Art visual np2

Since September, my friend Sofia Krimizi has been teaching a studio in the first year of the Pratt Institute 's undergraduate program. The assignment consisted in a series of three projects related to each other which was exploring both the notion of mass/void and the notion of joint. Several projects can be said to have been successful but the two following ones reached a level of intelligence that is rare in this early stage of the studies. The first one has been designed by Khilna Shah . She managed to create a model working only in tension and which allow enough elasticity in order to carry a variable amount of weights that would modify the structure's morphology. The second project, created by Inti Rojanasopondist is divided into two clear different phases. The first one is a sort of clothe assembled by wooden pieces in friction that give to the model a acupuntural masochism dimension. The second phase is a monumental labyrinth which paths are visible from everywhere but...

Yojiro Imasaka is currently achieving his Master in Fine Arts in Pratt Institute and his N ew Works has been exhibited this year at the Steuben Gallery in New York. Those photographs explore the interstitial voids between high buildings, thus creating some ambiguous corridors driven by a gradient light.

Last May, I published two of the three projects ( Another Dance Macabre and Underground City ) from Thomas Leeser's studio in Pratt Institute that I wanted to show; here is the third one. Stadium Tower in Detroit is a project narrated by Kendra James who proposes a monument to Detroit's status of "ruin-city" by erecting a frenzied building hosting a bunch of various sizes stadium and a car-park race track. This project is the expression of the non-thaumaturge power of architecture and thus an invitation to sublimate problems rather than trying to solve them.

Spatiology is a book written (and drawn) by Vittorio Giorgini , former teacher at the Pratt Institute who exposes among other fields, his interest for the geometrical and physical construction of topological thin shell structures. The book is rich of various drawings illustrating the geometrical processes applied to simple surfaces in order to achieve topological characteristics. This research matches with Giorgini's obsession for the minimal impact of a building on the ground. We can observe this obsession through the Casa Saldarini (Italy 1962) and the Liberty Center (done with Pratt's students in New York 1976) but also in other projects designed by the Italian architect which are using a more "industrial" architectural vocabulary. A video is available on youtube showing Giorgini in the garden of the Casa Saldarini talking (in Italian) about his small scales shells but also about the house itself (starting after the 5th minute) Casa Saldarini Liberty Center

Professor Ivan Shumkov and his crew of courageous Pratt students are opening this Monday at 6:00PM an exhibition on Le Corbusier 's work entitled Miracle Boxes . Pratt being one school that claims itself as fully part of the avant garde, it is quite refreshing to see that this claim still allows an exhibition on one of the most important modernist architect. Here is the text related to the exhibition and the associated lectures: Pratt Institute School of Architecture and the Pratt Library will present "Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes", a multidisciplinary, three-part exhibition on the work of renowned Swiss-French architect, urbanist, designer, writer, and painter Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), who is considered by many to be the most important architect of the 20th century, starting August 30, 2010. "Miracle Boxes," the first New York exhibition dedicated entirely to the work of Le Corbusier, is curated by Ivan R. Shumkov, Ph.D., adjunct ass...

Let's start this new Academic Year with a refreshing first year's student work. Roberto Godinez was in Enrique Limon 's studio at Pratt Institute last semester and following the rule of the assignment (aggregation of a standard element composing a landscape, then appropriation of this landscape by a wooden architecture), he created this beautiful space of meditation under the rocks (or concrete blocks) he first set.

A bit more than six months ago, I published Shawn Sims & Erik Martinez 's Thesis Research for Michael Chen and Jason Lee's undergrad thesis studio [ CRISIS FRONTS ] at Pratt Institute. This article is about the project that came out of this research. Excursions on Volume is a study about freight and its participation to counterfeit market. Shawn and Erik thus created their own "counterfeit" freight production by designing a harbor that creates its own terrain thanks to the containers' weight. In fact, the containers are sitting on a mechanism that dredges the ooze in the bottom of the Hudson River and thus transforms a deep muddy material into a physical more or less solid reclaiming land. The heaviest the container is, the most effective the process of solidification which produces an interesting contradiction with capitalism's eternal wish of profitability. In fact, the most effective container is the one that did not succeed to make itself cheap (i....