The video i made with the help of Zak Leighton. to show off the technique i used to create my ink, stencil designs :)

Un-sustainable But Beautiful - The Shard

The shard is a beautiful building, it is created to look like 4 huge shards of glass that travel along each side of the structure and meet at the tip. Its is the tallest building in Europe and has been constantly praised on how it is so energy efficient and sustainable. But there is many factors to this building which question its sustainability.

“The Tower has enough glass to cover eight football pitches. Each pane was cut by a factory in the Netherlands and fitted in a particular order to create the impression of shimmering. Unfortunately all this glass creates huge solar gain turning the building into a giant greenhouse. To combat this, triple glazing has been used with motorised roller blinds which are activated when the sun comes out. However, updated building regulations meant that designers needed to become 25% more efficient and reduce future buildings’ carbon use and emissions”

The fact the buildings glass, which there is plenty of, comes from a factory in the Netherlands, though this is not a huge distance from London its still a noticeable journey to transport such a large amount of materials. The cost, and emissions make this not very eco-friendly

http://www.lignacite.co.uk/Under-Construction/the-shard.html )

Define Beauty

Beauty, in the dictionary beauty is described as “The quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, colour, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest)”

In design beauty is subjective. There are many people like me who enjoy the use of glass and metal in building design, such as that used on The Shard and The Sage, but also those who think Large stone structures like The Baltic and Gaudi Buildings in Barcelona are what defines beauty. For me beauty is glass and metal, its fluid shapes, it’s the way it reflects the surrounding area. Instead of just taking the shapes of nature it portrays it across its surface, reflecting the sky, or trees, or a river… Buildings like the Gaudi ones in Barcelona to me are hideous. Some stone structures I am really fond of, but these buildings are too eccentric. There is lots of fluid natural designs in the shape and style but there is way to much of it. The overuse of shapes is what I find vulgar about it. Its just too much.

Does beauty change overtime?

Of course. Take a look at castles, the pyramids. Back then many millennia ago the stone structures built in Egypt where most likely considered very beautiful. But building that in the middle of the city nowadays would probably cause a stir and be classed as an ugly eyesore. Modern times came with changes, including materials a shift into not just stone, but now also metal, glass, even wood. So even though design changes overtime. Buildings like Gehry’s Cleveland clinic for Mental Health totally differ from any historic building in almost everyway. Materials, shape, use, location, all aspects are very modern. But just because times have changed doesn’t mean that particular shapes have to change. Places like the houses of parliament and Buckingham palace will most likely never change because of its high standing and royal connection, but going back to the pyramids there are plenty of examples where the shape has been used. Most notably, The Louvre in France has a huge glass pyramid outside. At first it was disliked by many but has now become one of the most recognisable things in Paris. This proves old design, even if it does have a modern twist can still be very beautiful.

What are the problems with beautiful design?

Sustainability, cost, pleasing everyone. There are dozens of problems with a design that is classed as beautiful. Lots of categories can come under sustainability. Some examples are is it being used, does the space it take up become useful. Energy efficiency, buildings like The Sage is not energy efficient, there is a very large space and trying to heat that is useless, heat will escape. Is the building created from recycled materials? Sometimes this can be a good thing but there can be counter effect. A building can be created from recycled materials but if you have to transport that material from a far away place such as a different country it kind of defeats the idea of being eco friendly.

A building also has to be cost effective. This also clashes with the purpose of the structure. If a building cost millions to make and is full of luxury apartments, that are unaffordable then it is not a cost effective building. Creating a building like the shard with its £78 apartments is not very cost effective considering its place in London where many working class people work, most of which who could never afford such an apartment. But on the other hand The Shard is a multi purpose building, full of office space, a hotel and even a restaurant, this makes it slightly more cost effective.

I consider both the Sage and the Shard beautiful pieces of design. But both have many problems. The sustainability factor is a problem with beautiful design. The Shard can be classed as sustainable but can also swing the other way. Speaking of the shard, it has mixed reviews. Some people think it is an eyesore on the London skyline where as others love the way that the building shows the way London is shifting into a futuristic modern city. Not everyone can say a beautiful building is beautiful.

The first images shows a poster I have created to show off the movie jaws. I tried to make something similar to the original poster, trying to get the iconic image of the shark but still create something different and new. I also got some inspiration from some exhibits in museums at Newcastle

Poster from

http://www.impawards.com/

Trip to Newcastle

From my recent trip to Newcastle I was able to compare that certain aspects of design change depending on location. In Hartlepool there is n river running through the town, I think this changes a lot about how a certain area will look. In Newcastle the Tyne river runs through it. This brings about the fact that there are several bridges that have all been designed differently and have there own impact on the area, but also buildings around the river have been created with the thought of reflection and colour in mind.

The sage has been created with a reflected glass surface, this mirrors the sky and the water. Letting it blend into its surrounding area, but on sunny days, reflecting the colours of the sky. I went on a cloudy day so for me the building blended with the sky

Also I have noticed that in Newcastle is hundreds of stone buildings that are very tall and built on slopes and bumps in the land. The streets are grand and the structures old, but still inside these buildings are clothes shops, McDonalds, even the Baltic used to be an old flour mill. The use of old buildings for common shopping areas and museums is frequent in Newcastle. The city is more derived from its old more vintage designs rather than focusing on the few modern buildings it makes a display of grand old structures full of history. It emphasises how Newcastle is an old industrial city.

razorshapes:

Clément Beauvais

Water (2012)

ruineshumaines:

Hesitate // Activate // Deviate by Alexa Meade & Sheila Vand.

Photographs of a portrait Alexa Meade painted on performance artist Sheila Vand’s body while submerged in a pool of milk.

The Building

Designed by Lord Foster on a landmark waterfront site, The Sage Gateshead incorporates outstanding performance spaces of internationally acclaimed acoustic excellence (Hall One and Hall Two), Northern Rock Foundation Hall for rehearsal and performance, a twenty-five room Music Education Centre, The Barbour Room (a sunny entertainment room), plus four bars, The Sir Michael Strake Café and The Brasserie.

It is one of the UK’s most popular venues for conferences and events including weddings, exhibitions, awards ceremonies, large or small scale meetings and more.

The spectacular curved steel roof, which weighs in at 750 tonnes, is made from 3,000 stainless steel panels and 250 glass panels. If the roof were laid flat, its 12,000 square metre area would be big enough to accommodate two football pitches.

Did you know that:

• The stunning £70 million Lord Foster building was his first for the performing arts – providing world class facilities for all kinds of music. Explore the floor plans below to discover more.
• Most of the 3,858 tonnes of steel is hidden from view in the foundations and reinforcing the walls and floors?
• More than 1,100 concrete and steel piles have been drilled into the ground to support the massive structure?
• More than 18,000 cubic metres of concrete has been poured into the foundations of the building – that concrete could fill 23 competition-size swimming pools, make almost 5 million foot-square paving slabs – enough concrete flags to build a path 800 miles long from St James’ Park, Newcastle, to the San Siro Stadium in Milan – and still have enough left to pave over the pitch six times?

( http://thesagegateshead.org/your-visit/the-building/ )

A possible connection between Salvador Dali’s film and Lady Gaga’s perfume Advert

This is the film piece by Salvador Dali, the one in which I feel can connect with the artist Lady Gaga. If you look at some of Gaga’s advertisement piece for her perfume, Fame you can see a slight connection, mainly the scene with the ants ( 3:19 ) crawling all over the hand, just like all the people crawl all over Gaga

I looked into lady gaga and how most of her images are strange, and some do have that style of mixing a calm and chaotic atmosphere. But also I noticed that some of her work could be link to that of surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

Also on further research I actually found some photography pieces by LaChapelle of Lady Gaga (bottom 2).  They are very much in the same style as most of LaChapelle’s work but I think the only thing the images lack is a creative background that is very contrasting to his other work. I feel he has played it easy with these images and is trying to draw more focus to the artist rather than the picture itself.

After more research into David LaChapelle I started to look at more eccentric artist and particularly the likes of Nicki Minaj and lady gaga who make a display of the strange and unusual. I think some of Nicki Minaj’s photography pieces are very similar or could have easily been inspired by LaChapelle.

David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an artist and photographer known for combining a hyper-realistic aesthetic with social messages.

After establishing himself as a fixture in contemporary photography, LaChapelle decided to branch out and direct music videos, live theatrical events, and documentary films. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, The Vines, No Doubt and Florence and the Machine. His stage work includes Elton John’s The Red Piano and the Caesar’s Palace spectacular he designed and directed in 2004. His burgeoning interest in film led him to make the short documentary Krumped, an award-winner at Sundance from which he developed RIZE, the feature film acquired for worldwide distribution by Lion’s Gate Films. The film was released in the US and internationally in the summer of 2005 to huge critical acclaim, and was chosen to open the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_LaChapelle)

 My thoughts

I think what make LaChapelle stand out is the majority of his work are mainly fashion shoots and they bring a complex and interesting mix of chaos and tranquility. There is always a flow to his images and then something that totally does not belong, but this aspect of his work is what attracts you to it and what keeps you looking