February 26

[I Hate Rendering] Folding Scraper by b4architects

Filed Under i hate rendering | Leave a Comment


[Read the Italian version of this post]

Today we’re officially launching I Hate Rendering, one of the new categories we already anticipated a few days ago.
Far from any nostalgic view, and well aware of the huge contribution of modeling and rendering to the spreading and understanding of architecture, this section (with the fundamental aid of your comments!) aims at starting a wider and shared reflection on representational methods, too often suffering from the fascination/slavery to the newest technology. It is meant to somehow balance the weight of what is substantially a very efficient instrument – the computer, the rendering process – and what instead is the personal expressive and communicational skills of every designer. A section that is thus completely dedicated to sketches as a primary vehicle between the world of “ideas” and the “real” world, in which our words will be few and images will communicate.
In this spirit we today present you b4architects studio’s “hand” and their Folding Scraper, winning project of the 2007 “Poto:type” competition in Vancouver, Special Prize from the Chamber of Architects in Bulgaria- Silver Interarch Medal and Honorary Diploma at XII Sofia – Interarch ’09 triennial.


Read more

February 25

[Looking for a Client] Mobile Floating Architecture by Giovanni Ambrosio

Filed Under looking for a client | Leave a Comment


[Read the Italian version of this post]

Ymag.it is renovating.
In occasion of the Architecture Biennale and of the nomination of our Editor-in-Chief Luca Molinari as the curator of the Italian pavilion (Luca will soon open a dedicated section on this site to discuss it), our editorial staff has once more been wondering about the complexity and the changes in contemporary architecture, design land graphics, and especially and the way we can narrate and trasmit such changes. This led us to the decision of opening two new categories, the first of which is Looking for a Client.
This category, dedicated to all those non-realized project still looking for somebody to sponsor them, is meant to unveil the underworld of project ideas that nourish the daily life of more or less famous studios and ateliers, to open a window on the reflections and the research which are too often ignored by specialized magazines, despite being an interesting ground for testing and debate (sometimes even more than realized projects). Our blog does not only want to be a gathering platform to document this world, but also – a little ironically – as a medium and a tool to reach clients.
It is with this spirit that today we’re happy to present you the Mobile Floating Architecture project by architect Giovanni Ambrosio (whose work we already introduced to you last summer).

Read more

February 24

Gentlemen of Bacongo by Daniele Tamagni. Book presentation @ Forma, Milan

Filed Under arts, books, events | Leave a Comment

(All images © Daniele Tamagni)

Tomorrow, february, 25

h 6.30 pm

Forma. Centro Internazionale di Fotografia

Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro, 1

20136 Milano

info@formafoto.it

Gentlemen of Bacongo by Daniele Terragni

Book presentation

Photographer Daniele Tamagni, designer and stylist Marina Spadafora, Francesco Benvenuti Arborio di Gattinara, Trolley publisher Gigi Giannuzzi and Contrasto director Denis Curti will attend and debate on the book.

Download the invitation

Don’t miss the chance to get introduced to the world of style and fashion of Congo Sapeurs that photographer Daniele Tamagni depicted in his, “Gentlemen of Bacongo”. The book is a colourful journey through the streests of Brazzaville and Kinshasa by young photographer Tamagni who has distinguished himself by his sociocultural research on Afro-Caribbean subculters around the world. Tamagni’s interviews to Congolese sapeurs open us the doors to the SAPE creed, the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People who perform and live the dandy-like dressing codes of elegance and behaviour. Refined, respected and admired like real vip by their communities sapeurs inherit and revive the French colonial roots and – despite living in slums and poverty – carry on the daily mission of elegance started by Grenard André Matsoua, the first Grand Sapeur who came back from Paris dressed as a genuine French flâneur in 1922. Tamagni’s eye immortalizes the paradoxes of the sapeur life and brilliantly captures the conflicting belief in good taste performed by gentlemen you wouldn’t expect in the Republic of Congo or in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The eternal and boundless longing for beauty keeps a constant factor of human condition. Aesthetics can be comforting! Read more

February 24

I Hate Rendering / Looking for a Client
New Ymag competitions

Filed Under i hate rendering, ideas, looking for a client, news | Leave a Comment


[Read the Italian version of this post]

The following announcement launches two new sections of our website, which will become active when we’ll post the first projects, starting tomorrow.

Dear architect/designer,
as an international blog focused on the continuous research of new ways to communicate and critically narrate the complexity and the changes in contemporary architecture, design and graphics, Ymag wants to constitute a platform for cultural exchange between different worlds.
With these goals in mind, we are now lauching two new categories on our website: I Hate Rendering and Looking for a Client.

The first, as you can easily guess, is a challenge and at the same time an answer to the prevailing dictatorship of rendering on most magazines and blogs, which too often propose project images that look very much alike. Consequently, I Hate Rendering will be devoted to drawings, sketches, and whatever handmade representation to promote and “re-discover” our expressive forces and abilities to convey ideas. The new category aims to start a critical debate on this theme, allowing all our readers to speak their mind and comment on every drawing, its peculiarities and techniques.

The second category, Looking for a Client, will be devoted to non-realized architectures in search of a client to become true. The purpose here is to unveil the underworld of project ideas that nourish the daily life of more or less famous studios and ateliers. The category will include competition projects, degree theses and, most of all, all those designs started after pure research and personal reflection by any author.

Our invitation is to join us and help us create an archive of vibrant ideas. Send your sketches, drawings or architectures looking for a client to:
info@ymag.it
We’ll be pleased and honoured to take it into consideration and promote it.
The invitation to send photos, drawings and whatever can illustrate your most recent works is open to everybody!
Thank you and we hope to hear from you soon.

The Yearbook Magazine editorial staff

February 22

Gagosian Gallery – Beverly Hills Completes Expansion by Architect Richard Meier

Filed Under architecture, news | Leave a Comment

Gagosian Gallery has completed the expansion of their Beverly Hills gallery, a new 3,000 sqf ground-floor gallery space designed by Richard Meier & Partners and to be unveiled on March 4. Read more

February 19

Kafka’s Architecture

Filed Under ideas | Leave a Comment

(By Cesare Alemanni)

When it comes to architecture we are used to think about blocks and structures, but this terminology is not the first it comes to mind when we speak about literature. Nonetheless, in the case of some literary golems like Franz Kafka, it is most definitely the proper way to analyze their work. Indeed, he shows an incredibly clear vision of the role played by structures and blocks along literary gameplay. Not only on a metaphisical level, but, foremost and quite surprisingly, on a phisical one.

According to French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari (Kafka: Towards a minor literature) the whole opera of the Czech writer is spotted by narrative and descriptive junctions that Deleuze himself calls “blocks”. They are distributed, in particular, along The Trial and The Castle; two novels in wich architecture is not merely a background, but it reaches the status of a character. There it is where the basements seems to represent the magma of instincts and in the upper floors lies the transcendence of a law that is impossibile to transcend. Read more

February 17

Verso il Mercato della Terra di Milano

Filed Under events | Leave a Comment

February 17

Studenten Kamer Festival

Filed Under events | Leave a Comment

Today we’ve got good news for all the ones following us from the Netherlands. Next week (precisely on Wednesday 24) the Studenten Kamer Festival will take place in a bunch of Dutch cities, opening student rooms to small audiences to promote young and talented performers who want to show off their skills in music, dance, performance, stand-up comedy and so on. In case you live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven or another of the many locations involved (or you’re just passing by), Stukafest can be a good chance for you to enjoy an unusual and cozy experience while at the same time touring the city and supporting young artists. It definitely looks like a win-win situation.
Read more

February 16

A House for Lady Gaga – Alternative Announcements

Filed Under architecture, events, ideas | Leave a Comment

Remember the A House for Lady Gaga competition we posted last week? Being the polyhedric pop singer always changing her looks and shifting from one character to another, ICARCH Gallery coulnd’t just make one announcement for their contest. In fact they made five, and today we are posting all of the remaining ones. The first is below, the others for you to download here, here, and here.


January 2010. Lady Gaga is appointed creative director for a specialty line of Polaroid Imaging products

A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA

What is a freak…?
If we look in a dictionary, we learn that it is “a thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular” or “an abnormally formed organism, especially a person or animal regarded as a curiosity or monstrosity.”
There are other meanings as well, but this will do.
Why is Lady Gaga insisting that her main interest is the “freak…?”
She even claims that herself was a freak, at least earlier in her life.
But was / is it so…? She seems sufficiently gifted and sufficiently successful, at all levels, to imagine otherwise. But maybe it is the perennial sympathy that the authentic artist has towards the underprivileged, the misrepresented, the disadvantaged, the irregular, the misfit, the weak… and if this is the case, cheers to Lady Gaga! Let’s only hope she remains so.
Read more

February 15

Dopo La Crescita. Idee sul futuro della dispersione

Filed Under events, ideas | Leave a Comment

Che cosa sta succedendo ai territori della dispersione?

Cosa alla città diffusa e ai suoi manufatti a bassa densità?

E’ attorno a queste domande che il seminario Dopo La Crescita. Idee sul futuro della dispersione chiama a riflettere alcuni tra i protagonisti della stagione di studi sulla dispersione degli anni ‘90 e li invita ad ipotizzare nuovi scenari di evoluzione. Interverranno Cristina Bianchetti (Politecnico di Torino), Stefano Boeri (Politecnico di Milano), Pippo Ciorra (Università di Camerino), Arturo Lanzani (Politecnico di Milano), Chiara Merlini (Politecnico di Milano). Read more

Next Page →

 

You need to log in to vote

The blog owner requires users to be logged in to be able to vote for this post.

Alternatively, if you do not have an account yet you can create one here.

Powered by Vote It Up