I have been looking forward to starting this English Literature course since september, but now that I have started it… It’s boring as hell, to put it briefly. At least the school library is nice!
Architectural Models in a New Light
There’s a new book a new book out from the University of Chicago Press called The Architectural Model: Tool, Fetish, Small Utopia, edited by Peter Cachola Schmal and Oliver Elser. It’s authors assert that the model hasn’t been explored as an artistic medium in its own right. In 2009, The Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) began to fill in this gap in architectural scholarship, focusing on the history of the model with particular attention paid to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on the museum’s vast collection of models, comprised of more than 1,200 objects created by over four hundred architects from around the world, the researchers and authors created both this book and a corresponding exhibit that opened in May.
Architects of Air - LUMINARIA | EXXOPOLIS
To commemorate the 20th luminarium, and to celebrate its long association with Nottingham, Architects of Air returned to its roots to involve local people. In partnership with Lakeside Arts Centre local community groups were enlisted in the ‘Windows Project’ workshops to make the intricate ‘stained glass’ windows of the EXXOPOLIS cupola based on a tiling design by Sir Roger Penrose.
The luminaria are designed by company founder, Alan Parkinson, who started experimenting with pneumatic sculptures in the I980s.
Each luminarium is an original design. The principal difference between the different luminaria is found in the rendering of the domes and in the layout of the tunnels.
The domes are the large chambers rising up to 10 metres high that provide the focal points. The tunnels connect the domes and determine the journey the visitor will take. The luminaria also feature ‘pods’ - alcoves where people can sit and relax out of the way of the other visitors.
Each luminarium is a dazzling maze of winding paths and soaring domes where Islamic architecture, Archimedean solids and Gothic cathedrals meld into an inspiring monument to the beauty of light and colour.
more: MIRACOCO | MIRAZOZO | AMOCOCO | LEVITY II | LEVITY III
