OZ | August 1st, 2008
| Photography |
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At the heart of Marrakech’s Medina resides Djemaa El Fna. A massive marketplace home to snake charmers, Barbary macaque handlers and endless stalls overflowing with oranges.
Motorcycles and donkey carts weave their way through dense crowds where sellers have staked out their territory. Offering everything from traditional medicines to a train like elliptical toy set, featuring George Bush atop a tank pursuing a mining cart bound Osama Bin Laden… Or is Bin Laden chasing Bush?
As the sun begins to set, rows of food stalls are quickly erected offering local tastes amidst an energetic setting where stall servers compete to usher in passer-bys.
Djemaa El Fna, a Square like no other.
Continue reading ‘Djemaa El Fna’
OZ | July 19th, 2008
| Architecture and Future |
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Floods or their imminent threat plagued the world last month from southern China to areas surrounding the Mississippi. While their effect on the natural landscape maybe temporary, 2004’s catastrophic Tsunami resulted in permanent coastal changes. With an accelerating increase in rising ocean levels, we can expect earth’s landscape to change more dramatically. At current rates, the Maldives will vanish before century’s end.
In popular media, engineering and architecture don’t offer salvation. Flooded urban landscapes provide a dramatic backdrop where those that survive… adapt. A watershed London serves as backdrop in FreakAngels, “a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Desolation Jones) and illustrated by Paul Duffield”. FreakAngels opens with a startling pane featuring London’s disintegrating Houses of Parliament engulfed by water (Top Image). Elevated water levels have startling transformative effects on architecture. Witnessing the Richard Rogers designed Millennium (O2) Dome jutting out of the water in episode thirteen brings forth fascinating possibilities; one character declares “I could have turned it into a great big solar still”.
Continue reading ‘A Watershed World’
OZ | June 3rd, 2008
| Architecture and Books |
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Two giants of modernist architecture have their works captured in noteworthy books.
Continue reading ‘Modernist Architecture Captured’
OZ | May 31st, 2008
| Film |
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Once upon a time the kaleidoscopic menagerie of colors in Speed Racer were more grounded.
The Wachowski Brothers latest directorial effort following The Matrix is an overload on the senses, with live action colors “further ramped up digitally in post production.” Green, purple, yellow, orange and red emblazen the sets as outlined in two Los Angeles Times features, A Futuristic, Midcentury Movie Set for ‘Speed Racer’ and A ‘Speed Racer’ Time Warp.
Concept Artist Peter Popken offers an alternative conceptual route never taken via his blog.
OZ | May 26th, 2008
| Architecture |
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Three distinct art forms converge on the corner of Broadway and Cloverfield Boulevard in Santa Monica. A building clad in graffiti since 1991, by famed graffiti writers Slick, Risk, Den and Severe, now houses the digital artists of editorial studio Rock Paper Scissors and visual effects boutique a52. The latter perhaps best remembered for their avant-garde title design work on HBO’s Carnivale, and Rome.
The building’s interior, once home to Producer Andrew Vajna’s (Rambo:First Blood, Terminator 2, Total Recall) Cinergi Pictures (Die Hard with a Vengeance, Judge Dredd, Nixon), has been redesigned by architect Bruce Bolander for Rock Paper Scissors/a52 owners Angus Wall and Linda Carlson. After fifteen years in West Hollywood, they decided to head west and set-up shop in the digital artist hub, Santa Monica.
Continue reading ‘Santa Monica’s ‘Graffiti Building’’
OZ | May 26th, 2008
| Special Feature |
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Last month’s debilitating hack overshadowed the one year anniversary of ArTect.net. Plans to celebrate this milestone have been oft delayed due to my continued presence in Morocco working on next Summer’s Prince of Persia film. Further compounded by the need to correct browser specific format issues stemming from the hack and subsequent backend upgrade.
So to commemorate, a compilation of features from the past year, culled from ArTect.net’s database of approximately one hundred and fifty articles.
Ocean Arcologies | An area of particular fascination since childhood, Ocean Arcologies equally captured the imagination of ArTect.net’s readership. Read by over ten thousand unique visitors within a month of the article’s publication and linked by over a dozen blogs.
The issue of ocean arcologies as potential city-states was recently a topic on Geoff Manaugh’s superlative BLDGBLOG. This following an article in Wired about “a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires who hope to develop a permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.”
Continue reading ‘ArTect.net: A Year of Articles’
OZ | April 13th, 2008
| Advertising and Automotive |
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Considering the proliferation of sub compact low cost cars in fast growth countries, exemplified by TATA’s venture to create a car costing a mere two and half thousand dollars, this joke is that much more ingenious.
Thanks to Penn for sending this. Author unknown.
OZ | March 23rd, 2008
| Architecture, Books and Events |
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En route to Marrakech I finally began turning the pages of Erik Larson’s factual based bestseller, Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.
From Marrakech, the Pink City, to the White City… Eric Larson’s opus captures Chicago circa 1890’s during the building of an empire. An inside look at the nation’s leading architects developing the 1893 World’s Fair in record time amidst a turmoil marred process. While nearby a handsome doctor created his own fortune at the expense of others through swindling, murder and devious architecture.
The architecture of the World’s Fairs exuded grandeur and scale, eliciting awe and highlighting the march of progress whilst celebrating the accomplishments and ingenuity of humanity. The Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the World’s Columbian Exposition, was no different. While spearheaded by Chicago based Burnham & Root, numerous architectural luminaries participated from Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles McKim to Richard Morris Hunt and Sophia Hayden Bennett, the first American woman to receive an architecture degree. It became known as the White City for its abundant use of white stucco and electrically lit promenades courtesy Tesla and Westinghouse.
Continue reading ‘The White City’
Perspective, the Journal of the Art Directors Guild & Scenic, Title and Graphic Artists has been made available for free download. The magazine offers a fascinating look at the set design and art direction behind film & television productions.
Considering the difficulty in attaining copies in the retail stream, the free availability of issues in PDF format is a welcome move by the Guild. Unlike its cousins, American Cinematographer or the quarterly visual effects journal Cinefex, the articles in Perspective are frequently written by the artistic practitioners themselves.
The most recent February/March issue includes features on The Spiderwick Chronicles, Into the Wild, Best Picture Oscar nominee There Will be Blood and winner No Country for Old Men, Fox reality series Hell’s Kitchen and the CBS series Moonlight. Also featured, 5D: The Future of Immersive Design written by Minority Report production designer Alex McDowell, production designer John Mutto and art director Judy Cosgrove.
Continue reading ‘Perspective’
OZ | February 25th, 2008
| Architecture |
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Where architect Santiago Calatrava transformed sculpture into architecture, the principals of Beijing architecture firm MAD, Yansong Ma, Hayano Yosuke and Qun Dang, push the boundaries even further. In a previous life, founder Yansong Ma might have been a glassblower. Today, advances in engineering allow such designs as the Absolute World Towers (above) in Mississauga, Canada and the Guangzhou Twin-Tower (appended) to become reality.
Continue reading ‘Architecture with a Dash of MADness’
