The New Black for Buildings

So even though the winning projects of this competition have been slowly surfacing in local media, and even though my proposal didnt even register in the first 20, somehow I'm still interested in this project and was happy to work on some additional photorealistic images. Photorealistic is sch a funny term and especially because my whole approach used to be to never ever produce this type of renderings, because I was always trying to make reality look like a computer image, especially in built projects likeTeleportDiner, Pause and Forever Laser. Recently I'm more and more into a kind of "Brutal Surrealism" as Memos Filippidis put it in the review of the New Trends exhibition. So anyway apart from doing more of these images, I thought maybe I'll try another material? Even though I'm knee deep into an exposed concrete fixation, I was curious to see what this apartment complex looked like if it was in white stripes...

or even a kind of classic red brick, which is such a generic material for new construction it's almost interesting and very scary indeed...and then I did a search for a leopard print, because I had a feeling that animal fur might be the new black for buildings, and what luck, I found a rainbow leopard print, so unexpectedly better even though Angelo looked over my shoulder and totally didnt go for it. So these images and many more became a kind of debate between a Brutalist Fantasy and a Flamboyant Reality, and what is building with exposed concrete formwork if not another texture map.

Lovett/Codagnone

Here's a quick look at the totally fabulous new book on Lovett/Codagnone who, apart from being tons of fun to be around, have been doing some fantastic work. The book is out on CHARTA and it covers 10 years of works, performances and photographs and includes some cool texts by Lia Gancitano and Octavio Zaya. Here's some of my favourite pics, including the great cover.

Napoli Est

While in Napoli I met Danilo Capasso who amongst other things is working with a group of people on rehabilitating a previously industrial area in East Naples. Their group is called N.EST and their idea is to start infiltrating the area with art rather than with commercial development. It's an interesting approach because we have seen so many of these areas around the world that go from "the new place to be" to "everybody is moving to" to "it used to be much cooler" to "I never go there anymore". Check out East Napoli while it's really hot

Greek Cuisine

While in Milan we stayed with our good friend Ilias Lefas who makes really fantastic handmade cabinet furniture. In the time of too much Ikea all over the place its really a great luxury to have these handmade pieces in your kitchen, plus its almost like cooking in a sketch!

Some more pics from Napoli

Banana Yoshimoto and the Queer Issue

I'm always lost in bookstores, looking for interesting fiction for the plane, but since I never really read book review I never know what to buy. This time I was browsing in Malpensa airport and I saw this book by Banana Yoshimoto. I thought if somebody is called Banana she MUST be interesting. The book was Hardboiled / Hard Luck, and simply amazing. Of course Banana turned out to be super famous with books translated all over the place. Her blend of metaphysical post xanax romantic bleakness was just perfect for the plane, and I suspect even better for the beach. What i would love to read too is this crop of new gay fiction that according to this article by my all-time favorite writer Edmund White is part of a big gay fiction renaissance.

The Seven Celestial Palaces

Yesterday I had a chance to see the Hangar Bicocca space in Milan, where Anselm Kiefer's "The Seven Celestial Palaces" are permanently installed. I had see drawings of the poject when it laucnched last year, but nothing could really describe this amazing space. The "palaces" are casts of container parts stacked precariously one on top of the other. So precariously in fact that the area is off-limits to people as the towering structures could really fall any minute.

Polygon Window

Recently I took part in a housing competition in Athens. My proposal was for a complex density that sits somewhere between a cluster of single family homes and an apartment building.

Post Padula

Padula was really great, especially the spooky forest where Fresco Bosco took place. Walking around at night you could see clouds of fireflies, and weird shadows from the installations on progress. Angelo's piece rocked: the Neen Emblems were installed along a huge wall facing the forest and they were imposing and funny at the same time.and we had tons of fun with Franko B and Alessandro and John of Lovett/Codagnone who did a great performance called Obliquities. Their soundtrack kept repeating "I recongnize that I'm not you, I made myself, I made myself what I am, I changed myself, I became someone else" over and over again, a totaly hypnotizing mantra that I can still hear...At the end of the night a gang of kids from the local town had gathered outside the monastery and brought an amazing over accesorized disco-car complete with huge sound system, light show and a homo-disco soundtrack that was just a perfect ending.

Some plants I liked in Naples

Naples is a pretty amazing town, and thanks to the wirlwind motorbike ride around town with our gracious hosts Vito and Katia last night, we got to see a pretty good part of it. During the day I just couldnt stop photographing the plants (?!). Here's some I liked.

Today we're off to Padula where Angelo is part of the Fresco Bosco exhibition curated by the super prestigious Achille Bonito Oliva

Schaulager

This is one of my totally favourite buildings and too bad I couldnt find any decent photos of it. Its Schaulager (2003) by Herzog & de Meuron, a kind of storage space / exhibition space. The concept is simple: art works stay in storage for so long and nobody can see them or see if they are ok so why not have a storage space where they can be easily exhibited while in storage? The solution by H&dM is not so simple, yet utterly fabulous: A kind of box with faux-cave exterior, with a prismatic space carved out of it, leaving a rockmade little house on the prairie in the middle. The windows are of course cracks in the rock.

Three Tree Buildings

Cute Marble Detail

I finished my Kamikaze deadline yesterday, so here's a cute building with a nice marble detail: the screws holding tha marble to the facade are kin of jighlighted and also they rusted a bit and there's some airconditioners too so its a nice example of how a modernist and maybe lightly brutalist building can look good today. Its in Thessaloniki, when I saw it I thought it looked like a building by Krandonellis, yet it's by Thomaidis.

A House made from stacked pieces of Land

This was my contribution for the Star Wars issue of the Hong Kong based concept book CREAM, which we got to know via our good friend Panos Tsagaris. Star Wars always makes me think of the desert, a kind of african landscape + Herzog's Fata Morgana and I was already having the idea to make somthing from the pieces of land leftover from the Invisible Home project. (I just re-read what I wrote, my syntax is way off today, I better stop bloggin and get back to work cos there is tons of stuff to do before tuesday)