miniature houses and a ladder to the moon

Steven Nunoda, Ghostown, 2011, and Ladder to the Moon, 2012, die-cut tarpaper/wood, sumi paper, projected video, installation view. 

Part of the My Winnipeg: The Artists' Choice exhibition at Plug In ICA during February/ March 2013 (Photos are taken during the opening).

About the two projects from the curatorial statement [link]: 

"Steven Nunoda’s Ghostown recalls memories endured by both of his parents during the Japanese interment during the Second World War. The installation consists of 80 miniature tarpaper scale models of the cramped shacks Japanese Canadian workers were forced to build for their own incarceration. Looming over the collection of shacks, Nunoda’s Ladder to the Moon provides a beacon of hope and child-like creativeness, as the piece was inspired from a conversation with Nunoda’s own daughter." 

Note: Winnipeg has been the home for Marshall McLuhan among other people.

Plug In ICA

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba

about the building: 

460 Portage Avenue (co-owned and commissioned with the University of Winnipeg) was designed by a collective comprising three firms: David Penner Architect, Peter Sampson Architecture Studio and DIN Projects.

460 is conceived as actively participating in its environs while also allowing the city to be brought inside. A shortcut enables pedestrians to pass through the building without actually entering. This portal is programmed as a gallery space that will expose passers-by to the gallery’s featured exhibits. A unique four storey interior space links the multiple occupants of the building in a manner that is both social and yet elusive, allowing simultaneous glimpses of goings on in disparate parts of the building.  The process of revealing prepares the visitor for the building’s other curiosities such as a rooftop terrace space that will permanently feature a new installation by Dan Graham. The overall architectural aim has therefore been to favour the experiential dimension rather than the formal qualities of the building as object. [via Plug In website]

this May's digital bouquet

Digital bouquet and photo by Maria Toloudi

orthographic people

Beautiful work by Geoff McFetridge

15

15 lbs (6.81 kg) of sticky rice. DZLAB's consumption of one year

Photodotes III: Plug-n-Plant

On May 31, 2013, Industry Lab will open Photodotes III: Plug-n-Plant, an installation/ exhibition examining the relationship between architecture, technology, light, and plants.

Plug-n-Plant is a modular structural system whose blocks are hybrids of water, light, and potential food volumes. The immaterial ingredients are enclosed in transparent plastic containers, and interconnected via fiberoptic cables. The whole system acts both as a spatial element that brings natural light in dark spaces, and also as a living or edible structure.

*Photodotes is the plural form of the greek: φωτοδότης = giver of light, luminary, light donor

Beyond Photodotes III: Plug-n-Plant the exhibition includes the projection of plant images, and videos by biologist, plant scientist, and photographer Kristophe Diaz; images from the Photodotes series by Zenovia Toloudi, and a food event conceptualized and produced by Zenovia Toloudi.

Installation Credits 
Concept, design, and research: Zenovia Toloudi/ Studio Z 
Plant development: Kristophe Diaz 
Construction: Zenovia Toloudi, George Toloudis 
Spatial thanks: Stamboulidis Workshop, Alexandroupolis, Greece
 

Exhibition Credits 
Curated by Zenovia Toloudi/ Studio Z 
Organized by Carly Nix/ Industry Lab 

Industry Lab 
288 Norfolk St., 4th Floor 
Cambridge MA, 02139 
Tel.  (857) 600-1522 
hi@industry-lab.com

literature night

These days that we all celebrate and praise our mom or the mother concept, I myself wanted as well to spend some time to admire the creation(s) of a mom. At an era, where I can hardly manage a(n academic) job and to take care of myself, it is indeed amazing to discover how many more things one individual mom is capable of doing. Although familiar to me, these intellectual achievements are very inspiring, especially when one knows the path they took to eventually come out. At the end, it does not matter where you are but from where did you start. Many thanks to Maria Toloudi

Watch the video [link]

fixing...

[gtroza] fixing my mom's glasses

...my mom's...

[gtroza] fixing my mom's glasses

...glasses

[gtroza] fixing my mom's glasses

Blanc-wall show or making the blank walls green

Patrick Blanc, a French botanist who has collaborated with architects like Herzog &deMeuron and Jean Nouvel, recently presented his work at MFA in Boston. His presentation under the title The Vertical Garden: Biological Design and Urban Architecture was very performative. One could easily guess that by the moment he entered the stage on a jungle-patterned shirt and green hair!

Patick Blanc during the show

Patick Blanc during Q&A

Patrick Blanc is known as the vertical garden inventor. In many of his projects, he populates blank walls with plants in wavy patterns. His plant designs include a lot of tropical biodiversity. His inspiration is driven by many plants and habitats, like karst and limestone cliffs, epiphytes, rocks and inselbergs, aquatics and rheophytes, root systems, and what he calls as plant architecture. 

Patick Blanc's office on water [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc's home [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc working at his office [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc has been interested in the plants' architecture since the time he was studying the tropical forest, where plants need to adapt themselves in order to utilize the 1% of natural light. Due to this minimum light resources, the plants develop a sophisticated adaptation by open themselves up to occupy the maximum surface possible (without any overlap at their leaves). Out of the competition among species (fast versus slow plants), some species will survive (distinction and high variation). It seems that Patrick Blanc took this concept of the wide horizontal surface of highly varied plants in the tropical forest and converted to a vertical surface of plants in the urban setting. Many of his projects have more than 250 species. Questions evolve around which species to use, and which plants can go side by side to avoid diseases and parasites. Lately he has been interested to work not only in surfaces but to expand the concept into vertical gardens with trees, or even three dimensional projects. Although in many of his field trips he discovers instances that architecture and plants that co-exist and co-evolute (or perhaps plants taking over architecture), Patrick Blanc totally separates the two in his projects.

Patick Blanc's house and friend [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Another very interesting concept he mentioned is that of the "living." Patrick Blanc commented that some things are too old to be considered as "living." For example, it is out of scale to consider petrol as living even if it consists out of dead animals. Some of his projects include edible plants. Other very interesting concepts he briefly mentioned are that of the elongation of plants and the black hole plants created during night (eg. Herzog & deMeuron Caixa).

A typical drawing for his plantings [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

One of his staircase plantings [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

During his "show," Patrick Blanc commented indirectly on the role of media and possibly marketing by referring to the different audience reception his projects had between 1986 and 1994. Quoting his words: "1986: Nobody interested, 1994: (same project) big success." To further illustrate the root of his fame, he mentioned that it was first the Art, then the Interior Design and at last Architecture to acknowledge his contribution. This note gives a lot of hope to researchers and designers that are very devoted to their own work, and sometimes work by themselves for many years without anyone being very interested in them. What would I say? Nice days are coming!

the planes of...

...my grandparents

macarons or*

*when french tradition meets the greek family

Note: A macaron is a sweet meringue-based confection made with eggs, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring.