2006 July archive at square. magazine - Modern Contemporary Design & Architecture

Maybach Exelero

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

700 horsepower and a killer body, the Maybach Exelero may hint a new high-performance model from the ultra-lux sedan maker. The V-12 coupe is based on the Maybach 57 and designed to test a high-speed tire for the German tire manufacturer Fulda.

Posted in Cars & Bikes

Tea & Coffee Towers (for Alessi)

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

The piazza is conceived as a landscaped tray, with vessels for tea, coffee, milk and sugar, nestling in its hollows. The ovals of the four components are formally seen as continuous surfaces that transform from handle to spout. The receptacles are luxuriously made of silver and the presentation platter is composed of an under-layer of dark orange plastic and a top layer of polished silver in which the reflections of the vessels undulate across the surface.

Posted in Accessories, Design, Kitchens

PENCK

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

PENCK has a body that soft and curved, seeing and not touching is just not an option. This beautifully crafted mobile phone fits neatly into your pocket or purse and has a internal antenna and no sub-display. The buttons and camera lens are concealed within the body, creating a handset with no corners and an ergonomic feel.

Posted in Gadgets

The 11 Stars of Skive

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

STAR DESIGNER BROUGHT THE SUN TO DENMARK IN HIS OWN SPACESHIP

Chief Designer Timothy Jacob Jensen beat everyone by several spaceship lengths when a City in Northen Jutland in Denmark unveiled 11 gigantic design sculptures. There is a Castle, a Square, and a crash-landed spaceship, paraphrase of the Sun, approx. 250 tones of granite and stainless steel, 30,000 pieces of gold, and much, much more. Jacob Jensen Design, creator of the form language of Bang & Olufsen and Gaggenau, has erected an expressive monument that will resound all over the world. The famous author Tor Nørretranders delivered the chief speech to the City and to Jacob Jensen.

Posted in Architecture

Holiday Home

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

The Holiday Home is an experiential installation exploring areas in which the holiday home departs from modern design conventions. The orthogonal surfaces of the archetypal house are extruded and skewed creating the sculptural armature within which the dichotomies of home and holiday home are played out. The new architectural shape emulates escapism, the expectation of a holiday as removed from everyday routine. Visitor movement through the installation activates unexpected view corridors and the multidirectional shadows create unpredictable perspectives. The perception of time is intrinsically interwoven into the project as light conditions subtly modulate; the sense of season and time of day become more abstract, as you may find on holiday where time is unbound by the frameworks of contemporary patterns of living and dwelling.

Posted in Design

Block lamp

Published by square. July 31st, 2006 0 Comments

This unique lamp was designed by Harri Koskinen for the Design House Stockholm. There is a light bulb inside the glass block. When turned on you get the impression of a block of ice, reflecting the world that surrounds it.

Posted in Lighting

The Crown Fountain

Published by square. July 30th, 2006 0 Comments

Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and inspired by the people of Chicago, The Crown Fountain is a major addition to the city’s world-renowned public art collection.

The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa’s tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.

Posted in Architecture

Cloud Gate Anish Kapoor

Published by square. July 30th, 2006 1 Comment

Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor’s first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city’s famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a “gate” to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.

What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one’s reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around.
-Anish Kapoor

Posted in Architecture