ScribeMedia recently recommended Lot-Ek to us. In the video on their website, which is from Postopolis, Lot-Ek founders Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano describe how Lot-Ek recycles industrial shipping containers, using them as raw materials for architecture. As ScribeMedia notes, it’s important to recognize that while we at Groundswell find this process appealing for the reuse of old materials, Lot-Ek is in it for the creative process, not to save the earth.
The video covers three projects that Lot-Ek is currently working on, ranging from industrial to residential spaces, and the founders raise some interesting questions spurred by the nature of their work. Well worth the watch!
The latest issue of PRINT Magazine focuses on “the ways that marketers and designers past and present have answered the populace, molded their perceptions, and spurred them to action.”
They’re coming at it from the Marshall McLuhan slash Guy Debord angle, analyzing communications theory and keeping a stern eye out for propagandistic urges and trends. I read it at the local bookstore (which, sadly, here in Boston means Borders) and highly recommend it.
Chris Jordan creates stunning and startling photographs that highlight the impact of unbridled consumerism.
From his artist’s statement:
“The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.
The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.”
Stencil artists made use of a stop sign’s shadow to craft an anti-war message in Bloomington, Indiana.
The piece itself is was stenciled on the floor using a shadow
cast by a light post at night, and later carefully sprayed with
a ‘camouflage black’ can.
Via designboom.
Global Cities, a recent exhibition at the Tate Modern, presented “films, videos & photographs by more than 20 artists and architects to offer subjective & intimate interpretations of urban conditions” in 10 global cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.
Choosing to focus on the host city as a “touchstone for comparison,” the exhibition includes a wide array of issues, such as sustainability, public space and social inclusion, and draws on data originally assembled for the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2006 Venice Biennale.
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