Tribeca Penthouse Apartment, New York via Steven Harris Architects LLP

The Tribeca penthouse apartment designed by Steven Harris, Professor of architecture at Yale - a multi level, 743 square metre, jaw dropping example of architectural design at its finest. 

In my opinion, the stairs are the most spectacular feature of the apartment. Yes, those are 3/4 inch-thick steel treads wrapped in leather and suspended by tension wires spanning across both floor levels. Steel and leather are two of my favourite materials and combined they create something equivalent to a sexy, architectural yeeros. I love how the stairs appear to just float unassumingly within the interior space. Peep the rest of the apartment here

URBAN SPACES

 The latest design concept for the Spur at The High Line via The High Line

 The Spur interior concept via The High Line

 Digital render of the High Line

An aerial view of The High Line, New York 

It's so inspiring to see more councils, cities and municipalities taking the initiative and raising the funds needed to transform mediocre and often unused public spaces into inviting, functional urban spaces.

A remarkable urban reincarnation that best illustrates this transformation is the High Lina at the Rail Yards in New York. The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan's largest industrial district. The High Line operated as a freight rail line between 1934 to 1980, carrying meat to the meatpacking district as well as agricultural goods to the factories and warehouses of the industrial West Side.

Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Their vision was to preserve the entire historic structure, transforming an essential piece of New York's industrial past into an innovative new public space raised above the city streets with views of the Hudson River and city skyline.

The High Line was transformed into a public park built on a 1.45-mile-long elevated rail structure running from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street on Manhattan's West Side. This urban space is a monument to the industrial history of New York's West Side as well as a hopeful model for industrial reuse for other cities around the world. 

Communities need to come together and rally for more urban spaces like this. We have to utilise all the visionary designers, architects, planners and artists in our communities and continue to create these urban spaces. These spaces unite and and inspire people to come together and appreciate the environments in which they reside - and i'm all for that.

A kilometre and a half long, the seaside promenade of the Playa Poniente, Spain used to run parallel to a four-lane road and a row of ground-level parking spaces. An intervention in the 1970s covered it with mediocre paving, lining it with a heavy concrete balustrade 1.2 m high, which noticeably obstructed views of the sea. Access to the sand was only provided at two-hundred-metre intervals by way of ostentatious imperial stairways. The new promenade reduces the urbanised surface and constitutes a complex strip of transition between skyscrapers and beach. It is structured on the basis of a sinuous succession of walls of white concrete that delimit terraces, garden plots, stairs and ramps.The esplanade’s colourful surging forms evoke the gardens of Antoni Gaudí or Burle Marx, while its powerful iconic presence unfolds in a forceful embrace with the skyscrapers along the seafront, ordering them into a unitary body via

MINI-ME // TWINKIND

Photographs via: Twinkind

Far out, this is cool. Hamburg based company, TWINKIND has worked their technological wizardry involving custom engineered 3D photogrammetry scanning and a multi-camera system to produce photorealistic miniature models of yourself (or anyone else). The 3D miniatures measure anywhere between 15cm and 30cm and are made of polymer plaster powder.

What's awesome and unique about TWINKIND is their process. Unlike other 3D modeling companies that can take anywhere up to 20 minutes to perform a full 3D scan, TWINKIND's process only takes a couple of seconds and therefore means that the scans can be altered and rescanned until you're happy with the end result. This speedy process means that you can also scan your pets and toddlers and create an entire miniature family!

Having a miniature you comes at a price though with the smallest figurine starting from 225 Euro. So what do you think of that Herkshire Bathaway?

SEEK BEAUTY IN IMPERFECTION // KINTSUGI

The Japanese have a long tradition of repairing broken ceramics with a lacquer resin mixed with genuine gold powder. It's called 'Kintsugi' or 'Kintsukuroi' meaning ''golden joinery'' in Japanese. It is said that the story of Kintsugi may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, inspiring Japanese craftsmen to seek a new form of repair that could make the broken piece look as good as new, or better. It is said that Japanese collectors acquired such a taste for Kintsugi that some were accused of deliberately breaking prized ceramic pieces in order to have them repaired in gold.

The Japanese believe that when something has suffered damage and has history, it becomes more beautiful and more precious than before. This old Japanese tradition teaches one to cherish imperfection rather than masking it. To see the beauty and value in imperfection where previously we would have only seen detritus  is something I feel is incredibly special. To put into question and shift the perspective of what beauty means. Perhaps we are less ruthless in our approach to damaged and broken things and in turn, more gentle in our approach to those around us who feel damaged or experience brokenness. 

THE ART OF THE BRICK // NATHAN SAWAYA

Yellow, Nathan Sawaya. Photograph via: The Art of the Brick

Red, Nathan Sawaya. Photograph via: The Art of the Brick

Blue, Nathan Sawaya. Photograph via: The Art of the Brick

Tyrannosaurus Rex Skeleton by Nathan Sawaya

Nathan Sawaya is a New York based corporate attorney turned full-time independent LEGO artist. Impressive.

Sawaya's LEGO sculptures take anywhere between a couple of days to a couple of months to create depending on the size and complexity of the form. His sculptural process often begins with a proposed sketch of the form on grid paper and then he will occasionally use Lego Digital Designer software which has virtual bricks programmed with gravitational physics for positioning.  

There's something so relatable and nostalgic about the use of LEGO pieces as a sculptural medium. On average, most of us have built something out of LEGO at some point during our lives. So, to take LEGO and incorporate it into the art world makes one perceive the medium and the art form in an entirely different light. You can go to a museum and admire a sculpture carved from marble but you can't necessarily go home and carve one for yourself. However,  unlike the marble most of us can quite easily get access to some LEGO pieces and create sculptural art of our own. I think it's this nostalgic familiarity of Sawaya's choice of medium that makes the art world seem a lot more 'accessible' and a lot less daunting - something that he should be commended for in my opinion. 

And if that's not quite enough for you to commend him on, how about the 20ft T-Rex skeleton LEGO sculpture he built for Singapore's ArtScience Museum over a summer of 8 to 12 hour days, commanding 80,000 Lego brick pieces? All I'm saying is that I built a small LEGO panda recently measuring in at about four fingers wide and it took me all of an hour. I was quietly chuffed with my efforts after its completion. And did you know that a professor of Mathematics calculated that 6 LEGO pieces can be combined in over 915 million different combinations? I'm even more impressed than I was at the beginning of this post..

Sawaya's art is currently touring museums in a show titles, The Art of the Brick. It's the first exhibition focusing exclusively on LEGO as an art medium. The creations, constructed from countless individual LEGO pieces were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2002. More information on the tour, dates and location can be found on the Art of the Brick Museum page.

MONDAY THREADS

ASOS Quilted Drop Waist Dress available here
PRISM Sydney Mirrored Sunglasses available at MyChameleon
PALM BEACH COLLECTION Vintage Gardenia Soy Candle available here
MIU MIU Madras Shoulder Bag available here
ISA TAPIA Nadia Lace Up Bootie in Midnight available at My Chameleon

BE@RBRICK

 

I love Medicom Toys. 

BE@RBRICKS are hectic. 

Enough said.

All Be@rbricks available on Project 1/6 Online Store