# Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco

This mask has been designed for the original theatre play, Rhinoceros by Romanian/French play writer Eugene Ionesco in 1957.
Rhinoceros depicts an imaginary epidemic disease called rhinocerite in a city which scares all inhabitants who become rhinoceros. Symbol is quite obvious, fighting against gregarious behaviour of people in general and French especially during Algeria's war.
This play even inspired some canadian politicians who created the Rhinoceros Party in 1963 and last for thirty years.

# Tomas Saraceno's Flying Green House

Here is one of the tenth International Sonsbeek Sculpture Exhibition's work in Arnhem (Netherlands). This Flying Green House was designed by Tomas Saraceno and consists of a 10m diametre sphere which can shelter the green house's plants, surrounded by 31 other spheres ensuring that temperature remains constant.
Let's hope that this work will really exists as a green house, not only as a sculpture.

# Oz's Abri n°177 exhibited in Ivry

Remember this article about DESA, Gaëtan Kohler and Alexandre Pachiaudi awarded in Le Festival des Architectures Vives de Montpellier ? Their abri n°177 is exhibited in Ivry for the week end. You can still see it for Pleins Feux 2008 today at 31st rue Raspail (200m south of City Hall). You can also visit their website OzCollective.com
Anyway, one more time, congratulations to them for managing to achieve this object with very low budgets.

# Le Refuge by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier's building for the Salvation Army is situated in the 13rd arrondissement in Paris and is still open for visit until tomorrow. It has been built in 1933 and renovated by Le Corbusier himself (the principal facade used to be a glass curtain wall) after WWII. Nowadays, 300 single men are living inside it.

# European Heritage Open Days

European Heritage Open Days / Journées Européenne du Patrimoine / Giornate Europee del Patrimonio / Tag des Offenen Denkmals / Jornadas Europeas de Patrimonio / Open Monumentendag

Enjoy visits you can not achieve usually !

# Robot Hands Get a Grip on the Future

Wired currently proposes an article about robotic hand's evolution from the 60's to nowadays.

# Architecture Principe N°1 Claude Parent / Paul Virilio

Et nous sommes donc devant l'impérieuse nécessité d'accepter comme un fait historique la fin de la verticale comme axe d'élévation, la fin de l'horizontale comme plan permanent, ceci au bénéfice de l'axe oblique et du plan incliné qui réalisent toutes les conditions nécessaires à la création d'un nouvel ordre urbain et qui permettent également une réinvention totale du vocabulaire architectural.
Ce basculement doit être compris pour ce qu'il est: la troisième possibilité spatiale de l'architecture

non official translation (which actually means open to suggestion):
We are in front of the imperious necessity to accept as an historical fact, the end of verticality as an elevation axis, the end of horizontality as a permanent plan, in the benefit of oblique axis and lean plan which achieve all the needed conditions to create a new urban order, and which also allow to totally reinvent architecture's vocabulary.
This shift should be understood for what it actually is: the third architecture's spatial possibility.

# WOODEN TRICKS

Is it sustainable to ride a bike to go to work? for sure, but maybe you can go over that and ride a wooden bike to go to work, there's no limit for a tree hugging hippie !

I heard about wooden bicycles, then I made a small research... and the result is way better than what I was imaginating! check this out!!





gota bikes (brazil)








woodbike.com




DIY bike (maybe the best one!)




some more...





more stuff about this subject: wheel fanatik
designboom



RIDE OR DIE !

# R-O-B by Gramazio & Kohler in Venice's biennal

Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler are going more and more into details in their reseach about robotic aided construction. After Gantenbein Winery (see the movie) and their Seroussi Pavilion's Competition entry, they invaded Switzerland's Venice's Biennal Pavilion with their bricks walls assembled by R-O-B (he's a robot by the way !).
I would say qualities and faults are quite the same than for other projects; notably, bricks are ugly and the space created could have been much more interesting... In addition it would have been great to see the machine assembling the walls LIVE !
Anyway, interesting people are too rare to be devaluated so let's thank and congratulate Switzerland for its choice !

# Tadashi Kawamata's Gandamaison in Versailles

Here is last Tadashi Kawamata's last work in La Maréchalerie in Versailles achieved after a workshop in l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles. Result is a ten installations exhibition built with only one material: market crates
Gandamaison comes from Japanese word for Transformers (Gandam) and French word for House (Maison).
Opening will be on September 18th and exhibition will run until december 13rd (except for the outdoor installation until october 4th)

download pdf

# Recycled Toy Furniture by Greg Lynn in Venice's Biennal

Venice's Biennal's Golden Lion (Best Installation) has been won by Greg Lynn for his recycled toy furniture which continues his research about modular construction elements.
I quite like the jury's explanation:

The jury found Greg Lynn’s experimental recycled-toys furniture to best embody the Biennale theme of Out There: Architecture Beyond building. The jury took interest in those projects in which experimentation took on the character of research, and thus to redirect the naïve ambition to achieve a novel solution to a difficult problem in a single daring leap toward increasing the body of knowledge and technique that the entire field can continue to develop. Though remaining at the level of a provocation rather than a prototype, the recycled-toy furniture advances the digital-form problem to a new level that intrinsically engages traditional architectural concerns such as meaning, aesthetics, and advancing fabrication technology with the recycling, an issue of broad, immediate and pressing concern.

pictures found on dezeen

# Design and craft

Here you will see the work of Minimaforms a young architect office based in London on the project "becoming animal" much more on the website http://www.minimaforms.com/

Now you got an idea of what I'm gonna prepare for the next ESA's halloween party!