Memory Cloud Taps Tradition At Texas A&M
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Memory Cloud embodies Texas A&M tradition with an active matrix of animated LEDs. (Courtesy Metalab)
Re:site and Metalab’s site-specific installation for Texas A&M’s 12th Man Memorial Student Center uses 4,000 networked LEDs to create an animated display that speaks to tradition as well as to the future.
The Corps of Cadets. Kyle Field. The 12th Man. Reveille. Texas A&M has more than a few strong traditions, most of which are centered around and given expression by the university’s football games and its alumni’s illustrious history of military service. At the same time, the school is well known for its robust and forward thinking science and engineering departments. Both of these characteristics factored into the conception for a permanent sculpture to inhabit A&M’s new Memorial Student Center (MSC). Created by art collaborative RE:site and design and fabrication studio Metalab (both located in Houston) the sculpture, titled Memory Cloud, is a chandelier of 4,000 white LEDs that are animated by two distinct feeds: one derived from archival footage of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, the other from live infrared cameras that monitor people passing through the center’s atrium.
“To interpret tradition visually we thought of moving patterns of people,” said Norman Lee of RE:site. “A&M has a strong marching band. If you remove the specifics of what the band is wearing and focus on the movements, they’re the same from 1900 to now. Once you reduce the figures from archival footage to silhouette patterns, you can’t identify the different points in time. Time and space collapse and bring together the school’s tradition in visual terms.”
Eavesdrop Midwest Goes to the Kentucky Derby
At Churchill Downs the day before the Derby. (The Architect’s Newspaper)
Maybe You Lost My Number: Eavesdrop wants to know why we weren’t invited to your Kentucky Derby party, De Leon and Primmer. You guys are practically the only cool architecture firm in the River City! We were down in Louisville the weekend of the Derby and wandered (hungover, naturally) past your office on Sunday morning.
Flint Public Art Project’s Free City Fest Reclaims Razed Chevy Site
Raphaele Shirley, Spinning Circle/Shooting Cloud, 2013. (RA Littlewolf and Whisper Willow)
The ongoing efforts of artists and designers to reignite the spark of downtown development in aging industrial cities face no simple task. But as architects and developers begin to put pencil to paper, the best public art projects draw on the spiritual side of that renewal.
Flint, Michigan’s inaugural Free City Festival, held May 3-5, did just that when it revived a mile-long stretch of now-razed Chevrolet plants with public art, transformational lighting displays and a reverberating gospel choir.
One World Trade Center Plays Light Tricks
One World Trade Center appears to glow in the sunlight. (William Menking / AN)
The 1973 World Trade Center twin towers by Minora Yamasaki were not great buildings but in various light conditions or in the dark of the night they would take on a mute sculptural quality that New Yorkers now remember with fondness or nostalgic reverence. Now something quiet similar may be happening with the replacement to the tower—One World Trade Center. In certain light and atmospheric conditions the top floors of the building seem to glow like a bright incandescent light build.
Oren Safdie’s New Play, “False Solution,” To Debut on June 16th
Oren Safdie.
False Solution, the final play in Oren Safdie’s trilogy (Private Jokes, Public Spaces and The Bilbao Effect) on contemporary architecture is finally set to take the stage on June 13th in New York City. The play will be followed by an official press opening on June 16th at the off-Broadway experimental theatre, La MaMa ETC in Manhattan.
Q+A> Design Week with Todd Bracher
Todd Bracher, right.
For the final installment of AN‘s New York Design Week Q+A series, we talked with Todd Bracher about his Nest and forthcoming Asa collections, his design philosophy, and inspirations. And Kevin Starck stopped in to visit, as well.
How did your collaboration with HBF come about?
I reached out originally to Kevin Starck a few years ago, who was the vice president of design at that time. I’ve been in the [design] business for 15 years but worked mostly overseas, so I wanted to find the right partner [stateside]. HBF entered my radar because they produce European craftsmanship; their products are really high quality. A year later a mutual friend reintroduced us and that ignited the relationship.
Providence Considers Plan for a More Pedestrian Friendly Kennedy Plaza
All images courtesy TimNelson3D.com / Union Studio Architecture & Community Design
Not unfamiliar with daring urban design endeavors, Providence, RI is gearing up for a $20 million transformation of Kennedy Plaza, a major transportation hub and park dating to 1848 in the city’s downtown. The overhaul designed by Providence-based Union Studio Architects was announced in late April and call for upholding the plaza’s principal position as a public-transit terminal, preserving the 2002 intermodal station. Change in the site’s layout will relocate bus kiosks to the perimeter of the plaza so as to create supplementary space for public and private activities to enliven the space.
Plus Pool Needs Money For Mock-Up
Rendering of the Plus Pool on the East River. (Courtesy Plus Pool)
For nearly a decade now, New Yorkers have been turning their focus on revitalizing the city’s waterfront, a trend that has only grown in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. WXY Architecture’s East River Blueway and Bloomberg’s Vision 2020 are two examples of initiatives that seek to build sustainable, accessible, and engaging shorelines for the city. But with summer approaching and the days heating up, what city dwellers may want most from their estuaries is a cool, clean dip. Brooklyn-based design firms Family Architects and PlayLab hope to make that dream possible, but they still need $250,000 to get started.
Q+A> Design Week with Christian Rasmussen
Christian Rasmussen. (Courtesy Fritz Hansen)
On the opening day of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) at the Javits Center, AN sat down with Christian Rasmussen, the head of design for Fritz Hansen, to discuss the company’s design strategies, its philosophy on collaboration, and to test out the new Favn and Ro seating that has just been released in the U.S.
What are your impressions of ICFF?
It’s getting better every year and I’m seeing more interesting stuff. I was surprised last year and this one is even better. Last month we were in Milan but it’s so big. I like that ICFF is more focused and offers a tighter overlook. You can spend more time in each booth as opposed to Milan where you have to move very fast to see everything. Overall it’s really positive.
On View> Water_Works Competition Exhibit Re-Imagines Gowanus, Brooklyn
One of the winning entries in the competition. (Courtesy Gowanus by Design)
Tonight, Gowanus by Design (GbD), a community-based urban advocacy group, will launch a new exhibition showing award winners and other selected entries of its Water Works Competition at The Old American Can Factory Gallery in Brooklyn. The opening reception for the exhibit will be held on May 22 from 6:30 to 9:00p.m. The intent of GbD’s competition was to design a new community resource to replace the site of the old Douglas Degraw pool with a Combined Sewer Overflow retention facility.
Oyler Wu, The Graduation Experts, Design Another Pavilion for SCI-Arc
Looking up at Storm Cloud (Clifford Ho)
After creating their 2011 and 2012 graduation pavilions for SCI-Arc, Oyler Wu has once again produced a striking structure LA-based school, this time on the occasion of their 4oth anniversary. Dubbed the Storm Cloud pavilion, the structure salvages the existing steel from the 2011 Netscape, which served as the school’s graduation pavilion two years ago. Looking at Storm Cloud, one can hardly tell it shares much of the bones that made up the older pavilion.
Land Crisis Puts Pressure on Lutyens’ Housing Quarter in New Delhi
A house in New Delhi’s Lutyens Bungalow Zone. (Courtesy World Monument Fund)
Indian officials have proposed that high-rises be built on the site of Edwin Lutyens-designed bungalows dating from the 1920s and 1930s, threatening Delhi’s colonial era architecture, according to the Guardian. Lutyens’ Delhi, a 3,000-acre zone containing the Mughal Garden at Rashtrapati Bhavan, has endured monsoons, riots, and acid rain, but now many of the area’s government buildings, parks, and homes have met a new menace: a scheme to loosen planning limitations to permit construction of high-rise structures.
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