VINTAGE SHOPPING.

Artist and designer Ebony Bizys captured our attention with her post about Shimokitazawa a suburb in Japan and must-visit destination for lovers of vintage shopping, cozy cafes and general cuteness. She describes it as “packed with teeny tiny six-seater bars, adorable cafes, loads of cheap and cheerful restaurants, vintage and retro clothing stores, live music venues, secondhand record stores, homewares and vintage stores…Come here if you fancy an afternoon wondering around people spotting, stay until sundown, have a G+T at Mois cafe, and try some delicious okonomiyaki.”

In addition to Mois, a relaxing cafe set in an old two story home, Bizys highlights several shops and thrift stores in the suburb. One is Sou, a crafty clothing and homewares store that makes a custom calendar just for customers. Commune is another shop, with a tiny gallery, that sells zines, art and other handmade items.

Bizys is in the midst of covering other Tokyo suburbs at her blog, Hello Sandwich, and plans to put together a Tokyo travel guide. Head over there to check it out.

EBONY BIZYS
SOU
COMMUNEE

BARCELO TEMPORARY MARKET
GRAND OPENING’S TRADE SCHOOL
LONDON’S BLACK DOG BOOKS

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ARCHITECTURE.

At the 2006 Venice Biennale, MAD Architects envisioned the future of Beijing with three proposals. One of their visions was the “Future of Hutongs,” a plan for metallic bubble structures that would pop up in hutongs, or narrow alleys, in the city’s oldest neighborhoods. Now, the first of these bubbles has made its debut in a modest, residential courtyard.

Rapid development in Beijing in recent years has been hard for the city to keep up with, and standards of living in older neighborhoods have suffered. MAD’s hutong bubbles address these conditions as small-scale, adaptable interventions that can grow with the fabric of the city and provide new, positive opportunities in struggling areas.

MAD writes: “The hutong bubbles…function like magnets, attracting new people, activities, and resources to reactivate entire neighborhoods… Fueled by the energy they helped to renew, the bubbles multiply and morph to provide for the community’s various needs, thereby allowing local residents to continue living in these old neighborhoods. In time, these interventions will become part of Beijing’s long history, newly formed membranes within the city’s living tissue.”

The first hutong bubble contains a toilet and staircase that connects it to the roof terrace of a newly renovated courtyard house. The design was recently nominated for the Brit Insurance Architecture Award by The Design Museum of London.

ARCH DAILY ON BEIJING BUBBLES
MAD ARCHITECTS
DESIGNS OF THE YEAR

NENDO MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC TOKYO
RECYCLED BIKE RACKS
GREEN WALLS GROW IN PORTLAND

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ART & CULTURE.

The exhibition space at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York appears customary when you first arrive. The main level of the former industrial building is a traditional gallery with white walls, high ceilings and rotating exhibitions of contemporary sculpture and installation. But walk to the back of the gallery, and a narrow set of stairs descends to a basement where you will find artworks staked out in underground tunnels, nestled beside brick walls and projected onto stone alcoves.

Leopards in the Temple, an exhibition that opened in January and runs through March 30, 2010, utilizes both floors of the Center. Among the artists featured on the more cavernous level is Philadelphia-based artist Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, who answered a few of our questions about the show, the Center and the curious locale of Long Island City. Click Read More for the full interview and photos.

Leopards in The Temple is based on a Kafka quote. What does it mean to you, and how do you see your work fitting into the idea?

The parable is about a process of becoming permanent through a repetition that becomes ritualistic. The work in the show re-situates a formal language that grew out of modernism. It also allows a space for poetics to be reexamined and opened up, to possibly expose a new potential. I see my work doing both of these things.

Tell us more about your work.

I have a background as a choreographer and visual artist, and now I’m in a sculpture program [MFA at Tyler School of Art]. I’ve adopted a lot of choreographic philosophies into the way that I make installations. They very much mimic stages, or tableaus, where there’s an arrangement of things that speak to an event that has happened, or is about to happen. Sometimes they mimic the way that things are arranged in an interior space, or on a stage, or in an office. [It’s] kind of a conflation of stage and gallery.

What do you know about SculptureCenter, specifically about its history of using the basement as an exhibition space?

SculptureCenter is like a project space, almost. A lot of important, established artists show there, and also people who are emerging. They always give an opportunity for emerging artists with In Practice projects. The basement space allows for another way for artists to be inspired by a space, or just reconsider how work is shown in different environments. It’s an opportunity to show in a space that’s unique and not just stark, white gallery walls.

Explain In Practice. That’s how you came to be in this show, right?

Once a year, SculptureCenter takes proposals for installations that will happen in their basement space. Anyone can apply; they just ask that you submit a project that is site specific in some way. After I applied, the curator got in contact with me and told me, basically, that he was bored with the format of the In Practice show, and wanted to try something different. He ended up taking a few people who applied to In Practice and curating us into this show, Leopards in the Temple.

What is your impression of Long Island City?

It feels like a place that’s been a little bit neglected and abandoned, but not in a destructive way. It’s a strange mix of really tall buildings, and smaller townhouses and rowhouses. It doesn’t commit to a demographic or a community like other parts of Queens. It’s this in-between space—almost like they’re waiting to build a lot of things there, but it’s never gonna happen. It’s vague. But there are also really interesting art museums and stuff there: SculptureCenter, Socrates Sculpture Park, which is an outdoor sculpture park where work is commissioned. It’s free to the public, and right on the East River. And then there’s PS1. The basement at SculptureCenter is similar to the Boiler Room at PS1. They have a basement level that has some finished gallery space, but also has this one room where they do a similar thing. I think you can apply to show there, and it’s cement basement walls, and a weird, small space with different rooms and nooks and stuff like that.

How do you feel about living in Philadelphia as an artist?

It’s nice being an artist in Philadelphia because you’re kind of removed from the gut of all that drama of ‘the artist’ in New York, but you’re really close to New York, so if you have an opportunity there it’s easy enough to commute. As far as my relationship to the arts community in Philadelphia, there’s not so much I can say about that. Being in school, you’re removed from the greater dynamics of the city you’re in. It’s partly my fault, but at the same time, school is a restriction.

You come from rural Maine, and moved to Philly from a small town in Western Massachusetts. Do you feel like living in an urban space influences how you make art, or how you are inspired?

I think there’s a little more motivation because there’s more opportunity [in a city]. But at the same time, when you’re in a rural area there’s this other drive to be productive, or make work, because everything around you is so slow moving; you feel like you have to be stimulated somehow.

I know you take the bus back and forth between Philly and New York a lot. Do you have any travel tips?

If you take the Chinatown bus, get off in Tribeca, not Chinatown because it takes an extra half an hour to get from the Tribeca stop to the actual stop in Chinatown.

OK. Now, do you have one that’s funny?

Well… Make sure you look better in New York than you do in Philly.

el fin.

Details

Leopards in the Temple
View until March 30, 2010
Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, New York 11101

SCULPTURE CENTER
LEOPARDS IN THE TEMPLE
STRAUSS BOURQUE-LAFRANCE

TRACKING TRANSCIENCE
WALES’ POST SECRET
NEW YORK ELEVATOR ART LIFTS SPIRITS

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LOCAL CULTURE.

People out in Rotterdam last Friday night who spotted a glowing, poppy-colored umbrella dome on the street couldn’t resist stopping in for a spontaneous party. The temporary structure housed a full bar and DJ, and over 300 visitors gathered there until 2 am when the police shut things down. Titled the Bucky Bar, the dome was part of a series of unsolicited positive proposals for the future of the city of Rotterdam by DUS Architects and Studio for Unsolicited Architecture.

From the architect/party planners: “The title refers to the great American inventor, Buckminster Fuller, who demonstrated how minimal energy geodesic domes could open a way to a more environmentally sustainable future. Could an umbrella dome lead the way to a more socially sustainable future? The Bucky Bar is a full-scale model of such a future. It shows the power of space for spontaneous gathering, for improvised shelters to host conversations, debates, games or even parties.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

SPOTTED VIA DEZEEN
DUS ARCHITECTS
UNSOLICITED ARCHITECTURE

SHANGHAI’S OLD & NEW
A FROZEN COMMUTE
TOKYO CABS

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CITY INNOVATIONS.

Perhaps this is an argument for Travel Health Insurance. Though we generally try to avoid ending up in mental health institutions, Nendo’s recently completed clinic in Japan might be worth feigning maladies to secure a visit. The Japanese firm’s design aims to express the clinic’s philosophy of treatment in its architecture. It transforms a patient’s stay into an entirely encompassing experience.

From Design Boom: “The doors that line the walls of the clinic do not open, and ‘ordinary’ parts of the walls open up into new spaces. The consultation rooms are entered by sliding the bookshelves sideways. The door at the end of the hallway opens onto a window; the amount of light in the hallway is controlled by opening and closing the door.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

The guiding principal behind the design is that by experiencing space in new ways, patients will develop new perspectives and avoid remaining trapped by previous, unhealthy patterns.

DESIGN BOOM ON NENDO
NENDO

RECYCLED BIKE RACKS
GREEN WALLS GROW IN PORTLAND
STOP YELLOW WASTE

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PLACES TO SEE.

How do you take something old, decrepit and forgotten and make people pay attention? Lasers, apparently, are one solution. Mid-February, French lighting studio Creatmosphere set up high-powered lasers along Brighton, England’s skeletal West Pier, and brought new recognition to a struggling local landmark.

According to Fast Company: “Brighton, England’s 1,115-foot-long West Pier has had a tough run lately. Built in 1866, it closed in 1975 and was burned to a crisp by a series of fires in 2003 (arson, say the experts). Plans to rebuild it have been batted around for years, but they’ve always been too expensive.”

The installation was called A Pier/Appears and was commissioned by Tiger Beer for a campaign celebrating the Chinese New Year as it transitions to the Year of the Tiger. The night-long light show stopped traffic and drew a crowd. It also beamed through a momentary blizzard to nice effect.

PHOTO CREDIT

CREATIVE REVIEW ON PIER
FAST COMPANY ON PIER CREATMOSPHERE

MVRDV’S WATER CUBE
ISTANBUL’S BESIKTAS FISH MARKET
AN UNLIKELY TIME CAPSULE

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ART & CULTURE.

On view now at SITE art space in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hasan Elahi’s Tracking Transience is a painstaking study in self-surveillance. It is also a response to, and provocation of, the politics of privacy and government oversight. Elahi, a Bangladesh-born American, developed the piece after being falsely accused as a 9/11 terrorist accomplice in 2002. He documents every detail of his life in photos: meals before he eats them, toilets before he uses them, and monitors his location with a GPS tracker. The artist has said: “I’ve decided that if the government wants to monitor me that’s fine. But I could do a much better job monitoring myself than anyone else.”

The piece is part of a group show, and will be up through May 9, 2010.

LOCATION DETAILS

SITE Santa Fe
1606 Paseo De Peralta
Santa Fe, NM 87501-3724

COOL HUNTING ON TRACKING TRANSCIENCE
CBS ON TRACKING TRANSCIENCE
WIRED ON TRACKING TRANSCIENCE

WALES’ POST SECRET
NEW YORK ELEVATOR ART LIFTS SPIRITS
DETROIT’S ICE HOUSE

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PLACES TO SEE.

Just outside the suburbs about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, lies an intricate map of deteriorating streets etched lightly in the dirt. The area is called California City, and is all that remains of a late 1950s plan for suburban extension that was never completed. BLDGBLOG describes the under-realized and deteriorating grid as, a suburb abandoned in advance of itself, and, an abstract geoglyph—unintentional land art visible from airplanes. The blog has teamed up with Atlas Obscura for their event Obscura Day: An International Celebration of Curious Places, and is organizing an excursion into the halted development on March 20, 2010. Head over to BLDGBLOG to learn more about California City, and for details on how to participate.

BLDGBLOG
ATLAS OBSCURA
OBSCURA DAY: AN INTERNATIONAL CELEBRATION OF CURIOUS PLACES

MVRDV’S WATER CUBE
ISTANBUL’S BESIKTAS FISH MARKET
AN UNLIKELY TIME CAPSULE

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CITY INNOVATIONS.

This Spring, a number of parking meters in New York will no longer service car parking. Instead, they are being repurposed to create much-needed spots for bikes. There is currently just one bike rack space for every 30 cyclists in New York, and as biking’s popularity grows, the repurposing is an inventive, sustainable answer to the city’s changing needs.

Parking meters in the Upper East and West sides; Park Slope, Brooklyn; Riverdale, Bronx; and Ridgewood, Queens are to be replaced by communal “mini munis” on every block. Rather then rip out the old, individual meters, the city will remove and recycle the meter heads, and bend the remaining posts into circular racks. About 225 new bike spaces will be created. By investing in this plan the city will save the expense of tearing out the old meters and repairing the sidewalks, and will make many bikers happy.

GOOD MAGAZINE ON NYC BIKE RACKS
NYPOST ON NYC BIKE RACKS

GREEN WALLS GROW IN PORTLAND
STOP YELLOW WASTE
MERCADO NEGRO BY RAMON CORONADO

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ARCHITECTURE.

Architects MVRDV wanted to bring an undersea experience to visitors at the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, Korea. Their design, The Water Cube, is being proposed for the event. The focus of the upcoming expo is on the power and beauty of the ocean, and MVRDV wanted to approach the idea simply. They created the concept of a, “pure visible block” extracted from the ocean that aims to express the unmediated beauty and power of the sea. The prospect of staring straight into watery depths from the safety of dry land sounds intriguing, but we will have to wait until the 2012 Expo to find out. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

MVRDV
ARCH DAILY ON MVRDV

ISTANBUL’S BESIKTAS FISH MARKET
AN UNLIKELY TIME CAPSULE
BONDI BEACH AND BILLY BOOKSHELF

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PLACES TO SEE.

Shoppers in Besiktas, one of Istanbul’s busiest districts, now have a new place to buy fish. Architects GAD recently completed a fish market to replace a popular, long-established venue that was in disrepair. The project team worked with local government and merchants to organize the strategy and goal, demonstrating a collaborative effort towards neighborhood revitalization.

The design began with the triangular shape of the market lot, which was translated into a concrete triangular slab that now drapes over six stainless steel vendor stands. Future plans for the market include using the underside and top of the shell as display space for artistic interventions. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

LOCATION DETAILS

Besiktas Fish Market No 2, Macka Besiktas Istanbul, Turkey 34357

DEZEEN ON BESIKTAS FISH MARKET
ARCHITECTS GAD

AN UNLIKELY TIME CAPSULE
BONDI BEACH AND BILLY BOOKSHELF
BEAUTIFUL BUS CENTER GEOMETRY

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ART IN SECRET.

Amidst a busy square in Cardiff, Wales, you can find a series of miniature worlds—if you know where to look. Artist Jane Edden designed diminutive tableaux that were recently installed in the tops of unassuming bollards, or traffic posts, that dot St. David’s shopping center. The permanent installation is called Post Secret, and was developed by Edden in collaboration with students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She photographed and sketched the students, then constructed the tiny, laser-cut scenes, which reside in secret until a curious visitor gazes in.

Edden: “Within the bollards are miniature constructions, created in a stylized monochrome form. Some of these environments seem to transcend the space that can be perceived to be within the bollards. This interplay with the interior and exterior space is designed to create the feeling of looking into another place or world.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

BBC ON WALES’ POST SECRET
SAFLE ON WALES’ POST SECRET

NEW YORK ELEVATOR ART LIFTS SPIRITS
DETROIT’S ICE HOUSE
IN A PERFECT WORLD

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LEWIS’S FIFTH FLOOR

On the fifth floor of the landmark Lewis’s Department Store in Liverpool, an unlikely time capsule has been unearthed. Closed and untouched for almost 30 years, the floor has been revealed to house retro treasures. For example, there’s a 1950’s diner, a 70’s hair salon and creepy curiosities like a room full of dismembered mannequins. Artist Stephen King prompted the reopening of this forgotten space, and made it the basis of a commissioned photo series, interview project and book.

From the project website: “The fifth floor…was once a bustling hive of activity filled with staff and customers who recognised it as the epitome of leisure, style and shopping. It closed to the public in the 1980s. What remains is an evocative space complete with original period fixtures and fittings from the 50s, 60s and 1970s.” King’s photos are haunting, with a touch of humor. Loud, campy interior design clashes with the space’s aged weariness. A one-time provocateur of enthusiastic spending, the fifth floor is now an accidental monument to its own glory days.” Click Read More for additional information and photos.

Lewis’s Fifth Floor
Spotted via WeHeart
Buy Lewis’s Fifth Floor

BONDI BEACH AND BILLY BOOKSHELF
BEAUTIFUL BUS CENTER GEOMETRY
ROTTERDAM MARKET HALL

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EASY READING.

Surfers, swimmers and sunbathers at Sydney’s Bondi Beach were recently surprised with the unexpected offer of a good book. In celebration of 30 years of their Billy bookcase, our favorite Scandinavian furniture superstore, IKEA, set up thirty Billy’s stocked with reading in the sand on a recent afternoon. Beachgoers were invited to take a book, and encouraged to swap one of their own, or make a donation to the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

Photos by C. Brewer

DAILY MAIL ON BONDI BEACH
ODDITY CENTRAL ON BONDI BEACH
MORE PHOTOS

BEAUTIFUL BUS CENTER GEOMETRY
ROTTERDAM MARKET HALL
ROME’S MAXXI MUSEUM

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WJS AUDIO.

Listening to Best Coast’s music is like gazing through the hazy sun at a high school lover on a Southern California beach. The band is basically Bethany Cosentino, a 23-year-old California native and former child actor, whose blog is a steady stream of cat photos, retro YouTube music clips and Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks adoration.

Best Coast delivers lo-fi, catchy, drifty songs that draw heavy influence from sixties girl groups, but feel so fresh they could be from the future, like something your little sister listened to when she was your mom. With a mix of sincerity and happy lassitude, Cosentino belts about infatuation, young love, pop-heartache and walking down the street stoned, and as she does, it’s like you’re walking along beside her, swaying in the summer afternoon. Listen to When I’m With You below…

BEST COAST ON MYSPACE
BEST COASTY BLOG

VINTAGE SOUND WITH DELTA SPIRIT
ANTHONY VALADEZ AUDIO/VISUAL
THE DIRTY PROJECTORS

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