AA Tonight: Mr Francois Roche R&Sie(n) Architects

I was going to post Francois Roche's Hulk Bump so I emailed him to ask for pics, then I find out he's lecturing at the Architectural Association as I type. Here's an extract from Hulk Bump, the project he did during Stockholm At Large at Fargfabriken.
Blogger is acting up so I'll post the pics later

HULK BUMP
Green Land is like a green carpet.
Bumping the carpet in a random shape is the way to introduce new facilities, without style.
Using the Waste Land inside motorway flower is a strategy of a dense and compact entertainment center.
This volume with black box could be wear by everything.
The vegetable clothe in growing nature and micro alga is the way to absorb carbonic gas.
One big Leisure Center fragmented in several situations.
The motorway is becoming a building corridor between each entity.

Strange Geodesic Dome briefly appears in Mediocre Gay Porn

What were they thinking? This weird geodesic dome covered in faux wood shingles (!) somehow made it into the plot (!) of this very mediocre gay porn movie. I watched it fast forward and with the sound off so I have no clue what anything is about but Bucky Fuller would have loved it for sure.

Oh Devendra...

Golden Brown

This is Juergen Mayer H's Stadhaus. I met Juergen when he was teaching at Columbia a while ago and he happened to use Beige, this really old text of mine in his class bibliography. Looking at his site later on I realised he's practically obsessed with the color. The Stadthaus shines in full beige/brown/gold/ecru iodized aluminum glory. Inside it looks like something rendered rather than built, a total video game space.

SUPERNEEN II

I'm still sorting through photos from Superneen, but here is another selection with fewer people.
Some people chatting in the Cloud couch...
Philosophy table + chairs with Miltos Manetas' JesusSwimming.com in the background
Rafael on a Splat Chair, in front of Angelo Plessas' MeLookingAtYou wallpainting
Angelo, Rafael, Bruno and Blue in the Philosophy room
A visitor reading Miltos' Neen Manifesto which was designed by the great Experimental Jetset. They are working on the major Manetas Monograph coming soon from hyper cool Revolver Books. Better superneen installation shots coming soon.

WhereverYouLookThereIAm

Its snowing pills on gaping face landscape! This is whereveryoulookthereiam.com by Marc Kremers. I saw a preview of this piece during NeenDay at Sketch in London last year, and now its finally on., and I can see it everyday, all day long.

Super Neen Opening

A super cute crowd showed up at our SuperNeen opening in Milan last night. Tons of people arrived an hour early and stayed really late. The first 300 to arrive got the limited superneen edition of Boiler magazine, while only a few got to watch the special Mai Ueda performance. I was in the gallery and still managed to miss it because of the huge crowd, but from what I could heard it was screamingly good. Mai was wearing a fantastic bird dress by Paolo di Landro made especially for the performance, while Angelo was wearing a t-shirt/object made especially sexy. Priscilla who discovered Di Landro before everyone else was wearing one of his early pieces. After the opening we had a fabulous dinner and a cool afterparty at Nike Studio, their secret underground lab. I'll post some good pics of the show once I sort through the 1.7 GB of compulsively photographed everythings.

Milano by night

Walking around in Milan, it was too late to get anything to eat, ended up in Roman McDonalds,

passed by the day-glo Sawaya & Moroni store,

and a fabulous flower station for gas.

Where on Earth...

Once again, I have no idea where I found this rainbow landscape. Looks like a geothermal map of some sort. It was in my Misc folder from Dec 05 and I'm suspecting I got this from BLDGBLOG or pruned or some other cool architecture blog.

Coming soon

Swiss Bunker

Some more bunkers by Leo Fabrizio, suggested by my good friend Marc Kremers. A concrete flower anyone? These buildings are just amazing, and more flamboyant than the bunkers in Normandy.

Positively Totsikas

While I was up at the Thessaloniki Contemporary Art Center for my lecture, I had a chance to the the Positive Charges show, with some really great pieces and an amazing, fabulously creepy video by one of the most important Greek artists ever, Thanassis Totsikas. In the video, titled "27 February 2004" he rides his friend across a small river.

Magic Mountain by Cero9

This is one of the most amazing architecture models I've seen recently. The Magic Mountain by Cero9 architects is an ecosystem mask for Ames thermal power station, a 2002 competion in Iowa USA. I dont know much about Cero9 other than that they are Efrén García and Cristina Díaz, and they are based in Barcelona and maybe Sao Paolo too. This project was included in the last architecture Biennial and was extensively published in El Croquis 118

Destroy Usefulness

"Anti-Design objects break the magic spell of pure contemplation and visibility to destroy usefulness, even if they use smooth finishes and traditional leather, forcing us passively to experience and mirror various formal approaches ; we do not, in fact, contemplate them voyeuristically or celibately but posses them like lovers!" Ennio Chiggio from "The Rock Furniture: Il Design della Gufram negli anni del Rock" published by Castello di Rivoli.

I saw this show in Spetember 2002 but took so few pictures. The long space (Manica Lunga) of the Castello di Rivoli didnt help much since I think any show there is bound to look a bit weak. Still the book-in-a-brick-wall catalogue is amazing, and I'll post more stuff from it. The Gufram Multipli collection is heaven translated into foam.

SUPERNEEN

Superneen, the show we are preparing in Milan is featured in two of my favorite blogs, the excellent Wifi-Art.com and we-make-money-not-art.com. Superneen opens Tuesday March 7th at Galleria Pack, Foro Buonaparte 60, 20121 Milano, T.+390286996395

Hysterical Architecture with a Byzantine twist as seen in Thessaloniki

80's architecture is almost everywhere the same, and I find myself strangely attracted to it. Its hysterical, it ages really badly and manages a subtle over-simplified complexity, and I dont even know what that could mean but I also love any building with mirrors.

Tombale da Soggiorno

This is the "Tomb for the Living Room" arcmcair (!) by the great Alessandro Mendini, produced by the legendary Gufram factory in 1974. It appeared on the cover of Casabella, number 395. Much more on Gufram soon.

Architecture Principe

Ok, so I'm not gonna post my entire library, but I was so surprised when I found this book. I had entered Form Zero in Downtown L.A. a couple of years back and asked if they had something on Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, thinking I might finally find a copy of "Bunker Archaelogy". Instead I found this fantastic facsimile of their manifesto magazine Architecture Principe, published in part by the bookstore itself, in collaboration with Les Editions De L'Imprimeur.