Tate Modern

Popped into Tate modern the other day (I love the fact that you can just pop in when are around the southbank). Looked mostly at level three at the 'Poet and dreams' and 'Material Gestures' exhibitions. It has got a nice mixtures of sculptures and paintings. It is interesting to see the different teqniches and elements used in paintings. 

 www.artandabsinthe.com/tag/mark-bradford/

The map above is by Mark Bradford called Los Moscos. It is aerial map of an urban area - using materials found on the streets of Los Angeles. He uses soaking, bleaching, tearing and sanding the paper, to emphasise its physicality.  I like this piece of mapping - it creates layers which is important in mapping. It would be interesting to try maybe for a project. 

I am also a big fan of Cornelia Parker. I remember seeing her piece - Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View - a few years ago. She is interested in how everyday objects can be changed by (often violent) processes and change into something new.  The light from one light bulb in the middle of the piece is casting shadows across the room. I haven't really incorporated light very much in my projects and I think by placing light in unusual positions you can get playful and dramatic effects. It has inspired me to try to incorporate some lighting effects in my play project. 

http://blog.tate.org.uk/tate-tales/?p=36

30 pieces of silver is involves symbolically killing off one set of values (class pretension, personal possession) to reveal another. It gives out a surprisingly calm feel. The way the silver is just hoovering above the floor. 

 flickr.com/photos/95443147@N00/23727938

serpentine pavillion

The temporary pavilions in Hyde Park have been very cool the last summers and I was really looking forward to seeing the one done by Frank Gehry. I like the materials and the way timber was used in different combinations. The positioning and the angling of the materials. The pavilion works well in the sunlight casting shadows and providing shade or sun - depending on what you feel like.

It would have been interesting to see how it worked in the rain. How the rain flows on the planes on the roofs.

It was busy with people relaxing - steps and balconies done and positioned to where people feel comfortable sitting. I think the balconies were less successful - I wouldn't feel relaxed sitting there and I felt like I disturbed the girl sitting on one of them when I went to have a look at the view from one.

Overall I thought it was cool - quite natural and organic in a sharp way.

Gelitin

Link to the hamster wheel exhibition.

Looks cool. I like artists who doesn't take themselves to serious. And I like the concept of us moving at the spot a lot and not getting anywhere. Seems like the world today in some aspects.

Psycho Buildings at the Hayward Gallery

The exhibition at the Hayward gallery shows works of artists who combine habitat like structures with architecture. It is all about big installations which can you can walk in, smell, see and interact with. They are atmospehric, spatial and ulitmatley want people to experience.

My favorite is the boating lake at the top by artist group Gelitin.

The lake contrasts against the surrounding concrete building and creates a different view of the Southbank. It is meant to be fun and playful.

I am all for art to interact with.

My goal for Landscape as well. Interacting Landscape.

London Open City exhibition

View of the courtyard at Somerset House

Somerset House is beautiful and the courtyard is as well. I have been to a concert here during the summer and it is a great place for an outside concert. Next year I am hoping to get to the ice rink which is here during the Christmas period. Since we have been talking a lot about paving and drainage lately in University I couldn't help to look at it. The stone setts are beautiful and probably been here for a long time. I am guessing they are granite, since most of the paving in London is. The drainage is a little bit special. The high point is in the middle of the courtyard. Draining off to the sides, where there is a slot drain placed in an oval. Then there is another slot drain going in another oval between the buildings and the first slot drain. With the levels draining down to it. I think it is good solution to the drainage here. As it keeps the courtyard clean. The middle point is quite high though and possibly there might have been a better solution to the middle.

The proposed new city to sea path

The reason I went to Somerset house was to see the London Open City Exhibition. The exhibition does what the name says, it looks at London and its open spaces. Green and hard spaces. It talks about the challenges London faces as a city at the moment and in the future. The growing population of London and how do you accommodate this growth within the boundaries of London. Talking about the careful planning that this will take, to keep existing open spaces and to create new ones. One solution being higher density developments. Of course all this needs to done at the same time as tackling the issue of Climate change. Making transport efficient and public space a pleasure to use, well managed and easily accessible.

The points about making public space accessible I think is very important. Cause there a lot of areas across London which are missing an important close open space to them.

Design for London who has curated the exhibition also talks about blending new and old, respecting London's heritage and creating places for a diverse population. This is also very important since London is a very multi cultural city and spaces need to support this.

The exhibtion looks at some of the spaces that are either going through a change at the moment or have designs planned for the space. It is concentrating on 4 big ones, the Victoria Embankment - the potential of a great promenade along the waterfront, with less traffic and more pedestrian space - Bankside Urban Forest proposal - by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the proposal aims to highlight the relationship between the less intensively developed urban interior and its active, increasingly corporate, edges - Barking and the Riverside - Potters Field Park by Gross Maxx - which has been done so you can go and check it out.

Some of the people and organisations that shape London's urban fabric.

In the three rooms of the exhibition there are tear off 1 page A3 essays by Alan Powers, Gillian Darley and Edwin Heathcote. Which is a great idea. Sometimes you like to read more around the subject of the exhibition, but no necessarily when you are there and this essays you can take away with you and read on your way home. The essays talk about how London has changed over the years, about greening the grey and a city of surprises. They are all good and worth reading. Some things you will agree with and some not.

I like the greening the grey, talking about simple little things we can do to improve ecology, habitats and local food productions. About blending private and public responsibilities in terms of these areas. Which I think is a very exciting and new possibility, that I might try to investigate in my next project.

The other thing I really take from the exhibition are a few words and sentences. Don't dictate use. Which I find interesting and definitively worth investigating in your designs. It also talks a lot about security streetscape and the need to find other ways to achieve the security that bollards, anti climb paint, skate boards stoppers on street furniture and much more.

It leaves you thinking and it is both exciting and scary to think about the challenges ahead.

NLA - Waterfront London

The new exhibition at the NLA is called Waterfront London - rediscovering the rivers and canals of the capital.
The exhibition has great models and interesting facts about the the Thames and other rivers around London. It shows examples of developments that have been carried out or will happen in the future along the riverfront.

One of the most important things that the exhibition brings to light is the importance of the Thames and riverfront as public open space and how today it is not as beautiful or active as it used to be. And that this is something that has huge potential and should be fulfilled.

As an landscape architect student this is interesting and great. I love the opportunity to work along any kind of water and the Thames is obviously a fantastic resource of water.

The challenge is today greater than ever, with increasing flooding and climate change to consider. The Thames barrier has over the last few years been used a lot more than thought when it was built in 1982 and we all know that the Thames barrier will not be enough for the future.

So future developments need to consider flooding and try to find solutions for this.

The other challenge is to protect the Thames for its biodiversity. It is the largest continuous natural habitat in greater London. The heavy rainfall and flooding is causing the sewer system to discharge into the Thames and the Lea river when it becomes overloaded to save properties. This has severe consequences for ecology.


Some of the developments that i am looking forward to is Battersea Reach, King Cross and Venture Xtreme Surf Centre.

Model of Buro Happold and Grant Associates bid for one of the Olympic sites.

Matthew Williamson at the Design Museum

The second exhibition I saw at the design museum was the Matthew Williamson's. The exhibtion looked great. The colourfulness of his designs looked great suspended from the ceiling in the white museum. In terms of exhibition I didn't think it was my thing. I did find the colours and the patterns very cool, but part from that I didn't find it too interesting.

The text on the walls was the most interesting thing - where Matthew Williamson's design process was described and where you can read quotes from him. I liked how he says that ' combing the natural with the man made - the contrast between design, fabric and decoration is the strongest inspiration of all'.

Jean Prouve at the Design Museum

This is the 2nd Focus week this year. Took the chance today to go to the Design Museum to check out the Jean Prouve exhibition.

They say that Jean Prouve was the man who invented high-tech. He worked in architecture, but wasn't an architect. He was a designer and an engineer. He designed unique furniture and moved on to buildings. Some of the models on show are amazing. Some are surprisingly organic and ecological and feel very contemporary at the same time

This model is of a youth center proposal for Ermot done in 1967.

His use of material and inventive ideas make him inspiring. In a house he designed for his brother he had vents in the roof to naturally ventilate the house.

Model showing the structure of the Grenoble exhibition hall, done in aluminium and brass in 1968.

His sketches are cool and his furniture very nice. He designed a lot for schools, and government institutions. They got to have a very cool furniture in those days!

Jean Prouves sketches are very good. I love the way he has worked with line thickness to give his sketches some depth.

It was a nice exhibition and I took the chance to try to do some sketching of some of the models and structures. I found Jean Prouves work inspiring and he seemed like a designer with a systematic approach and order. Which is what I am in a way. It is good to see that you can be organised and a good designer at the same time. Since for me the go hand in hand.

Tate Modern

Outside Tate Modern at the moment stands Louise Bourgeois's monumental spider sculpture Maman from 1999. It is quite a scary sculpture when you get closer and think of what it really is and it gives you a very different feeling standing underneath the spider's legs. A different feeling of space and nature.


Inside in the Turbine Hall you can see Doris Salcedo's work Shibboleth. It is a huge crack in the floor reaching the length of the hall. It is the first installation in the turbine hall to intervene directly with the floor in the space.


When I was looking around in the hall, I didn't know what Doris Salcedo's aim and thought with the installation was. I was thinking it had to do with fragility of society, space and built world. Maybe to make people experience the space differently. When I got home I decided to find out what her intentions with the work was. The crack according to her asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and its values ans symbolises the ideological foundations on which western modernity are built. It draws our eye to the floor and shifting our perception of the turbine hall. For me the crack made the hall feel bigger and was fun to see everyone looking and interacting with it in the hall. It was a bit weird to see the amount of people trying to get their feet and hands in the crack!

What I didn't know is that Doris Salcedo also is trying to address the issue of racism and colonism with the crack. Which I have a harder time to see and maybe not connecting so much to that idea. But in general it is an alright installation, it takes great photos, but maybe not so much more.

Matthew Barney

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/MB283_L3_small%20NO%20CAPTION.jpg

At the serpentine gallery there is a exhibition on at the moment of Matthew Barney. I didn't quite know what to expect when I walked in. The exhibition has films, drawings and sculptures. I didn't really like the films (but I have to admit I didn't really give them a chance) . I did like some of the drawings, they reminded me of landforms and some were really simple. The sculptures were made from industrial materials such as petroleum jelly, expanded polystyrene and poly - carproactone thermoplastic. The 'Holographic Entry Point' (the photo above) reminded me of oil covered beach and the forms and shape made it interesting. I guess everyone experiences the exhibition differently and I went away feeling inspired in terms of drawing and landforms.

Serpentine Pavilion

Took a last chance to see the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park - designed by Olafur Eliasson (the guy who did the weather project at Tate Modern in 2003) and architect Kjetil Thorsen. The two has collaborated on a few projects in the past few years - the National Opera House in Oslo and they have recently submitted a competition proposal for the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Olafur Eliasson has a laboratory for spatial research in Berlin, his work deals with the relationship between people and their surroundings. Kjetil Thorsen is co funder of architectural practice Snohetta.



At first I didn't think it looked that great seeing from a distance, but as I got closer I started to really like it. It was just before 5 o'clock and it was starting to get dark, it was a beautiful light to see the pavilion in between daylight and nighttime. The yellowness of the leaves contrasted the bronzy colour of the pavilion.

The pavilion is a timberclad structure with levels in contrast traditional single level pavilions. You can walk up and around the building and then view the surrounding park and into the dome. When I was there there were some kids running up and down the pavilion and it was interesting to see how they responded to the building, bouncing off the walls and loving to run up to the top and down again. Also fascinated by the lights and the views, which are slightly interrupted by the vertical elements. On the way up they are the shape as in the photos below and on the way down they look like on the last photo below. It was interesting to see and I didn't realise it until I was walking back down again.

The Serpentine Pavilion is a beautiful building and it is a bit if shame it is going to be taken down. It plays with views, geometry and shapes. I really liked how it appealed to both adults and kids and I liked the fact that they let the kids run around it. It makes you realise things about the building that you might not have otherwise. If you got a chance to go and see it before the it is taken down on the 5th, I can highly recommend it.