Posters by Evelyne Bouchard
A video of the Tunisia installation at the McGill School of Architecture. The exhibit explores the notion of private space in the traditional Islamic medina. The wrapped cloth restricts access to the interior courtyard but allows for liminal views to the sights and sounds of the country.
Video by Andrew Chau
Hotel Puerta de America parking lot, Madrid. Photo courtesy of teresasapey.com
Even the most successful designers have to get their big break somewhere. It was Tobias Wong who made his own big breaks by self-financing his projects like the Money Pad and Philippe Starck Chair-Lamp. I truly believe you have to be willing to bet on yourself with your own money before you can expect others to invest in your projects.
Tobias Wong went to a number of print shops, including Kinkos, before he finally found a printer willing to bind his stack of 100 one dollar bills. Photo courtesy of Theme Magazine.
Teresa Sapey got her break designing the Hotel Puerta de America parking lot in Madrid. Instead of going the traditional route of designing hotels, store interiors, and restaurants, Teresa decided she coud do something different. It’s a spectacular space and the novelty of it has brought her into the world of celebrity: Madonna has held a party in the space, Frank Gehry has contacted her about doing a joint project, and she has become well-known by artists and other architects alike.
Hotel Puerta de America parking lot, Madrid. Photos courtesy of teresasapey.com
Peter Bremers’ Icebergs and Paraphenalia, photo courtesy of sandraainsleygallery.com
“Sandra Ainsley established her first gallery in Hazelton Lanes in Toronto in 1984, and has since established herself as a leading dealer on the global market. In early 2002, Sandra was approached by developers interested in reconstructing the old Gooderham and Wort’s Whiskey Distillery. This 10,000 square foot space is now home to one of the finest collections of glass art in the world. 1
Susan Rankin’s Garden Columns (stacked), photo courtesy of sandraainsleygallery.com
In January, I had the opportunity to speak with Sandra Ainsley as a part of my Entrepreneurial Leadership course at McGill University, a course where prominent Canadian leaders from diverse fields are invited to share their life experiences. Below are my thoughts on her visit.
Dale Chihuly’s Red Chandelier, photo courtesy of sandraainsleygallery.com
Sandra Ainsley is many things. Owner of an internationally renowned glass gallery, mother to three children, recognized entrepreneur, friend of Dale Chihuley. Even so, describing Sandra Ainsley in one word is easy.
I would choose genuine.
My trip to the automotive capital. Yes, it’s run down and there were a lot of abandoned buildings, but there was a lot of new activity too: the new compuware center in the heart of downtown, the newly renovated detroit institute for arts, the high-end malls in the suburbs. One day was definitely not enough time to see the city, and I could have easily spent a week there.
Michigan Central Station sits abandoned and awaiting future plans (photos: A Chau)
“Q: What must I do to be saved? A: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (photo: J Chau)
The Ford Rouge river factory sits on a sprawling campus in Dearborn. (photo: A Chau)
The Detroit Institute for Arts renovation by Michael Graves is tasteful, mixing a modern style with relics from the past. Each section of the galleries subtly reflects the work on display, through Gothic Arches, careful stonework, or monumental squared columns. The DIA has one of the most extensive collections in all of the states. (photos: A Chau)
I would argue that it was in Detroit where the international style found its place. here is Minoru Yamasaki’s building at Wayne State. Detroit is also home to Mies Van Der Rohe’s Lafayette residences, and Albert Kahn’s many buildings. (photo: J Chau)
The Guardian building in downtown Detroit was recently renovated and restored by SmithGroup. (photo: A Chau)
shopdropping 1 to covertly place merchandise on display in a store. A form of culture jamming. s to reverse shoplift, droplift.
shop dropping is a (legal) way for artists, musicians, to hijack the mass distribution systems of companies to self-promote. because these new items dropped into the stores often do not have barcodes, customers and employees are often left confused. sometimes, they are sold anyways, and the consumer takes home a product they otherwise would not have exposure to!
Picture courtesy of nycfalls.com
The artist Olafur Eliasson will build four artificial waterfalls in New York City’s Hudson River for three months this summer.
Pictures courtesy of nycfalls.com
Image courtesy of the American Geographic Institute
Ron Eglash gives an amazing TED talk about fractals found in African villages. He debunks a couple of widely held prejudices. One, that all natives would design with fractals. This isn’t true, because African natives are the only ones that build their villages in the fractal form. The other, that these fractals are based solely on intuition. Many are algorithmic and intentional, such as in cloth designs and even in divination rituals.
Image courtesy of Rajah on TechRepublic, created using Apophysis
These ideas of self-organization are in the brain, in ecological sustainability, the aids virus, capitalism… artists today are using fractals to generate incredible digital pieces. When will an architect design a building using fractals?
The fractal villages he talks about are below:
much has been written on the demise of inner-city detroit.
abandoned united artists theatre hidden by the people mover, from forgottendetroit.com
while its downtown core has been languishing, the suburbs around the city have been growing and prospering. 80% of the population in the detroit metro region lives in the periphery. to make the point even clearer, detroit is the poorest city in the usa, while oakland county, just to the north, is the nation’s second-richest.
detroit is emblematic of the worldwide trend of shrinking city cores and ballooning periphery suburbs, a trend that began with ebenezer howard and the garden city (1950s). it is similar to new orleans’ problems after katrina, its many abandoned neighbourhoods and population that has been more than halved.
abandoned michigan central station, from forgottendetroit.com
there has been much written on how to rehabilitate detroit: should planners facilitate the city’s thinning out by demolishing the remains, abandon whole parts altogether, create more suburban models in the inner city?
a number of projects have dealt with suburbanizing/re-naturalizing the city:
The main glass facade of Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is taking shape. In these photos I took today, you can see the magnificent Douglas fir beams supporting the moulded glass that will make up the bulk of the Dundas Street face.
Eight massive steel structures by Richard Serra in the Guggenheim Bilbao, Vincent West/Reuters
Anselm Kiefer’s “Sonnenschiff (Sun Ship)”, Vincent Nguyen/AFP
It has been a gradual evolution, from anselm kiefer’s paintings and installations to richard serra’s cor-ten sculptures, but this new fusion between architecture and art was most certainly spurred on by the need to fill the cavernous spaces in the starchitect-designed museum (frank gehry’s guggenheim bilbao and herzog + de meuron’s tate turbine hall). Contemporary art has become more ambitious in recent years, with sculpture and painting approaching mammoth scales, with artists teaming up with architects for commissions, and with the definition between the two professions consistently blurred.
Tate Modern Turbine Hall, Wikimedia Commons
Recent installations follow.
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