Hello to anyone stopping by. Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting updates from a close friend co-oping in France. Claire is a fashion major with a passion for graphic and industrial design. She is in the middle of a six month co-op with Salomon sports in their Annecy office. Annecy is near the border of Switzerland so Claire's first day of work included testing their ski equipment in the Alps. During her free time Claire does water color paintings and she has submitted them with descriptions for me to post. Check back regularly to see her work and follow her experience in France. ~ TW
"I went on a three hour walk along the lake and found this view to paint. Lake Annecy is the cleanest lake in all of Europe so every part of the lake is quite natural and beautiful to look at. Downtown Annecy has a population of about 50,000 people, but as you walk along the lake you don't get a sense there are that many people around. It's very peaceful."
"A collection of adult furniture for the Medici Gardens in Rome.
The spaces in the gardens of the Villa Medici are like rooms, outdoor rooms without furniture. We would like to furnish them, and provide suggestions for how these neutral spaces could be used. Parks are strange places. During the day happy families play out idealised scenarios of modern life, while at night, they become sites for a variety of illicit activities. Our furniture will make some of these night-time activities more convenient and at the same time, offer a critique of the kind of design that is always trying to make things nice, convenient, user-friendly, efficient and ergonomic (especially public furniture)." - Dunne & Raby
ALSO...
"Hideaway Furniture is part of the Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times series. There are three versions. They are designed to meet irrational but real needs, in this case, a fear of alien abduction."
AND...
"A building project. A studio and a home. The architect and builder Cassion Castle worked very closely with us. The main requirement:'A place of calm'. It sits hidden behind the shops in Bethnal Green in a tiny street next to garages used by the market traders. Only one south facing facade can be manipulated freely."
AND...
"Parasite light: A light that feeds off the leaky radiation of household electronic products; it only works when placed in electromagnetic fields."
They have so many cool things on their website. I highly recommend you explore their website dunneandraby.co.uk if you're into this stuff.
I know my last couple posts have basically all been about the same thing and not exactly art focused, but I'll have to apologize because here we go again.
But before I get into a whole bunch of nerdy skate crap, here is a photo of the largest skateboard in the world, which was at the Grand Opening of the Lafayette Skate Spot and Rob and the Mayor of LA rode.
SO. We all know Rob Dyrdek even if it's just for his MTV antics. What you may not know is that he is single-handedly leading the movement for the transformation of how skateparks are built, where they are built, and ultimately how society views and incorporates skateboarding. I think part of getting that to happen is for people other than skaters to 'See What I See' as was eloquently showcased in these DC shoes commericials.
Dyrdek spearheaded the building of the first Skate Plaza in Kettering, OH in co-operation with DC Shoes. The idea of this park is to break the traditional box of what a skatepark should look like, and mimic the natural street terrain that skateboarders have been skating ever since Natas Kumpas, Mark Gonzales etc etc in the 80's. The whole point is to provide a place to skate without the legal hassles of skateboarding on private property owned by people who are not stoked on their marble benches getting wax and chunks on them.
Unfortunately, the Skate Plaza in Kettering is a $700,000 slab of concrete that needed to go through all kinds of red tape, and still fit into the notion of a skate park as a destination that one might have to drive to. For example, when I attended the University of Dayton only 15 or so odd miles away from the Skate Plaza I was only able to visit it once. I had a bike on campus too, but it was still too far - by the time I got there I'd be too tired to skate.
The draw of skateboarding is it's accessibility and universality. Given a board and sneakers you could skate anywhere with semi- smooth ground. The fact that I couldn't skate the best skatepark in the world when I lived 15 miles away attests to the 'skatepark as a destination' notion as an inaccessible and incompatible concept with skateboarding.
So finally to the SKATE SPOT idea. Rob came up with the idea to split up the ginormous Skate Plaza and place bits of it around the city of LA for people to enjoy sans car ride. I actually had been thinking about this kind of thing this summer, so I'm glad I didn't have to go through the trouble of making it happen.
A SIDE NOTE ON "SELLING OUT": Rob appeared in a commercial for Carl's Jr. and on a series of their large 'collectable' soft drink cups. How much did he make from this? Nothing. IT PAID FOR THE LAFAYETTE SPOT. Can you imagine that? A burger chain paying for a skate spot? Brilliant.
"Happy Star Just Saved My Life."
www.skateplaza.com for anything else you would possibly want to know about it.
My primary goal as a blogger for Calx is to showcase design that is fun. I feel it is important that the students who 'keep it light' deserve an enthusiastic high-five. On that note I would like to introduce my friend Steve Havira. Steve is a Sophomore with the major of Art. He is extremely relaxed and has a welcome sense of humor. He plans to pursue a career in advertising, a profession that would fuse his interest in film, art, and clever words. His most recent project was a steel sculpture inspired by Alexander Calder, but he is also influenced by Leroy Neeman and Sall Bass.
Shrinking Cities is a traveling exhibition that began in Germany in 2002 and explores how cities today are literally shrinking.
How do cities address this phenomenon? AND, in eastern Germany's case, should surplus apartments be demolished?
This struck me; here in the US, we always seem to replace the old with the new. Could we ever settle for simply getting rid of the old. Why can't "empty" space satisfy us?
Interior Design Student, Gina Lorubbio, has allowed us to make her a test subject of sorts. Throughout the quarter we will be updating you on her studio project, a restaurant by the name of Dalla Mano.
"Dalla Mano, meaning "by hand" in Italian, is a restaurant that focuses on Southern Italian dishes made fresh by hand daily. The interior reflects two spaces that are a very important part of the Italian culture: the marketplace and the dining room."
