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Design

New Eco-Inspired Gallery Presents Contemporary Art Within a Vine-Covered Exhibition Space

IK LAB is a new art gallery concept in Tulum, Mexico founded by Guggenheim descendent and Tulum resident Santiago Rumney Guggenheim and designed by Jorge Eduardo Neira Serkel. The open air exhibition space is located at Neira Sterkel’s upscale eco resort Azulik, and eschews all elements associated with the traditional white cube gallery. Instead of static walls, IK LAB contains undulating cement surfaces that meld into overhead pathways and leaf-shaped podiums. Bejuco, a vine-like plant native to the region, fills in the areas not covered by waves of cement and forms the circular openings that dot the gallery’s slatted walls and ceiling.

Guests are invited to walk barefoot through the space to get a tactile sense of the built environment’s textures. The gallery’s cement walls mute most external sounds. This allows any noise produced during contemplation to be echoed and amplified, creating ambient auditory sounds experienced in tandem with the architectural design.

IK Lab opened April 20th with their inaugural exhibition Alignments, which is comprised of work by Artur Lescher, Margo Trushina, and Tatiana Trouvé. In addition to mounting contemporary art exhibitions, the new gallery will also host an avant-garde residency program that will invite guests to interact with the unique architecture. The gallery is open to the public every day from 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. (via Dezeen)

Art Design

Soaring Wire Mesh Buildings Cast Ethereal Shadows Over Coachella Music Festival

Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi (previously), known for his massive architectural sculptures made of wire, built three transparent structures for this year’s Coachella music festival in California. Titled ‘Etherea’, the sculptural series was comprised of three identical buildings in different sizes, inspired by Neoclassical and Baroque aesthetics. The buildings were illuminated at night with a hazy lavender glow that emphasized the illusion of Etherea’s solidity. You can hear Tresoldi share more about his work in a TED talk, and see previous installations on his website, Instagram, and Facebook. (via Ignant)

Photography

A Rare Glimpse at a Deserted Great Wall of China Captured by Andres Gallardo Albajar

This past February architectural photographer Andres Gallardo Albajar traveled to the Great Wall of China where he was able to take in a rare sight—one of the seven wonders of the world without a single soul to be seen. Albajar had expected to create the same tourist-filled images as others who visited the architectural feat, however when he arrived he found a thick fog encapsulating the structure. The dense cover may have been a deterrent for tourists, but this particular weather added further mystery to the deserted landscape Albajar captured in this recent series.

“I was expecting big amounts of people, even lines to access or things like that, but for my surprise there was very few people, which allowed me to capture the wall with no people, which in my opinion helps to create a more surreal and magic feeling,” Albajar tells Colossal.

You can view more of the Spanish photographer’s work, including his multi-part series on urban geometry, on his website, Instagram, and Behance.

Design

Artificial Island is the First of Nine Proposed Floating Cultural Destinations in Copenhagen Harbor

A tiny, man-made island floats near the center of Copenhagen Harbor. Rooted inside of the wooden platform is a single linden tree, which gives the 215-square-foot pentagon the appearance of a park rather than a stray dock. Australian architect Marshall Blecher teamed up with Magnus Maarbjerg from Danish design studio Fokstrot to build the public gathering place as a prototype for their project Copenhagen Islands.

The project aims to build a series of similar platforms throughout Copenhagen Harbor with a variety of public purposes. Despite its diminutive size, the current island has already hosted a few small events including a lecture series regarding the future of harbor cities like Copenhagen.

The team has proposed nine islands, each of which can connect to form a larger island, or what the architect’s refer to as a “parkipelago.” Currently there are plans for a stage, coffee shop, sauna, diving board, and mussel farm which will all be accessible via boat. With an increase in large-scale apartment buildings filling the area, Maarbjerg and Blecher hope their plan will bring more cultural opportunities to the expanding coast.

“It was developed to ​introduce life and activity to Copenhagen’s rapidly developing harbour and to ​bring back some of the whimsy that has been lost in ​its development,” said Blecher in Dezeen.

This first stage of the project was funded by the Statenskunstfond and Havnekulturpuljen, a local organization that promotes the expansion of cultural and sporting events in the surrounding harbor. The two are working with Statenskunstfond and other not-for profits to help fund their next stage. The island is currently located in Slusen, in Copenhagen’s South Harbor, but will move north to the area of Refshaleøen later this spring. (via Dezeen)

Animation Design History

Ancient Ruins Reconstructed with Architectural GIFs

Today, views of the world’s ancient architectural wonders are firmly based in their current state of ruin, leaving to visitors’ imaginations the original glory of structures like the Parthenon, Pyramid of the Sun, and Temple of Luxor. NeoMam, in a project for Expedia, has resurrected several ancient buildings through a series of gifs. In a matter of seconds, centuries of natural and intentional damage and decay are reversed to reveal a rare glimpse at what the original structures would have looked like. The creative contractors behind the labor-intensive renderings are Maja Wrońska (previously) and her husband Przemek Sobiecki, who works as This Is Render.  (via designboom)

Design

A National Park-Inspired Chapel Composed of Branching Fractals by Yu Momeoda

Agri Chapel is located within a national park on the northwest coast of Japan’s island of Kyushu. The chapel was constructed by Japanese architect Yu Momoeda, who wanted to reflect the surrounding forest by bringing tree-like forms into the building.

To create the structure’s central dome, Momoeda stacked wooden pillars in the shape of simplistic tree branches. This nature-based support system imitates the branching fractals found in trees, with ascending symmetrical patterns spread throughout the light-filled space. (via Jeroen Apers)

Art

The Subverted Architecture and Twisted Objects of Alex Chinneck

British sculptor Alex Chinneck (previously) upends the steady, reliable nature of banal structures that we interact with every day through his architectural interventions. Overturned swaths of car parking lots, twisted broomstick handles, and inverted building facades are executed with such precise detail that it is difficult to determine where reality ends and surreality begins. Chinneck describes one particular piece to It’s Nice That as “sculpturally bold but contextually sensitive,” which seems an apt description of his entire body of work. You can see more on his website and Instagram. (via It’s Nice That)