Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
The most memorable things seen over the last 12 months
Citation preview
2010, A year of reflection and beauty
The most memorable things seen over the last 12 monthsJames Dudley, Creative Director Andreas Messerli AG
2010, A year of reflection and beauty
With the effects of the financial crosses still echoing around the globe budgets for my of the location based communication industry, exhibitions, events and retail, have remained at relatively low levels. More has been asked of designers and design agencies for less budget. The days of the bombastic, outrageous and ostentatious have given way to the focused, considered and poetic. The projects which have caught my eye, either by seeing them in the flesh or via documentation can be divided into four sub groups:
Interactive / kinetic installationsPoetic scenographic installationsSimple and the minimalArchitecturally heroic
Interactive / kinetic installations
The advance of LED light technology and computer controlled motors has enabled the creation of some moving, pulsing, colour changing, abstract wonders.
Decode exhibition at the V&A in London set the pace early in the year giving a platform to around a dozen amazing installations, the most engaging of which for me was the pixel camera by Golan LevinSeeper took the art of projections onto buildings well beyond the idea of an outdoor cinema and truly work with the architectural qualities of the monumental canvas. The Wolfsberg show for VW was especially memorable. Random International continued to set the pace in blurring the boundaries between art and design with their Swarm exhibit seen at Design / Art Basel in the summer. On a personal note Whitevoid proved to be fabulous to work with on the Roca stand at 100% Design in London.
Decode exhibition at the V&A in London
Golan Levin Yoke
Video wall BMW Paris Mondial de l'Automobile 2010
Poetic / Scenographic installations
The use of theatrical technique to create a narrative environment. The results are often playful and immediately charming.
The first of our high profile installations at the Milan Furniture fair was curated by Dr Jules Wright for Swarovski Crystal Palace Exhibition. Especially impressive was the installation piece by Gwenael Nicolas.
The gothic art show Hells Half Acre in underground vaults which have been purchased by Kevin Spacey was mix of kitsch art and gothic, but still a memorable event.
OSS, the young Designer Architects from Zurich continued to produce built work of the highest standard including this interesting wine shop.
Swarovski Crystal Palace Exhibition
Gwenael Nicolas.
Hells Half Acre
Daniela Schönbächle
The Campana Brothers at Vitra
Fiona BannerHarrier and Jaguar The Tate Britian, London
Frieze Art FairRegents Park London
Simple and the minimal
Simple forms in natural materials or white ranging from a touch of the clinical to the sublimely sensual.
John Pawson had a beautiful exhibition at the Design Museum in London which defined his position as the leading exponent of humane Mininalism. Sanaa had a busy year in the media limelight. First there was the specially commissioned gallery for the Ruhr 2010 exhibition in Essen close to the Zollverein which would have a subsequent life as an Art school. Kazuyo Sejima, one of the two partners of Sanaa, was also the first female director of the Venice architecture biennial. Sejima's selection of projects to show was more thoughtful than previous years bombastic overload. One Pavilion which I noticed was cloudscape by transsolar + tetsuo condo architects.There was also a cloud installation at the inspiring exhibition titled Innen Stadt Außen by the prolific Olafar Eliasson in Berlin.
Tomas Saraceno
at Frieze Art Fair London
John Pawson
Transsolar + Tetsuo condo architects.
Olafar Eliasson
Established & Sons Milan 2010
Design Miami VIP LoungeArik Levy
Architecturally heroic
There were still a few stunning architectural gestures to be seen but these were rather an endangered spices in their traditional home of the A class motorshow, although there were many sightings at the Shanghai world expo.
Of the this years crop of motorshow Pavilions the clearly outstanding was the Audi Installation in Paris in the Autumn by Munich based Schmidhuber + Kaindl. Although I did not visit the Shanghai world expo, (Expos I find too big anyway, so the prospect of a China sized version was my idea of hell) there certainly was enough good documentation to see that there were a few real gems, such as the UK Dandilion by Heatherwick Studio, a building with thousands of plexus glass rods containing seeds from Kew Garden’s millennium seed bank embedded in the ends.
Gallery for the Ruhr 2010 exhibition
Vitra Showroom, Hd’M Architects
Tate Modern, LondonThe Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei
