# Interaction Between the Elements by Rietveld Landscape

Interaction Between the Elements is a beautiful project by dutch office Rietveld Landscape (Grand Prix de Rome 2006) which attempt to save a North Sea island, Terschelling from a massive flooding.
The project proposes to create multiple dunes by introducing hundreds of stakes in the ground which would recover the sand freed from vegetation and carried by the wind.
Here is the introduction text:

Interaction between the elements

Rising sea levels are posing a threat to Terschelling, a North Sea island and UNESCO monument. In 2008, a report addressing this threat appeared, and Rietveld Landscape was asked to advise on the opportunities offered by the report. According to Rietveld Landscape’s vision, the symbiosis between human activity and impressive natural processes accounts for Terschelling’s attraction to inhabitants and outsiders alike – a fact that should guide all attempts at dealing with the rising of the sea level.

Because it is impossible to predict with sufficient certainty when the sea will have what level, flexible strategies for East- and West-Terschelling are needed: interventions that follow the movement of the water and can be adjusted through time. The activity of a huge drifting dune will be stimulated by removing its current vegetation, and the power of the wind will be used to transport its sand. In this way, the growth of the island will outpace the rising of the sea level.

Although the proposed interventions have been designed specifically for Terschelling, the strategy informing it can be exported to other islands in the North Sea that are threatened by the sea in a similar manner. Read more >>>

Client: Atelier Fryslan
Designers: Rietveld Landscape
In collaboration with Deltares
Location: Boschplaat Terschelling
Status: vision 2009

#Faster than china by FREAKS freearchitects.

Here is a (very) short film made by a young interesting office FREAKS freearchitects (Paris, FR), this movie as been made during august 2007 maybe we can qualified it as a "pre-crisis" work. so far even if the message of the video is pretty tough, the pictures are kind of enthusiastic!!

Enjoy!

# (UN)WALL /// the art of Vincent Mauger

The stunishning and poetic work of Vincent Mauger is perfectly fitting in this (UN)WALL thematic. Maugers use of simple material as concrete block, brick cardboard or plywood, that are cheap and daily used to build walls, shows a new face when it comes out as art pieces. The simple absence of ciment or any junction between brick or pipes just let us reading the landscapes and the constinuous surfaces.


more : here & here
current event : here

# Dystopia : Architecture in the clouds.

Here is a serie of artworks of the French artist Christophe Dessaigne , his work is a mixture of pictures texture and photographic effect. He's playing with the scale of the original object to create a new dimension, each of his pictures is telling a story and creating a new fantastic world. In his dark visions you can notice that his favorite movies are Dark city (Alex Proyas) and Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), some of his works appears on books, CDs or magazines covers.

What follows is a selection of the more architectural ones.

More here & much more here
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# Installations of Anthony Gormley

Here is the pretty impressive installations of Anthony Gormley (I discover his work at the kunsthall in Rotterdam in January). Gormley's work is about human body in space, compare to his other sculptures more traditional in a way, those installations create an interesting relation between the human body volume at a big scale and the visitor/observer size and body. More over the quality of the fabrication of those art piece is really amazing. We have to notice that Gormley is one of the few artists using last technologies to push there art to another level of complexity and meaning (like the french artist Xavier Veilhan) for example his collaboration with ARUP for several projects (see this former post).

More here

Much more on Gormley's website : here

# Empty streets

A new serie of emptiness, after La Soufriere, Paris, Tokyo or London, this time the void is in the streets of Los Angeles, this serie of pictures by the photographer Matt Logues, let me think that I'm fascinated by this kind of pictures that is becoming a "genre". It's even more astonishing when you know the usual density of cars, traffic jam on highways or people in the streets of L.A.
This is an echo of this good article (by our friends of NDLR).

Empty London, 28 days later (Danny Boyle).


Vider Paris by Nicolas Moulin.


Rush hour in L.A.


Matt Logue 's website : here

# The utopian cities of Clément Bagot

The art works of Clément Bagot are combining large and micro scale. In fact, the distance between the observer and the art piece define the size of the worlds that Bagot is creating. In the one hand he's producing huge drawing like cartography or large scale microscopic views and in the other hand he's crafting impressiv models of citys, tower, floating islands. All of those are higly detailed and made of paper, cardboard, wood and plexiglas.