discoveries channel

What if instead of watching the usual television channels named after a number do we have tv channels called advertising, underground art, product design and so on. All these channels exist on studio BANANA TV, an online platform which produces short documentaries focused on the promotion of creativity in different fields.

It is a a very interesting tool to be updated about the last trends in design and an opportunity to discover new works explained by their own creators. In the architecture channel there is an interesting short documentary dedicated to the Benidorm west beach promenade in which its designer, Carles Ferrater, explains the concept of this wonderful promenade. 

 

 

It's also nice to take a look at the commercials. The one that have impressed us the most, is the advertisement of HP and the colorful coreografy of its printers capable of "bringing to life anything the creative mind can conceive.” More in studio BANANA tv!

 

"chez IKEA": do- it- yourself cooking book

"Hembakat ar Bast" (Homemade is Best) is the new cooking book of Ikea, with a whole of swedish recipes presented in a very original way.

The photographer Carl Kleiner and the stylist Evelina Bratell, with the Forsman & Bodenfors agency, propose very clear, graphic and direct images, like still- life portraits, that work as instructions for use; but this time we are not speaking about furniture or homeware, unles you want to prepare a cake with screwdriver, nails or adjustable wrenches...

Each recipe has only two pictures: one of the ingredients you need to prepare it and the other with the final result.

The creatives declare that, for this work, they have been inspired by high fashion and japanese minimalism; the result is aesthetically very high and very close to the graphic and communicative line of the brand.

For the moment, it seems avaiable only in Sweden.

P.S: there is also an i-phone app (KONDIS) that calculate how many train you must do for getting rid of the cakes!

http://www.carlkleiner.com/

http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/homemade_is_best/

METROPOLITAN LIVES

Subways are a railway system in which electric trains travel along passages below ground transporting thousand of people every day. Subway becomes the nerve centre of the metropolis and at the same time a crossing zone. Inside it, empty gazes, momentary stares, worried faces, lost expressions. Walker Evans defined them as naked faces, when he shot the subway passengers in 1940.
Thirty-nine years later, in the peak of the financial crisis, Reinier Gerritsen photographed people in the New York subway between Wall Street and Grand Central Station.

5.04pm 09.06.09

It's wonderful to take a look at each individual and discover the innumerable feelings all doing the same action: waiting. Gerritsen assembles his photos from a number of shots that he takes within a few seconds avoiding to be seen. This collection has been exposed in the Netherlands Fotomuseum and also published in a book call Wall street stop .

mini- architecture

Berlin strikes again.

The idea of Evol is simple but very clever: to transform anonymous urban surfaces as electric boxes, planters, benches, etc... into micro- architecture with bizarre people appearing at the windows. The effect is surprising.

Modern, post- war and soviet architecture is the style from whom take inspiration Evol for his drawings, the same that you can find in the german suburbs: for this reason these new miniaturized buildings weave with the urban fabric, camouflage themselves but also create a new dialogue with the context, as the boring electric boxes usually can't do.

Give way to the creativity, people!

Today more than ever, our everyday life needs ways of escape!!

http://www.evoltaste.com/

where creativity is born

Have you ever stopped walking to take a look through the window by passing in front of a studio? Models, drawings, mess, lights open while the city is sleeping...what an amazing atmosphere!

Mamastudio ,Varsaw_Poland

The Australian photographer Paul Barbera, is capturing the soul of different studios abroad in his so called project Where they create. The pictures are amazing as well as the wide variety of places in which creativity can flow. It is very curious to find common threads in different continents and containers: old factories, mansards, apartments, stores shares a feeling of stillness and serenity.

It's also interesting to take a look at the other project which Barbera is working on Love Lost a very sensual and intimate daily travel

ran hwang: absence and presence

Pure poetry in these installations of Ran Hwang, a korean artist who works in NY.

Her works are very close to pixel art, but so far away from digital world. She uses everyday's stuff, like pins and buttons for creating images full of delicacy and frailty. The choice of dealing with these objects is due to the fact that they are common and ordinary, like the existence of human beings. And also these pieces aren't stick or fixed to the support, so they could move and be moved by the air, by the time, by the circumstance: also this underlines the ephemeral of her art.

For Ran, art is a form of meditation and the subjects are often inspired by buddhist theories: button after button, she finds herself....a repetitive manual work to find the interior peace.

Against the histeria of our times.

http://www.ranhwang.com/

CITY SIGHTING SYNDROMES

In the middle of August, all European main cities are crowded by reflex cameras with huge lens shotting the most insignificant urban scenes just because they have a kind of exoticism. The cities are invaded for tourist, the worst nightmare for those citizens who rest in their place at summer.

However, all of us are tourist too and we also shot insignificant but "rare" stuff with our giant lens. The acid look of Rilk Tulka and his talent hand, reflects how ridiculous are people when they are touring a city. In this case, his draws are focused on the tourist of Paris and their behaviours.

Here you have the whole serie Tourists in Paris published in his Flickr profile.

the city out my window: Matteo Pericoli

Matteo Pericoli is the son of the famous illustrator Tullio Pericoli. He had studied architecture in Milan, he worked for Richard Meier but his fame has come out especially for his illustrations.

The New Yorker magazine has written that the drawings of Matteo had shown, to many inhabitants of NY, the city as it was their first time. It's absolutely clear how much Matteo loves this urbanscape, from his pencil we can discover real surprising view of these famous streets.

I absolutely suggest his book: The city out of my window: 63 views of New York, introduced by the Pulitzer Price Paul Goldberger.

But the Big Apple is not the only place that inspired Matteo and for parochial spirit I must quote the amazing pictures did by him for LA STAMPA, an italian newspaper, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Italian State.

So he moved from New York to Turin, the first italian capital, and also here he started to draw what people see from their windows.

These windows are of famous personality of the town (like the mayor), historical figures who has lived in town (Mozart and Nietzsche between all) but also from very common inhabitants: everyone is a little piece of the great deed of the foundation of ITALY, that started just from here in 1851.

Enjoy it!

http://www.matteopericoli.com/

http://www.lastampa.it/_web/cmstp/tmplrubriche/unannoallafinestra/archivio.asp

fifty people, one question

In the answers of these people I've found lot of unaware poetry.

Crush + Lovely has the idea, that has brought them to create five films and received four thousand six hundred and forty-eight responses from seventeen hundred and sixty-three cities.

http://fiftypeopleonequestion.com/

"Fifty People One Question is an ongoing social experiment and film series exploring human connections through people and place. The project began in New Orleans in 2008 and has since traveled across the globe, touching millions of viewers. Along the way, the films have captured a small slice of humanity; to discover dreams, losses, reflections, stories and secrets, some shared and some completely unrepeatable."

Fifty People, One Question: New York from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

Fifty People, One Question: New York from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

cup's architecture: what architecture is about

Architecture is more than a building as well as a cup is more than a cup. How to explain what exactly architecture is, why we architects are always starring at every simple object and why we use such strange words when we talk about a building.

Maya films has developed this amazing video to define what is Information Architecture. In a simple and clear way, they successfully talk about "everything you can define about a solution without specifying the underlying system (the raw plumbing) or specifying the particular user interface that will be employed to deliver and manipulate the information. By thinking about the architecture of how information is used, how it flows, and how it fits within the user’s world (its context), you can capture the essence of how to build a system that is not only intuitive but future proof."

“i learned to drive in order to read los angeles in the original”. reyner banham, architecture of four ecologies

I would like to suggest a comparison.

Reyner Banham, architectural critic, did in 1972 a very interesting documentary about the city of Los Angeles, a city who could not leave aside the autombiles! You need to move with them to discover its sprawl, its complexity, its peculiarity, its beauty. There aren't other possibilities.

But what Ross Ching shows is a LA without car, so how to understand the city and become part of it?

Both of them are very interesting points of view.

They make us thinking about how cars have conditioned our life and how we are so deeply slaves of them.

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

emptiness and other tales

Running on Empty from Ross Ching

Ross Ching is a talented young American film director with some interesting projects. One of them is "Running on Empty". Once he discovered Matt Logue’s Empty LA photographs he started to ask himself “What if tomorrow everyone’s car disappeared.” This video is his response: a desert L.A. whose traffic lights, clouds and palm trees dance at the rhythm of Radiohead.

If you want to know more about this artist, take a look on his website where he has published all his recent woks and experiments. We strongly recommend you "distortions" and the "electic" series. Hope you enjoy them!

http://rossching.com/

vintage graphic art at the OLIVETTI

In these posters there is the history of one of the most important italian company of the twentieth century, but also the history of the international graphic art.

These advertising posters are a real piece of italian (graphic) design history.

Since his birth, Olivetti has always given huge importance at the aestethic quality of his products, intending to be a cutting- edge factory.

And this research of beauty and progress is traced in every aspect connected with the brand: the architecture of their head offices, the industrial design as in the graphic look of the products.

The most famous signatures of the period are called to work with the company and so their publicity campaign distinguish theirselves by their originality: giovanni pintori, costantino nivola, albe steiner, walter ballmer and enzo mari are only a share of these artists.

Very interesting is also the LOGO. The most famous has been designed by Walter Balmer in 1950 but all the history of the typographic evolution of the company name is ...may be in a further post!

in a planning mood

After a long winter and a strange spring, summer has officially arrived and our minds can't help thinking about travelling abroad. It's a good time to organise city tours and here we have a great tool to make it easier.

We are talking about MIMOA, an online architecture guide which catalogues the outstanding examples of Modern Architecture of several cities abroad. Moreover, users can browse their findings in order to enlarge the catalogue.

marais and memories

http://www.francoisavril.com/francois_avril_prints_french.htm

François Avril is born in 1961 in Paris.

He is an illustrator also of comics and children's books.

He takes inspirations mainly from the street: in his drawings there are marvellous urban views animated by colorful people.

Great are his sketches of Paris and New York.