Posted: February 11th, 2013 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design | Tags: architecture, design, home
BEFORE
I am constantly compensating for my various dissatisfactions with our house by investing myself in home improvement projects. And admittedly, that is the beauty of a small home — that home improvement projects are all the more viable and easier to confront. Our home may be smaller than I would like, but I am committed to making each part of it exactly as I want it. Throughout our house we have blond wood floors which I hate. Admittedly, that seems like an extreme response, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. They’re just so darn yellow looking. In addition, of the limited square footage we have, a fair amount is dedicated to the stairway and landing — wasted space in a small home — so I am determined to milk that staircase and landing for all of the aesthetic potential they are worth. Hence the beloved dear. And now the Christmas vase. The last step, easily accomplished with a quart of paint or two, is the stairs themselves, and that cursed blond wood. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 14th, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: art | Tags: architecture, art, artists, humor, innovative design, photography
Now here’s a guy who knows how to put photoshop to good use. Flemish photographer Filip Dujardin’s Fictions are so seamless that the read immediately as reality. It is only after you look at them for a while that you realize that the structures are impossible.
They have been compared to Escher’s drawings. With the immediacy and insistence on “reality” inherent to photography, I find the photographs much more compelling than the drawings which are fascinating for the visual tricks they play, but not particularly pretty to look at.
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Posted: March 26th, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: design | Tags: architecture, design, environment, home, humor, modernism, trends
Since I was in high school, I have been drawn to architecture which has been designed to interact with nature, and taking its position in nature into consideration in giving it form. That means that — I know, like millions of other teens — I went through the obsession with Frank Lloyd Wright phase, and the accompanying obsession with Ayn Rand phase. And like many (although by no means all) of those teens, have struggled with the disillusionment when I was able to understand Rand’s political view ever since.
The longer I looked at photographs of a couple of recent homes built to blur the line between inside and outside, gorgeous and brilliantly designed homes, the more they began to look not so much contemporary, as Modern (insofar as that defines a decidedly twentieth century aesthetic ). The interiors particularly are not so far from something Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed. They are a distillment of a number of twentieth century architectural greats from the 1930′s through the 1960′s. But as I say, that’s only after looking for a really long time, since on the face of it — and again, in their bones — these two homes are absolutely contemporary and innovative.
The Belvedere Residence by Anastasia Arquitetos, located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, takes advantage of the temperate climate by allowing outside and inside to flow almost seamlessly into each other. Since aesthetics are my thing, mostly I’m just drawn to how exquisite the first floor patio is. But the reality is, that the home was designed taking into thoughtful consideration how to maximize space in an urban context, how to take maximal advantage of light and air and manipulate them to make the house efficient and comfortable.
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Posted: February 23rd, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: art, design | Tags: architecture, art, humor, innovative design, public spaces, street art
Every once in a while an idea comes along which is so clever that it seems absolutely obvious — even though it is being expressed for the first time.
I love graffiti — or more broadly, street art (actually, it is both more broadly and more narrowly, since the word art contains the idea that the art maker intends to engage with a viewer through his work, and therefore wants it to be good, or pretty, or expressive, or whatever it may be, but does not include someone randomly scrawling a mess in black paint in the side of a building to no end except destruction). But admittedly, there are a number of issues raised by street art which make it a contentious and problematic medium. If a building (wall, bridge, train track) is nondescript, run-down, urban squalor, or in some way in need of energy and beauty, graffiti may look like a positive addition to the structure. If the building is, instead, a recently completed structure, constructed to the tune of vast amounts of money by a talented architect who invested a lot of time and thought into its appearance, the same graffiti may be seen as destructive defacement. However, such a distinction suggests that one can objectively distinguish which structures belong in each of the two categories. That little problem aside, if we accept that, at its best, graffiti breaths new life and energy to derelict structures and spaces, Russian artist Nikita Nomerz’s work can be seen as its literal realization — concept made form in entirely literal terms. It is surprising that no one has done this before. After all, the urge to anthropomorphize seems like an almost irresistible human imperative. But, as far as I know, Nomerz is the first. Check out these photos of some of the work … it’s absolute trip.
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Posted: February 14th, 2012 | Author: artintolife | Filed under: art | Tags: architecture, art, art exhibitions, artists, design, popular culture, public art, public spaces
Maybe everyone else already knew this and I’m coming late to the party, but the Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium houses a major contemporary art collection. Way to go Dallas! More accurately, way to go Jerry Jones (team owner) and Gene Jones. Cool concept to begin with, bringing art and football together — highly unlikely bedfellows. I am sure it reflects completely unsubstantiated bias on my part that I think it’s particularly cool that this is at the Cowboys’ stadium, so we won’t go there, but Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders + Jenny Holzer…
When the stadium first opened in 2009 there were 14 site specific commissioned works. The collection now boasts 21 works. It even has its own app.
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