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Design

A Wind-Up Bamboo Passenger Pigeon by Haptic Lab

The Flying Martha Ornithopter is a mechanical toy that when wound, flaps its wings through the air just like a real bird. The simple invention is built entirely from bamboo and Mulberry paper, and released just like a paper airplane. The ornithopter was built by Haptic Lab to honor the very last passenger pigeon, Martha, who died while in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Haptic Lab believes the invention is symbolic of humanity’s role in a rapidly changing world. “Like our other projects at Haptic Lab, the Flying Martha ornithopter aims to connect people to their physical environment, to one another, and to the planet as a whole,” says the design studio. “The Flying Martha celebrates the spirit of invention and discovery essential to humanity’s survival and to the survival of our planet.”

Each ornithopter is built to reflect the true size of the extinct bird, with a wingspan of 16 inches. The handmade nature of the toy bird allows its user to customize its flight, solving problems to discover the invention’s best flight path. By a slight twist of the tail to the left or right, its flight course is altered, giving the owner full control of how the bird flies.

The project is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. You can see more projects by Haptic Lab on their website, Instagram and Facebook. (via Kottke)

Design

A Bamboo Recreation Facility Inspired by the Lotus Flower Blooms in Thailand

The Panyaden International School is an education center located in Chiang Mai, Thailand built entirely from natural materials. Architecture firm Chiangmai Life recently designed a covered recreation hall for the school’s sports teams, creating a 2,500-square-foot bamboo terrace that echos the Buddhist values found in the school’s curriculum. The lotus-inspired structure was built without any steel reinforcements or other manmade materials, and stays naturally cool in the city’s humid climate while also withstanding high-speed winds and earthquakes. (via Inhabitat)

Design

The First Annual International Bamboo Architectural Biennale Explores Material’s Use in Contemporary Design

Last fall the very first International Bamboo Architecture Biennale premiered in the small village of Baoxi, China, placing eighteen permanent works by twelve international architects within the traditionally agriculture-centered town. The biennale, curated by artist Ge Qiantao and architect George Kunihiro, reveals how the traditional material can be incorporated into contemporary design. The plant serves as the base to new buildings in the village including a youth hostel and a ceramics museum, which Baoxi hopes to draw tourism to through supplementary infrastructures such as a visitors building, hotel, and learning center. (via My Modern Met)

Design

A Wood Turned Bamboo Death Star by Frank Howarth

In this new timelapse video, woodworker Frank Howarth (previously) demonstrates how he designed and constructed a replica of the Star Wars’ Death Star out of bamboo. The Portland-based designer, who also has a degree in architecture from Harvard, shares much of his behind-the-scenes processes through his wildly popular YouTube channel. I expected to skip through different parts of the video, but Howarth has an uncanny ability to film himself working, it really is worth watching the whole thing straight through. Even the sound design is great.

Art

Ai Weiwei’s Suspended Bamboo and Silk Beasts Highlight Ancient Chinese Mythology Inside a Paris Department Store

Ai Weiwei‘s (previously here and here) first exhibition in France is not staged at the Centre Pompidou nor the Palais de Tokyo, but within Paris’s Le Bon Marché, the city’s oldest department store founded in 1852. At its center the exhibition includes 20 illuminated silk and bamboo creatures that float above the cosmetics department, a contradiction of subject matter that Ai embraces as he allows the two vastly different worlds to collide momentarily during his store-bound exhibition.

The show, titled “Er Xi” or “Child’s Play,” is in many ways tied to the artist’s family and childhood. His father, the Chinese poet Ai Qing, passed on stories to Ai of his time spent living and studying art in Paris in the 30s. Thinking about his father’s history within the city, Ai also contemplated his own background with the art of kite making, enlisting 12 kite makers from the Shandong Province in China to build the sculptures from similar materials he used to make his first kite at the age of ten.

In addition to these hanging sculptures, Ai also installed work in the department store’s front windows and throughout the store, including a 65-foot dragon on Le Bon Marché’s ground floor. Weaving together 2D and 3D works, Ai illuminate’s the mythology found in the 2,000 year-old “Shan Hai Jing” (Classic of Mountains and Seas), a series of traditional Chinese children’s fables that reference birds, fish, and dragons.

“Introducing the fantastic within a retail space strikes the imagination of customers, visitors, passersby,” said Ai in a statement. “We all lead parallel lives in this other world of dreams, fantasies and feats. We must learn to coexist with them as they are an integral part of our humanity; to embrace our mythology. Children know how to do this naturally. This exhibition speaks to our inner child,” the artist said in a statement.

“Er Xi” runs at Le Bon Marché in Paris through February 20, 2016. (via Designboom)

Art Design

A New Japanese Painting Supply Store Lines its Walls With 4,200 Different Pigments

Thousands of pigments fill glass vials below the slatted wood ceilings of the new concept Pigment, an art supply laboratory and store that just opened in Tokyo by company Warehouse TERRADA. The store design was created by architect Kengo Kuma, utilizing bamboo and large open spaces to create a sense of unity with the outdoors and spark the imagination of those who enter.

In recent years fewer artists have turned to more traditional methods of art making, diminishing the number of successors to these older forms. Pigment aims to provide hard-to-find tools for the preservation of older paintings while also inspiring the latest generation of artists to incorporate these older materials into newer works. In addition to selling brushes, pigments, special glues, and papers (some used in Japanese painting since the Meiji period), the store will also provide workshops by both art professors and manufacturers of the supplies housed in-store.

If you can’t make it to Japan to experience the space in person, you can browse Pigment’s large supply of pigments and rare materials on their online store here. (via Designboom)