Color. Color Space City.

Epochenfächer - by Haus der Farben

The Swiss “Haus der Farbe” developed in 2005 the color atlas “Farbraum Stadt” of Zurich (color-space-city), a research project supported by the Minister of Regional Planning. It is a comprehensive compendium and analysis of urban color spaces of Zurich. The work consists of a maps with 96 color portraits, the book and the epoch color-guide (Epochenfächer). The box guides the read through the color history of Zurich from 1900 to 2010 - it is the color portrait of Zurich. shouldn't ever city have a color-guide?

color portrait of Augustinergasse, Zurich

Mobile Homes. Peter Garfield.

image by Peter Garfield - Mobile Homes.

Bye architecture.
[link to the artist's website - Peter Garfield]

Book. Code + Form.

I never was sure about the potential of computational designing and the aesthetic of it. Why should we - as designers - leave the fun part of artistic expression to computers? Why not draw, sculpture, model or sketch for your self? “Coding art”, I realised, means something different. It is maybe the attempt to abstract a design problem - “telling” the computer to produce “art” and reveal in that way the logic of aesthetics. Of course, quite profane, it is fun to watch the computer producing stuff.

The book "introduces readers to over 250 significant works and undertakings of the past 60 years in the fields of fine and applied art, architecture, industrial design, digital fabrication, visual cinema, photography, typography, interactive media, gaming, artificial intelligence (AI), artificial life (a-life), and graphic design, including data mapping and visualizations, and all forms of new media and expression."

Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (Design Briefs) (on Amazon)
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 9781568989372
7 x 8.5 inches (17.8 x 21.6 cm)
Paperback, 176 pages
http://formandcode.com/

Ai Weiwei - Sunflower Seeds.

Ai Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" -  image by Loz Flowers

China's image abroad is suffering - however - the country seems to be immune against foreign criticism, no matter if it comes from the nobel prize committee, which recently awarded Liu Xiaobo for the "2010 Nobel Peace Prize", or from Ai Weiwei, one of China's most well known contemporary artists. Ai Weiwei recently installed the work "Sunflower Seeds" in The Tate Modern Turbine Hall.

"Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands." (source: Tate Modern)

Ai Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" -  image by Loz Flowers

2010-11-04: The installation has been shut down because of noxious ceramic dust wafting off the 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds.

2010-11-05: Ai Weiwei is under house arres at his home in Beijing. Authorities want to prevent him holding a party to mark the forced demolition of his new Shanghai studio.

Election 2010 - Vienna - City of Gambling.

Gambling shops are legal in Vienna, well - not really - only when playing for low stakes. But the so called “small gambling” is growing large in the city and ruins gamblers’ life and Vienna’s street space. Especially in low income neighborhoods slot-machine shops spring up like mushrooms. Because the number gaming machines per shop is limited by law, owners just duplicate the entrances. The result: Vienna is the city of gambling.

Election 2010 - Vienna - City of Garage Doors.

"Vienna is a good place to drive. In most cases, vehicular traffic is still the most suitable means of transportation. Partly, because neither traffic jams nor parking spaces are a big issue in Vienna. For every newly constructed building - for example - a parking area must be guaranteed - the result : Vienna is the city of garage doors."

[eine Plakatserie zur Wien Wahl 2010 - Wien, die Stadt der Garageneinfahrten]

Pierre Guldin's Libary.

In 1622 the mathematician Pierre Guldin designed maybe the longest list on earth: he estimates the number of words you could compose if you arrange the alphabet’s letters in all possible combinations - from two letter words to 23 letters. The mathematician did not care if those words make sense or not. It results in seventy-thousand billion billion words. But Pierre Guldin continued his calculation. He thought about writing down all words into notebooks, each one with thousand pages and hundred lines a page, sixty letters per line. Later, he designed the notebook’s library - a simple cube, side length 133 meter - which could house 32 million books each. To archive all the notebooks, 8 052 122 350 library buildings needed to be built. An impossible task: the earth space would provide space for just 7 757 213 799 libraries. Guldin, however, could not guess the invention of the internet. Virtual space vs. physical space.

(translation of a paragraph form the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nr.205, “Die Liste, die uns zeigt, wie sich die Welt verändert”, original stry from Umberto Eco,Vertigine della lista, 2009)