's Chicago.
Here photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin showing this artificial but also very realistic replica of Palestinian city. In their book about the project we can read:
“To create this alternative universe, Palestinian architecture has been carefully scrutinized. Roads and alleyways have been constructed to mimic the layout of towns like Ramallah and Nablus. In one corner the ground has been covered in sand, a reference to unpaved refugee camps like Jenin. Graffiti has been applied to the walls with obscure declarations in Arabic: 'I love you Ruby' and 'Red ash, hot as blood'. Burned-out vehicles line the streets.”
What’s more fascinating than it’s spatial authenticity is the fact that the history of this ghost town “directly mirrors the history of the Palestinian conflict”. Aparently most of Israel's major military tactics in the Middle East over the past three decades were performed in advance here, with soldiers rehearsing tactics like actors in a studio set.
Looking at these amazing photographs and realizing how complex the Arab-Israeli conflict is, one wonders if places like Chicago will ever be replaced with something real, something built on natural, positive human activities?
Well, I hope I will live long enough to see that happen.
Newly discovered Swedish label with so many interesting artists!
Here only their beautiful covers that at first brought my attention.
It’s all very consistent, music is also very minimalistic. As they say “whispers say much more than a scream”. More on their web site here.
Hi, if you don't know that yet my name is Malwina. I am an architect and I work in Birmingham, UK. I hope you'll enjoy some of the posted discoveries and observations.
