Nobel architecture

for Eduardo Souto de Moura:




Portugese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura claimed Architecture's top honor, the Pritzker Prize, on Monday. Souto de Moura becomes just the second Portugese architect to win the award.

Although not well-known in the U.S. and with no buildings on U.S. soil, Souto de Moura's completed projects include a stadium in Braga, Portugual that was the site of the 2004 European soccer championships. According to the Chicago Tribune, other finished works run the gamut from single-family homes to shopping centers, art galleries and museums, schools, subway stations and a cinema.

Souto de Moura, 58, joins Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando and Renzo Piano in receiving the top honor in the field.

Endowed by Chicago's billionaire Pritzker family, the Pritzker Prize recognizes a living architect who has "produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."

The winner receives $100,000 and a bronze medallion.

The Pritzker jury praised Souto de Moura, as many have in the past, for his creative use of materials, as well as unexpected dashes of color in his works.

"During the past three decades, Eduardo Souto de Moura has produced a body of work that is of our time but also carries echoes of architectural traditions," the seven-member Pritzker Prize jury said in its citation. "His buildings have a unique ability to convey seemingly conflicting characteristics � power and modesty, bravado and subtlety, bold public authority and a sense of intimacy �at the same time."

According to the Associated Press, Souto de Moura's past remarks showed a humble architect interested in creating buildings that fit in their surroundings, perform their function and become part of a global, architectural landscape.

"There is no ecological architecture, no intelligent architecture, no sustainable architecture � there is only good architecture," he said at a building forum in 2004. "There are always problems we must not neglect. For example, energy, resources, costs, social aspects � one must always pay attention to all these."

The award is to be presented June 2 in Washington, D.C. at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in the complex of government buildings known as the Federal Triangle.

www.prtizkerprize.com

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Let`s go surfing

with Charles and  Ray Eames` Coffeetable, nothing new, but beautiful: 

Vitra Elliptical Table ETR white | Vitra

The Elliptical Table ETR by Vitra (Charles & Ray Eames, 1951): This low coffee table with its elegant elliptical shape ressembles a surfboard and was quickly given the nickname "surfboard table". With its double chromed base, the table formally references a theme repeatedly varied by the Eameses, that of shaped steel rods welded together to make a fixed, static structure. 

ETR = Elliptical Table Rod Base.

Materials: laminate table top, chromed round steel base.

2267 x 746 x 235 mm.

Charles & Ray Eames

Biography:

Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, studied architecture at Washington Universityin St. Louis and opened his own office together with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935 he founded another architectural firm with Robert T. Walsh. After receiving a fellowship in 1938 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he moved to Michigan and assumed a teaching position in the design department the following year. In 1940, he and Eero Saarinen won first prize for their joint entry in the competition "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" organized by the New YorkMuseum of Modern Art. During the same year, Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook, and in 1941 he married Ray Kaiser.

Ray Eames, née Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. She attended the May Friend Bennet School in Millbrook, New York, and continued her studies in painting under Hans Hofmann through 1937. During this year she exhibited her work in the first exhibition of the American Abstract Artists group at the Riverside Museum in New York. She matriculated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1940 and married Charles Eames the following year.

Projects:

Charles & Ray Eames designed and developed stretchers and leg splints made of moulded plywood between 1941-43, and showed an exhibition of experimental moulded plywood furniture at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1946. The Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Michigan, subsequently began to produce the Eameses' furniture designs. In 1948, Charles and Ray Eames participated in the "Low-Cost Furniture Competition" at MoMA, and in 1949 they built their Case Study houses. Around 1955 they began to focus more on their extensive work as photographers and filmmakers, and in 1964 an honorary doctoral degree from the Pratt Institute (New York) highlighted Charles’ achievements.

The Eames Office designed the IBM Pavilion for the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York, and the year 1969 offered the opportunity to participate in the exhibition "Qu'est-ce que le design?' at theMusée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1970-71, Charles was invited to hold the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry lecture series at Harvard University. MoMA again presented an exhibition of their work, entitled "Furniture by Charles Eames", in 1973. Charles Eames died in St. Louis in 1978; Ray's death followed in 1988.

The influence of Charles and Ray Eames was fundamental to the development of Vitra. Its activity as a furniture manufacturer began in 1957 with the production of their designs. Yet it was not only the products of Charles and Ray Eames that left their mark on Vitra. With their approach to and understanding of design, they made an ongoing contribution to the values and goals of the company.

Additional information on Charles and Ray Eames can be found at: www.eamesoffice.com

Table is ready

Please come to share a meal with:



The Hansen Family‘s new Dining Table 

COLLECTION / REMIX / DINING TABLE

The Dining Table exists in three models that offer space for 6, 8 or 10 people.
The solid tabletop of the Dining Table has two cases to either hide or present things. The cases are covered by plates. The plates are made out of solid wood on one side and slated plates on the other so that hot dishes can be posed in the middle of the table. The leg-construction prevents the top from warping whilst allowing it the necessary movement.

Like our wood, the slate stone comes from the area surrounding our atelier.

Function : table/ tisch / tabel
Dimensions HxDxW: 76 x 80 x 180 cm (table for 8 people)
Material : solid oak
Colors (cases) : black / red – orange – yellow – blue
Designer : Gesa Hansen

http://www.thehansenfamily.com/

Space in the woods

Apartment in El Born by Arquitectura-G

Spanish studio Arquitectura-G have renovated this apartment in the El Born area of Barcelona by adding wooden storage and mezzanines. 

www.arquitectura-g.com

Do not copy

www.artinfo.com

ART & CRIME

Copyrights and Copy Wrongs: Learning from the Legal Precedents Set by Jeff Koons, Shepard Fairey, and Others

Courtesy of the artist

Chapman Kelly's "Wildflower Works I" was deemed uncopyright-able.

Patrick Cariou's victory last Friday in his copyright suit against artist Richard Prince — which determined that Prince's work did not sufficiently transform or comment on Cariou's original — signaled another startling development in the troubled and troubling history of fair-use rulings concerning the arts. But is it consistent with the other zany lawsuits of late that have seen artists go head to head with the laity in legal battles over supposed appropriation?

Copyright is complicated — particularly so when it comes to art and even more so since, as the the Copyright Principles Project pointed out in its 2010 Directions of Reform report, U.S. Copyright law was drafted in the 1960s, well before the Internet and globalized image-sharing made the widespread distribution and manipulation of imagery ubiquitous. ARTINFO here provides a handy roundup of recent and notable rulings concerning art and fair use — see which ones you agree with.

1. Fairey Use?
Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press faced off over Fairey's commercial appropriation of a photograph of Barack Obama — originally taken by the news agency's photographerMannie Garcia — for the street artist's iconic "Hope" campaign poster. Fairey sued in 2009 for a declaratory judgment stating that his appropriation was protected under the U.S. fair use statute and that he hadn't violated AP copyrights. He was promptly countersued for uncredited use of the image. Much enraged finger-wagging and many counterclaims followed, before feuding between Fairey and the AP was settled in January, when the news agency and the artist agreed to collaborate on a line of AP-Fairey branded merchandise. "The AP and Mr. Fairey have agreed that neither side surrenders its view of the law," the AP stated at the time, adding that both parties looked forward to capitalizing on the "Hope" poster design. The final wrap-up of the convoluted dispute came just this month, the Wall Street Journal reports, when the AP and Obey Clothing reached a deal in which they agreed to collaborate on the peddling of clothing bearing Fairey's graphic.

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2. Koons in the Doghouse
We all had a good chuckle over this one, when Jeff Koonsthreatened a San Francisco gallery and a Canadian manufacturing company over their supposed unlawful appropriation of his balloon dog design. His legal team issued cease and desist warnings to both Park Life gallery and imm Living, demanding that they stop selling balloon-dog bookends by Christmas Eve, 2010, as the tchotchke pups infringed on the blue-chip artist's copyright and intellectual property rights. In January, lawyer Jedediah Wakefield offered his services pro bono to Park Life, drafting a federal complaint that called for a declaratory judgment on the matter. In his darkly humorous document, Wakefield put forth his case that, "As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain." The kerfuffle was resolved when Koons and his lawyers gave up their attempt to monopolize the pooch, allowing imm Living to continue cranking out the bookends and allowing Park Life to continue selling them, so long as neither used Koons's name to promote them.

To rewind a bit, Koons did, however, in 2006, win a suit brought against him by the photographerAndrea Blanch, whose "Silk Sandals by Gucci" image Koons used for his painting "Niagra." The artist won, in that case, because he borrowed only Blanch's legs, one of four pairs the photographer had pictured in her image for Allure magazine. Koons also inverted and modified the legs, sufficiently transforming them, and furthermore not endangering the original creator's income from her work.

3. Nothing But Flowers
This one's a twisty tale of artists' rights being upheld and then yanked away: In 2007 artist Chapman Kelley won a dispute with the Chicago Park District concerning his "Wildflower Works I," when a federal court determined that his 1984 "living painting" of 66,000 square feet of flowers was legally a work of art. Kelley had sued for $10 million in damages after the city removed half of the work in 2004 to make way for a development project. The artist argued that as his floral installation was indeed art, it was protected by the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), which ensured that he be notified 90 days before any change was made to it. The parks department, meanwhile, upheld that the flowers were not copyrightable, as they were constantly changing form. In 2008, a bench trial in district courtreversed the first ruling, determining that the work was not "original" enough to qualify for protection under the Copyright act. The dispute eventually made its way to the Seventh Circuit, where last month it was determined that you cannot, in fact, copyright a garden, as it "is neither 'authored' nor 'fixed in the senses required for copyright'," the decision read. "Simply put, gardens are planted and cultivated, not authored." The court made sure, however, to distinguish between Kelley's "garden" and Jeff Koons's "Puppy," which it argued was a different thing entirely because of the huge, artist-made metal frame on which flowers are grown.

4. Rented OutChinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's "Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard" was modeled on the 1965 socialist-realist "Rent Collection Courtyard" sculpture, originally constructed by members of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. In the version from the 60s — copies of which can still be found around China, and a version of which toured to Massimiliano Gioni's 2010 Gwangju Biennale — more than one hundred life-sized figures are included in scenes of peasants suffering abuse at the hands of pre-revolutionary landlords. Cai enlisted ten Chinese sculptors, including one of the creators of the original piece, to remake the historic sculpture for the 1999 edition of the Venice Biennale, where the clay forms were left, unfired, to disintegrate. A lawsuit was filed against Cai for copyright infringement by some of the original creators from the Sichuan Arts academy, but the case was quickly dismissed by the courts.

5. "Anything you can get away with"Just to put this all in perspective, here's one from the history books. Andy Warhol, as you might expect, was sued multiple times by commercial photographers — including Charles Moore,Fred Ward, and Patricia Caulfield — whose images he appropriated for his Pop creations. All of those cases were settled out of court, with the artist appeasing the plaintiffs by giving them prints of the offending silkscreens — featuring Moore's images from the Birmingham race riots, Ward's images of Jackie O for Life magazine, and Caulfield's images of flowers. Warhol also promised Caulfield royalties from future sales of her floral photos. Wonder if she's living in some castle somewhere now, swimming in Champagne...

Art versus building

Art and Architecture

Liam Gillick’s exterior at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, Vancouver.

In 1996, a groundbreaking exhibit etitled “Traffic” took place at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, examining the role of Relational Aesthetics in art. The real product of the show, however, was the rise of a young artist named Liam Gillick. Since “Traffic,” Gillick has become known as a hybrid artist/designer, fusing the architectural with the theoretical though projects that focus on text and type in the built world. Gillick’s art is an attempt to understand the function of signs and symbols in the built world - more on that after the jump, and a roundup of the textual side of architecture.

Liam Gillick (born 1964, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) is a British artist who lives in New York City

Liam Gillick wrapped the quote, “Lying on top of a building, the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street,” around exterior of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, Vancouver.

http://www.liamgillick.info

Art versus politics

Drawing the Line: Artist Daniel Buren Speaks Out Against Europe's Arts Cuts

ttp://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37177/drawing-the-line-artist-daniel-buren-speaks-out-against-europes-arts-cuts/

ARTINFO UK: "Like architecture, public art is always dependent on politics. You are chosen by a group of politicians, but as time goes by these people are replaced by others who might stop financing the piece just to attack their predecessors. The artist ends up in the middle of a stupid fight between two politicians and the work usually suffers from it."

Daniel Buren: "If you are in charge of a city, small or big, you have to take care of millions of things whether you like them or not. Even if you are in a place like France where the church and the state have been separated for centuries, the state has to maintain churches. As a mayor, even if you are against religion, there's no way you can say "I don't give a shit and won't restore this cathedral." It should be the same thing with contemporary art but isn't — and I think that's a huge issue."

LONDON— French conceptual artist Daniel Buren has often been a controversial figure over the years, usually for the same reason. Best known for paintings and installations involving stripes, his signature motif for the last four decades, Buren provoked an uproar in 1986 when his monumental forest of differently sized black and white columns, titled "Les Deux Plateaux," was unveiled in the courtyard of Paris's Palais Royal— and again in 2010 when it reopened after a €6 million facelift. Last week, the artist was in Britain to install a new piece for the opening of Turner Contemporary in the seaside town of Margate.

The work, occupying a double-height gallery on the new building's first floor, will consist of mirrors and colored film arranged to create an "infinite view," while a large circle traced in film will echo the view of the seascape outside. Buren, an old hand at such ambitious installations in institutions and public spaces alike, talked to ARTINFO UK about the sweeping cuts to art funding across Europe and politicians' lack of long-term commitment to the public art they commission. 

How do you start working on a site-specific piece like the one you are currently installing in Margate? Do have a strategy?

I don't have any kind of regular system. It depends on the space, on the type of exhibition, and whether the piece is a public work or it is meant for an institution. I usually like to see the space before I start working, but this is not a rule. Sometimes I just go there and improvise a work in eight or 10 days. For this piece, I went to Margate when Turner Contemporary was under construction. I could almost have worked from plans, but visiting the city gives you some perspective and ideas.

As you know, the cultural situation is quite strained in the U.K. at the moment. The government voted major funding cuts and art institutions across the country are now waiting to hear from the Arts Council if their funding will be renewed.

I've heard about it but it would be wrong to say that I know the situation really well. Having no money to do things has become very banal. Institutions are getting poorer and poorer everywhere. It's not only an English problem — the situation is the same throughout the Western world, and especially in Europe where museums are paid for by the state, the cities, or the regions.

Do you feel that people are less interested in contemporary art or is it just an economical problem?

There's a lot of confusion: the public for contemporary art has never been as important as now, but politicians keep limiting institutions' budgets, making it difficult for them to survive. It's a total contradiction.

It is really exciting to see a venue like Turner Contemporary opening in Margate, but in the current climate one hopes that it'll be given the means to sustain its activity in the long run — which is often a concern for new institutions. There is a parallel here with the situation of your piece "Les Deux Plateaux" at the Palais Royal, which was commissioned at great expense in the 1980s but not properly maintained and had to undergo major restoration last year.

Exactly, it's the same contradiction. Politicians who are abandoning artworks by not paying for their maintenance end up either losing the piece or having to spend a fortune to restore it. This can be really frustrating.

Have you ever felt let down by commissioners?

The maintenance is always really problematic. Unlike 25 years ago, people now understand the benefits of commissioning a piece of public art but they still don't get that they are responsible for it afterward — and as an artist you automatically end up in big conflicts.

Why not, kid?

The Pirate Ship Bedroom by Kuhl Design Build




Created by Steve Kuhl of Kuhl Design Build, a Minneapolis area design/build firm specializing in remodeling and unique custom projects, this bedroom is certainly one of a kind. Built for a 6-year-old, the pirate theme was chosen after considering space ship, race car, and castle concepts.

Read more at Design Milk: http://design-milk.com/the-pirate-ship-bedroom-by-kuhl-design-build/#ixzz1G2dFLwl9

Inspiration light

Bacterioptica Chandelier by MADLAB

http://www.madlabllc.com/projects/?p=135

Bacterioptica is a one-of-a-kind chandelier designed by MADLAB designed for a NJ couple whose home is more than chaotic. The home houses the two parents and more than an extended family that includes three children, a dog, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, not to mention house plants, insects, allergens, fungi, and billions of bacteria that live with, on and among all humans! Therefore, the Bacteriortica is a custom piece that is like another living organism in their home and a physical representation of their family (and family bacteria). Looking quite alive, the chandelier is made of Petri dishes, metal rods and 15,000 feet of fiber optics. Inside the Petri dishes each family member placed some — er — bacteria.





I wonder what will actually be growing in those Petri dishes in a few years?

Light upon

Love you Love you not


In Lamps | Brand van Egmond

Story by Brand van Egmond

Thu , 3 March 2011

An explosion of laughter, a shower of tears – the thin line between love gained and love lost. It is a woman’s prerogative to pick the petals in random style, your faith is in her hands. Black, white, love you, love you not. Love you Love you not fits into the new collection with its Brand van Egmond’s trademark: a waterfall of emotions. The curvy petals are strung together in a stray fashion: black, white or nickel leaves drop as they please. And just when you thought you had figured it out, there is laser-cut twist in the
tail… Love you, love you not …. Keep smiling!

Looking abroad

THE ARMORY SHOW - CONTEMPORARY

PIER 94
MARCH 3-6, 2011

The Armory Show is America's leading fine art fair devoted to the most important art of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its eleven years, the fair has become an international institution. Every March, artists, galleries, collectors, critics and curators from all over the world make New York their destination during Armory Arts Week

Articles about The Armory Show are available in the Press Information section of this site.

• The Armory Show 2011 Prospectus (PDF)

http://www.thearmoryshow.com/cgi-local/content.cgi