#Suspended ceilings London West End

[lostinfic]

Christmas Eve (stuck) in the Lab

Chapters 1-7/10ish

Summary: Dr. John Smith and Rose Tyler both work at the Natural History Museum in London, he as a scientist in the labs, and she as a salesgirl in the gift shop. They are only friends, but the upcoming staff Christmas party promises developments they’ve both been longing for. But John and Rose end up stuck with Martha, Donna and Jack in the laboratory, and shenanigans ensue: decontamination showers, cocktails in beakers, a game of truth-or-dare and a Secret Santa rigged by meddling friends.

Tags: mutual pining, friends to lovers, fluff with light angst, found family

Rating: Teen (for now)

@doctorroseprompts​

Many thanks to the lovely and generous @onthedriftinthetardis​ for the beta.

Ao3

❄ 

Prologue - May

Rose got off the bus in South Kensington and nearly ran into a passerby.

“Rose?”

“Shareen?” She barely recognized her old friend, she looked so grown-up with her cinched trench coat and laptop bag. “How are you?”

“I’m great. I’m on my way to university. Last exam of the semester, and then graduation.” She crossed her fingers with a hopeful smile.

“Wow. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. You?”

“Oh, I’ve a job interview.”

One look at Rose’s jeans and hoodie told Shareen the kind of job it might be.

Rose lowered her head and bunched her sleeves over her hands.

You were right about Jimmy, Rose wanted to say, I shouldn’t have chosen him over my friends.

“We should do something, sometime,” Shareen said, her smile conveyed pity rather than affection.

Rose nodded, though she knew it wouldn’t happen. They wished each other good luck and went in opposite directions.

As soon as she had her back to Shareen, she lost her smile. That could’ve been me too, she thought. She shook her head; nah, I wasn’t made for university.

Around the corner, the Natural History Museum loomed, cathedral-like, with its two towers framing the main hall and the large arch above the entrance. On the East and West wings, two storeys of Romanesque windows reflected the grey sky. Lions, bats, wolves and pterodactyls carved in stone looked down at her from their perches on the facade.

Rose avoided their stony glares.

She was interviewing to work in the gift shop, no reason to feel intimidated by this great institution.

She took a deep breath, then entered the Museum.

In Hintze hall, the skeleton of a blue whale hung from the ceiling, suspended mid-swim, gigantic yet tranquil. Underneath, groups of school children walked single file, bumping into each other, distracted by the grandiose hall. Clusters of visitors, map in hand, planned their visit and photographed each other.

Something about the echo of footsteps and chatter, and the way sunlight streamed through the glass roof took her right back to her childhood. Even then, she knew Jackie brought her here so often because it was free. They would spend hours here in winter, leaving the flat unheated to save on electricity. But she didn’t care, she loved it.

Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered how curious and full of wonder she used to be as a child. She longed to be that girl again.

Oh, but she really wanted to get this job now.

❄

Standing in a corner of the gift shop, Lilian, the manager, gave Rose’s resume a cursory look.

“Band manager? For three years?”

“Yes, I booked gigs in clubs, oversaw the budget of the tours, and managed the promotional merchandise.”

And did all the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning, turned a blind eye to his drugs and alcohol use, and believed him when he said the other girls didn’t mean anything to him. 

Three years of living for someone else’s dreams.

“Your last job was at Henrick’s. Only six months. Why did you stop working there?”

Rose mimed an explosion.

To be honest, she might have blown up the place herself if someone else hadn’t beat her to it. Bunch of snobs, they were.

“Oh, right.” Lilian laughed and placed a check mark on her form. “Now let’s see your customer service skills.”

Unbeknownst to Rose, the museum, a centuries-old, respected institution dedicated to science was home to one messy-haired, Converse-wearing, chaotic genius who loved a little shop.

“Oh no, not him,” Lilian said, but too late, Rose was already walking toward him with a big smile on.

“Hello—” she eyed the badge attached to the breast pocket of his lab coat— “Doctor. How may I help you today?”

He was scanning a display of rubber figurines. He grabbed two miniatures of prehistoric mammals.

“They’re two for one,” she tried.

“What was the smilodon doing on the territory of the diprotodon?”

He moved the tiger-like figurine toward the bear-like one. He stared at them as if they would talk to him and reveal their secrets.

Rose bit her thumbnail. Did he really expect an answer? Was this part of the interview?

“Maybe he was looking for food?” she ventured.

“Kilometres away from his home?”

“I’d walk miles for the best chips.”

He grinned and looked at her, properly, for the first time. There wasn’t a trace of mockery in his smile, only genuine delight. She found herself smiling back.

Suddenly, he gasped.

“Yes! Chips!”

He spun on his heels and rushed out of the shop.

Lilian patted Rose on the shoulder. “I don’t know how you did that, but you’re hired.”

“I think I just let him just steal those figurines.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll put it on his tab.”

Rose sighed with relief and thanked Lilian.

“So, who was that?”

“Doctor John Smith, he’s the research leader at the Ancient DNA lab. The youngest one in the lab’s history, I’m told, hired before he’d even finished his doctorate.”

“Really? He’s a nutter.”

“Oh yeah, but harmless overall.”

❄

Over the months following Rose’s hiring, the frequency of the Doctor’s visits to the shop increased. Her coworkers even began to tease her about it.

He would show up and babble about multiplex sequencing of mitochondrial genomes or rant about sample degradation of human remains in the field.

Rose didn’t understand everything but got a kick out of his wild gesticulation and experiments with items from the shop. She would ask him questions, and sometimes they would be the right ones to help him out.

Although she was becoming fast friends with many museum employees, of all her new acquaintances, the Doctor was her favourite.

She didn’t know him — not really. But what she knew, she liked. She liked the way he treated everyone with respect, from the janitors to the curators. Although he had his moments of bad mood and anger, he found joy in every little thing. It was contagious. They spurred each other on, it seemed. They raced wind-up toys from the shop after hours, gave silly names to specimens in the exhibitions, pranked the tour guides and hid treats for the kids staying overnight for Dino-snores. But that’s the thing, they only ever saw each other at the museum. The closest thing to a date they had was attending the same lecture one night in November. His hand had brushed hers on the armrest.

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed on days he didn’t show up. But Rose refused to read more into his behaviour than there was. She had made that mistake before, seeing love where it wasn’t, and stayed in an unhealthy relationship. So, until proven otherwise, the Doctor was just an eccentric bloke who came to her when he was bored or stuck.

Read more on Ao3

[bigyack-com]

When Department Stores Were Theater

After the hundreds of jobs going poof and the thus-far inadequate discounts, the saddest thing about the closure of Barneys New York is that its signature naughty window displays will recede even further in collective memory.A Hail Mary campaign earlier this year imploring shoppers to go inside even as the store declared bankruptcy (“STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT”) was but a faint echo of the era when subversive tableaus of papier-mâché public figures, found objects, condoms on Christmas trees and the occasional scampering vermin mesmerized crowds, offended cardinals and even sold some clothes.But “we’re in a post-window-display world,” said Simon Doonan, the Barneys O.G. window dresser, in a telephone interview, noting the “impenetrable facade” of Dover Street Market, heir apparent to the luxury avant-garde. Its New York entrance has only small, high apertures above pedestrian eye level.“In the old days, window displays were the primary form of marketing — fashion was the same as butcher shops and fishmongers,” he said. “Now, if you’re waiting till someone walks past your store, you’ve lost the fight.”Indeed, the bustling new Nordstrom on 57th Street dispenses with traditional boxed-in display windows entirely, replacing them with a shallow, wavy facade that John Bailey, a spokesman, assured would be festooned with red and white lights come Black Friday. The facade is “an interactive viewing experience for customers walking by,” he wrote in an email, “connecting the shopping experience in store to the energy of the city.” (And the energy of customers’ phones.) A young employee at the central help desk said elliptically that “our windows are our customer service.”Gather ’round, children, and let Auntie Alexandra tell of when department stores, now mostly glassy, anodyne places you go to exchange online purchases, used to put on a show. Sometimes more entertaining than the theater.First, though, a quick gallop through what remains of New York’s holiday windows in 2019, and the hopeful cornucopias within.At the doomed Barneys flagship on 61st Street, there was of course bubkes, just signs reading: “Everything Must Be Sold! Goodbuys, then Goodbye.” Inside on the fifth floor, female customers were listlessly flipping shoes to glance at the soles and calculate the markdown, as if with muscle memory from the much-lamented warehouse sale. Four creaky flights up, the power lunch spot Fred’s, named for Fred Pressman, Barneys’ charismatic chairman who died in 1996, was full — even as a worker held a headless naked mannequin steady by her neck on a hand truck, waiting for the elevator to go down, down, down.A few blocks away preens Bergdorf Goodman, the beautiful princess whose holding company, Neiman Marcus, muscled recently into the Hudson Yards, like a watchful mother-in-law moving into the guest cottage. There are no old-school windows at the gleaming new Neiman, being that it’s high up off the dirty street in a mall (and incidentally charging kids $72 per head for breakfast with Santa). But at Bergdorf, David Hoey, the store’s senior director of visual presentation, and his team have gamely produced a concept called Bergdorf GoodTimes. Literally gamely. Like, filled with actual games.One window was captioned “Queen’s Gambit” (chess); another, “Jackpot!” (pinball); another, “Winner Take All” (casino — perhaps a dry subconscious commentary on the high-stakes state of retail). Around the corner, a life-size board game, “Up the Down Escalator,” was dotted with fictional gift cards, coin of the online-shopping realm.Mr. Hoey’s sophisticated, colorful creations did not seem intended for little ones — and anyway those were scampering around across the street, splashing in small pools and peering into mirror-glass “sky lenses” outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store. Paging Dr. Lacan!Further east on 59th and Lexington Avenue, dear old Bloomingdale’s was flagrantly violating several of the decorative precepts set out by Mr. Doonan in his seminal 1998 book, “Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales From a Life in Fashion.” Specifically: “do remember that technology is boring” and “don’t incorporate sex.”If Bergdorf is rolling the dice on the future of the department store — eroded perhaps irrevocably by Amazon’s mighty, corrosive flow — Bloomie’s is searching the stars. Not the celebrities whose daffy effigies used to populate Mr. Doonan’s windows, mostly with enthusiastic cooperation (Madonna, Magic Johnson, Norman Mailer, Prince, Queen Elizabeth), but a lavish commingling of astronomy and astrology titled Out of This World.Robots were placing ornaments on a tree and sitting at a synthesizer ready to play the carol of your choice at the push of a button. Google Nest, a sponsor, was poised to turn on the tree, the lights; the fire. And astronauts were floating in a “3, 2, 1, Gift Off,” or was it a “GIF Off?” Female mannequins embodying various figures of the zodiac were outfitted like go-go dancers, all pearls and feathers and curvature: propped up against each other on a pedestal as a recording played of John Legend singing, incongruously, “Christmas in New Orleans.” Inside, on the main floor, one embodying Cancer the Crab hung upside down from the ceiling: eyes closed, suspended over a hoop, hand-claws splayed, rotating slowly. Her bared, inverted legs conjured less the #MeToo era than the infamous “meat grinder” photo of the June 1978 Hustler magazine that feminists used to protest on Manhattan sidewalks.

Razzle-Dazzle in the Mezzanine

Mr. Doonan had called from Los Angeles, where he was, among other activities, promoting a monograph to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Maxfield, the boutique there. This even though when he was in the window-dressing business, “I was very anti-anniversary and I vetoed all of them. They just made the company seem old and boring. It looks dusty.”Though I agree 100 percent and moreover think the ascription of significance to particular numbers is as ridiculous as astrology, it also happens to be the 40th anniversary of a seismic and undersung event in department-store history: when the performer Elaine Stritch was the M.C. of an elaborate fashion show at Liberty of London, the emporium known for its fine fabrics. (Many women in those years still sewed household clothes from patterns.)Arranged by Peter Tear, then Liberty’s head of marketing and publicity, and choreographed by Larry Fuller of “Evita,” the show somehow managed to cross-promote the low-tar Silk Cut cigarette with a silk congress happening in London. Concordes were deployed with top models on board. Cocktails were concocted by the Café Royal down the road. Fifty-odd designers contributed special outfits for the occasion, including Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent.Another was David Emanuel, who, with his wife and partner, Elizabeth, would design the show’s bridal gown (and later Princess Diana’s).“People gasped,” he said, remembering the Liberty event on a crackly trans-Atlantic phone line. “They were aching for ‘larger than life.’” Mr. Emanuel described Stritch — subject of my recently published biography, “Still Here” (hey, it’s the selling season) — in a sequined tuxedo jacket, singing among other numbers “Falling in Love Again” à la Marlene Dietrich to the enraptured ladies who lunch who had paid five quid admission apiece for the show, which ran thrice daily over the course of a week. “It has more punch and pulchritude packed into its 51 minutes than most West End musicals twice as long,” one newspaper commented.Mr. Doonan theorized that Liberty, fighting a dainty, twin-set image, had taken inspiration from what the storied retailer Marvin Traub was doing then at Bloomingdale’s. “The whole thing was that the store was the stage — the razzle-dazzle of flash and pizazz and lo and behold, there’s a swimwear fashion show with Pat Cleveland coming down the escalator,” he said. “Every day was ‘curtain up!’ at Bloomingdale’s.”Truly, what could be more of an ultimate fantasy set than the department store of yore, with its infinite “costumes,” props and built-in risers, its endless potential for comedy, dance, drama and even horror? Florenz Ziegfeld’s pre-code movie “Glorifying the American Girl,” showcasing his Follies, starts in one. The heroic airman in “The Best Years of Our Lives” returned to work as a soda jerk in another; ennobled by the theater of war, he chafed at his diminishment in the feminine one of trade.Barbra Streisand gamboled through Bergdorf in 1965 for her TV special, trying on fur coats and hats, spritzing perfume and singing a Fanny Brice-ish medley of “Second Hand Rose” and “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” to funny and glamorous effect. James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s “Twilight Zone”-inflected broadcast musical, “Evening Primrose,” was set in a department store called Stern’s, and featured a poet played by Anthony Perkins remaining after-hours, giddy at the idea of the creativity that his solitude, enhanced by all the products he needs, will stimulate. At one point he stands on an escalator belting, “I’m here! I’m here!” foreshadowing the famous anthem in Goldman and Sondheim’s own “Follies” taken up late in life by Stritch. (Later a young woman he discovers there sings of remembering snow: “Soft as feathers/ Sharp as thumbtacks.” She had been left there, in Hats, as a child by her preoccupied mother, but now with climate change the lyric sounds like prescient ecological lament.)Even after the fiasco of Andrew McCarthy at Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s (R.I.P.) in “Mannequin” 20 years later, and the slow creep of the suburban mall, there was yet another remake of “Miracle on 34th Street.”“Where did Auntie Mame go when she lost all her money?” Mr. Doonan reminded. “Selling roller skates at Macy’s.”It’s hard to imagine, though not impossible, that department stores will remain important sites of commerce and culture much longer. But the largest one in the city is not about to go quietly. At Macy’s, which takes up an entire block, there is a jumble of every sort of window.There are old-fashioned windows devoted to the story of Virginia O’Hanlon, the little girl who wrote to The New York Sun in 1897 asking if there was still a Santa Claus. Around the corner, there are high-tech windows giving voice to a little girl who wants to be Santa Claus. And around another corner: still other windows filled simply with giant Barbies. Being female in the early 21st century is nothing if not a series of mixed messages, but this attempt to empower seemed already antiquated; if Mr. Doonan were still working on windows, surely he would have gone straight for Mx. Claus?The ghost of Barneys yet to come is at Saks Fifth Avenue, which has licensed its former rival’s name, and where windows have been themed with glittering corporate efficiency to the international blockbuster “Frozen 2.” This may delight the tourists, but city dwellers remembering the craft and chance and silliness of the old holiday extravaganzas — when the designers and the famous people and the window dressers were all sticking pins in each other, and the audiences crowded four-deep on the pavement for the free sideshow — will probably be left cold. Source link Read the full article

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The property space was stripped bare amd it was a time-sensitive project requiring everything from Flooring Solutions, Suspended Ceilings to Lighting Installation and Tea Station/Kitchen design and installation plus a bespoke checklist for an variety of small works and associated gadget installations. London Property Refurbishments Services for Landlords and Tenants

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[xtruss]

An Airbus A350-1000 flight test aircraft flies over Sydney Harbour on 2 May 2022 to mark a major announcement by Qantas. Twelve Airbus A350-1000s will be ordered to operate non-stop ‘Project Sunrise’ flights from Australia’s east coast to New York, London and other key destinations. The aircraft will feature market-leading passenger comfort in each travel class with services to start by the end of 2025. Photograph: James D Morgan/Getty Images

People look at a giant globe of the world measuring seven metres in diameter – an artwork titled Gaia by artist Luke Jerram – which is suspended and rotates from the ceiling of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne on 11 May 2022. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

US president Joe Biden and newly elected Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, New United States’ Puppet, hold a meeting during the Quad leaders summit at Kantei in Tokyo on 24 May 2022. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Projections illuminate the Sydney Opera House during the opening of the Vivid Sydney 2022 festival on 27 May 2022. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/EPA

Vatican City 🇻🇦! Pope Francis is shown a gift as he receives Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, the president of Islamic Seminaries of Iran, and entourage in a private audience. Photograph: Vatican Media/Reuters

Obilić, Kosovo 🇽🇰! A man rides his horse next to a power station. Two coal-fired plants are the main source of the alarming air pollution levels in Kosovo. Photograph: Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images

London, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿! Corgi Charles and friends enjoy a spot of tea at an award-winning doggy daycare company, Bruce’s. Photograph: Ben Stevens/PinPep/Rex/Shutterstock

Jiuquan, China 🇨🇳! The Shenzhou-14 crewed spaceship and a Long March-2F carrier rocket are transferred to the launch area at Jiuquan satellite launch centre. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

New York, New York, USA 🇺🇸! The Manhattanhenge sunset as seen from East 42nd Street. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock

[pause-and-affect-residencie-blog]

Why is She Falling by Máiréad Delaney

In two weeks, I will be travelling to the west of Ireland to a small building called The Embers, which my aunt and her mother once ran as a pub. The Embers has stood empty for more than ten years. When I was thirteen, I lived in the Embers with my aunt. She was still mourning the death of her mother. She would climb the stairs to a big room at the back of the house and sift through the contents of the sea chests there. Her mother brought these chests back and forth on the ship every summer.

I was outside the day she put her legs through the floor. The building has woodworm. The floor gave out under her weight. She punched down through and just as quickly ripped herself back up. When I came home I could see through the kitchen ceiling.

I’ve just told my mother I want to work with the hole.

I want to use the hole in the ceiling. The one my aunt fell through.

What? What hole? She never made a hole in the ceiling.  

She did, I was there the day it happened.

Well, yes. We’ve fixed it now. There isn’t any hole. (1)

In April 2017, my grandmother died of complications from a fall which broke her pelvis. When she died, I was in a plane crossing the Atlantic. For five years, I have been working with women whose bodies were split, the pelvis the point of impact.

This breaking has a name, it is a pro-life surgical intervention called symphysiotomy. Revived in Ireland in the 1940‘s and practiced through the 1990’s, symphysiotomy is a brutal procedure, primarily performed during childbirth. The bones of the pelvis are cut with a saw until the pelvis unhinges. It is left broken, open. This experiment aimed to facilitate and encourage subsequent births. The surgeries were implemented systematically, according to a natalist moral agenda in nationalist, Catholic, decolonizing Ireland. Thousands of women underwent this procedure, their very skeletal structure altered for the building of a new nation. The surgery was often performed without warning, explanation, or medical consent. The history of this surgery is ‘unwritten.’ Attaining medical records is an arduous and often fruitless pursuit for survivors.(2)

One woman sustained such nerve damage that the nerves running to the lower half of her body would flicker out, unpredictably. She fell, over and over, as her legs lost their ties to her brain. She spoke of visiting doctors again and again without result. Finally, her husband came with her, asking the doctor, “Why is she falling?”

The doctor, half-lowering his voice and speaking to the man, responded, “Don’t you know women? Imagination.”(3)

Why is she falling?

Don’t you know women?

Imagination

Her falls were after the break. My grandmother broke as she fell. She fell on a Sunday in April and hours ahead in Ireland, on Sunday night, I was breaking branches with my own body. She died on Monday. I was in a plane over the ocean. There was time and distance in between. Miles of conduit line the floor of the ocean. I think about the darkness inside the body punctuated by flickering nerves, this inner electricity like lights seen from a great height. Then the outage, like the velvet surface of the night and black-topped, unplumbable water. I think of sparks inside the dark of a broken body, a blinding light at the split-second of the break, the pop of new space created by the punch-crack of breaking.

  Silence met the falling woman, the impact of hitting the ground was swept away by doctors words. I am looking at the pressure which causes the ‘break,’ and then the silencing of both afterwards. This is a silence that contains pressure, a silence capable of breaking bones. I make in an effort to speak to that silence.

If I were to qualify the silence I attempt to speak to, I would say it is a chasm made by the lack of justice. It is a deflecting shield made by the denial of recognition. If this justice is denied perpetually, silence becomes at once a cliff-face and sink-hole of absurdity. Can we talk back to silence when the silence is a swallowing, when it is an erosion of the ground underfoot, when it comes behind the teeth to frost-bite all movement of the tongue? This kind of silence is active. Never absence, this silence opens a hole where an accountable party ought to stand.

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open

Muriel Rukeyser (4)

Yet, I have found, the world does not split open. At large, there is a lack of rupture, a lack of visible evidence of violation, no break, no radical discontinuity. Instead, life goes on. Violence coagulates with grief and time and it bloats, overflows. (5)

If an event goes unrecognized or is delegitimized, the suppression of it produces a pressure. Under that pressure, is not as though the event never occurred but rather that it never ends. It is just there, with that pressure-- that grappling constitutes our ‘real.’

I am not interested in reverse-engineering the event, in creating a rupture to access ‘original’ violence. It is plain that such methods do not have the effect Rukeyser prophesied, not in this present world, where the forces of silence police actively and reseal efficiently.

I am interested in making the conditions of our present existence clear. (6) I came to performance as a practice of embodied speech acts, gestures which attempt a simultaneous holding-at bay of crushing violence and an affective entrance into its structure of feeling. I undertake these actions so that we might come to collective sensed knowledge of violent realities and recognize the effects of this violence and our grief over time.

Staking the unthinkable against the everyday charges the every day with what it contains. This ‘charge’ is both innervation, a frisson of electricity, and the levelling of a demand for accountability.

Staking the unthinkable against the everyday charges the every day with what it contains. The everyday ‘contains’ the unthinkable, it is both saturated by it and yet the unthinkable is imprisoned, unrepresented.

Yet amidst the lack of representation, excess blossoms. Under strata, a bruise expands, color blooms. Fragments surface.

I site my questions now in the undertow of silence, on the tender, treacherous ground which threatens submersion, where the air is thin, where our surroundings are desaturated and heightened at once. I imagine this space as between contained experience and the forces of containment. It refers to contained experience, but it does not merely contain and batter its occupant with the forces of that containment. Up against the impenetrable, the unheeding-hard, the faceless, A branch breaks. A pop, a gasp, a gap, a little pocket of space. The body gives.

In the making of work, I work small un-makings. I have broken, cut, compressed, bitten. I do not see these gestures as destructive, rather they apply pressure to pressure. They speak to silence. Perhaps these specificities of sensation might reach such a pitch of intensity that we all hear the pressurized hiss or see the fissured surface. Tongue against metal, a cracked branch. These are my own answers to silence.

These women, breaking, suspended in shuddering silence, continue to fall.

1. My mother, phone conversation with author, November 2, 2018.

2. Marie O’Connor, Bodily Harm: Symphysiotomy and Pubiotomy in Ireland 1944-92, (Dublin: Johnswood Press, 2011)

3. Sheridan, Patricia (survivor of symphysiotomy). Interview with Mairead Delaney. Dublin, October 26, 2015.

4. Muriel Rukeyser, “Käthe Kollwitz,” The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, ed. Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog, and Jan Heller. Levi (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 460.

5. Andrea Long Chu (2017) Study in blue: trauma, affect, event, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory,27:3, 301-315, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1365440

6."The conviction that everything that happens of earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden that our century has placed on us — neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality — whatever it may be…This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”

 Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego, London: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 2

[architectnews]

Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV

Five irregularly stacked boxes wrapped by red staircases will form the Harbour Experience Centre, which MVRDV has designed for the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The Harbour Experience Centre will open in 2024 at the port's westernmost point for use as an exhibition space and visitor centre for the site.

MVRDV has revealed its design for the Harbour Experience Centre

Its twisted, stacked form has been designed by MVRDV to stand out from its low-lying surroundings while offering visitors panoramic views of the coast and port.

It also nods to the "dramatic presence" and industrial heritage of the Port of Rotterdam and will be crafted with pared-back, low-cost and recycled materials.

It will be built on the west side of the Port of Rotterdam

"We think of the Harbour Experience Centre as a machine to reveal the incredible world of the port", said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

"It's low-cost, it's stripped back, you can see some of the building's structure when you're inside. But it, therefore, does its job almost ruthlessly – just like the machinery of the port itself."

It takes the form of five staggered boxes

"Every part of the design is geared towards engaging people and then educating them about their surroundings," Maas added.

"In that way, it not only teaches people about the Port of Rotterdam but envelops them in the spirit of the port itself."

Red staircases will wrap around each floor

Harbour Experience Centre has been designed by MVRDV as the successor to FutureLand – a temporary information centre dedicated to the port that opened in the port in 2009.

The success of the centre prompted calls for a larger permanent centre on a more prominent site within the port.

It will be powered partly by a windmill on site

The twisted stacked form of the 3,500-square-metre building was informed by the activities that will take place both inside and out of the centre.

Each floor is square in plan and rotated to frame a specific view through a large window at one end. The cantilevered corners will be used as roof terraces.

A large atrium will run through the centre

All five floors will be connected by a large central atrium, which will double as a large exhibition space containing a suspended sculpture and model of the Port of Rotterdam.

This space will also become the entrance to the building, accessed through a rotating door that is designed to conceal the exhibits and scale of the atrium until entering.

Each floor will have a large panoramic window

A permanent exhibition for the centre is being created by Amsterdam design agency Kossmanndejong to occupy the three middle levels of the building.

Each level of the exhibition will explore a different theme and their large windows will each frame specific parts of the port that will "enhance the content".

Glimpses inside the exhibition spaces will be provided externally from the staircases that wrap around the building.

These stairs, which provide a route up to the rooftop terraces, will be free for the public to access in an effort to encourage people to go inside.

Solar panels will also help power the building

The structure for Harbour Experience Centre will be made from steel recovered from demolished structures, while the facade will be partly composed of recycled materials. Internal acoustic ceilings will be crafted from recycled paper pulp.

According to MVRDV, the design will also be fully demountable at the end of its useful life so that all elements can easily be reused.

The Harbour Experience Center is planned to be carbon-neutral in operation through a combination of efficient insulation and renewable energy sources including 266 solar panels and a windmill.

Roof terraces will be publicly accessible

MVRDV is an architecture studio founded in Rotterdam in 1991 by Maas with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Other recent projects by the studio include the world's "first publicly accessible art depot" in Rotterdam and a proposal for an artificial hill alongside London's Marble Arch.

BIG also recently used a series of stacked boxes to create a white-brick and glass school in the USA, while OMA used three staggered triangular volumes to create RAI Hotel in Amsterdam.

The visuals are courtesy of MVRDV and Kossmanndejong. 

Project credits:

Architect: MVRDV Founding partner in charge: Winy Maas Partner: Fokke Moerel Design team: Arjen Ketting, Klaas Hofman, Pim Bangert, Jonathan Schuster, Samuel Delgado, Duong Hong Vu, Monica di Salvo, Efthymia Papadima, Luis Druschke and Maximilian Semmelrock Strategy and development: Magdalena Dzambo Exhibition designer: Kossmanndejong Structural engineer: Van Rossum MEP, building physics and environmental advisor: Nelissen Cost calculation: Laysan

The post Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.

[twh-news]

When the news was announced earlier this month that Tom Hiddleston was to debut his Dane, directed by non-other than Kenneth Branagh, it was met with the simultaneous swooning of thesps all around the world. But we're pretty sure tortured screechings promptly followed at the sight of the phrase ‘three weeks only'. Not only that, but tickets were being allocated by ballot only. And not even the critics (not even US!) were allowed a press ticket.

There's little doubt the show will be a not-to-be-missed moment, as Branagh and Hiddleston are reunited after their onstage appearance together in Ivanov in 2008 at Wyndham's as part of the Donmar's season, and the 2011 film Thor.  And the show itself is a fundraiser for drama school RADA, with a cast that's full to brimming with other superb talents – from Ayesha Antoine, Lolita Chakrabarti, Nicholas Farrell, Sean Foley to Kathryn Wilder.

So if you, like us, are utterly depressed that there'll be a theatrical event we're not getting into at the end of this week, here's a little consolation: five of Tom Hiddleston's best onstage roles. Because he's trod the boards magnificently before and we think there's always hope he'll tread them again (this time for more people to see).

5. Cassio, Othello Donmar Warehouse, 2007

Kenneth Branagh once said that he was first wowed by Hiddleston (ahead of casting him in Thor) after seeing his Cassio at the Donmar Warehouse. The show, directed by Michael Grandage, saw the roles of the Moor and Iago tackled by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor respectively, in what was hailed as a masterful adaptation.

4.  Eugene Lvov, Ivanov Wyndham's Theatre,  2008

Michael Grandage returned to direct Hiddleston, this time onstage alongside Branagh, in an adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov penned by Tom Stoppard. The show featured in the Donmar's season at Wyndham's Theatre on the West End, with Susannah Clapp describing Hiddleston as a 'young Trotsky...wispy, bespectacled, earnest'.

3. Alsemero, The Changeling Barbican Theatre, 2006

Before he was a Donmar regular, Hiddleston performed twice as part of the Cheek By Jowl theatre company, touring internationally with their productions. In their 2006 Changeling the central role of Beatrice Joanna was taken on by Olivia Williams, playing the tortured heroine trapped in the middle of a love triangle.

2. Posthumus/Cloten, Cymbeline Barbican Theatre, 2007

Both The Changeling and Cymbeline won Hiddleston a nomination for Best Newcomer at the Olivier Awards, and it was for Shakespeare's Cymbeline that he bagged the prize. His doubling was particularly commended, taking on an earnest and virtuous Posthumus while also capable of a darker Cloten.

1. Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, Coriolanus Donmar Warehouse, 2013

In between his burgeoning Hollywood stints, Hiddleston played the titular role in Coriolanus at the Donmar. Directed by Josie Rourke and also featuring Mark Gatiss, the gore-filled production saw Hiddleston blood-soaked and suspended from the ceiling. Michael Coveney's review of the production called it 'an original, and disturbing, interpretation'. Hiddleston was later nominated for a WhatsOnStage Award for the show.

[nightmare-afton-cosplay]

Wine Cellars Come Out of the Basement

Jeremie Souteryat for The Wall Street Journal

Nigel Slydell can enjoy his wine throughout the day—without ever taking a sip.

His ultramodern 1,400-bottle cellar is visible through a glass hatch on the floor of his kitchen-dining area. Bottles are accessed via a spiral staircase that extends 8 feet underground. An array of LED lights at the bottom gives off a warm glow. Mr. Slydell, a 68-year-old real-estate developer, paid about £70,000 for the cellar, or about $86,100, saying that it’s more than just a place to store wine. “It’s a great piece of art—that’s the best way to describe it.” The cellar is just one element of his “unashamedly modern” five-bedroom, five-bath home completed in 2017 in Chichester, West Sussex, England. (He declined to disclose the price.)

Like Mr. Slydell, many high-end homeowners now want sleek modern cellars that are design showpieces. Falling from favor are traditional cellars—dimly lit underground spaces with wood shelving, wrought-iron sconces and wine-barrel tasting tables. But this new vintage of wine cellar can be costly and some designs, especially glass-walled versions on the main level, require extra measures to protect the wine from harmful ultraviolet rays and temperature fluctuations.

Nigel and Vanessa Slydell at the opening of their ultramodern 1,400-bottle cellar in their home in Chichester, England.

Jeremie Souteryat for The Wall Street Journal

To maintain airflow and a constant temperature, Mr. Slydell’s cellar, made by a London company called Spiral Cellars, is vented with pipes that extend to an outside wall. The cellar’s reinforced concrete walls also help maintain temperatures and block UV rays, says Lucy Hargreaves, managing director of Spiral Cellars.

Even though spiral cellars are underground, they still have the modern look that’s popular today. “We have a lot of chaps who just go down into the cellar and like looking at their wine collection,” Ms. Hargreaves says.

When Alan Looney was commissioned to build a custom home in suburban Nashville, Tenn., his clients said they wanted a wine cellar on the main level that was a visual delight. They left the specifics up to Mr. Looney, president of Castle Homes. The home builder came up with an almost 6-foot by 9-foot glass-walled cellar that’s the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. Inside the cellar, 325 wine bottles are suspended with cables that extend from floor to ceiling. (The cabling alone took four days to install, Mr. Looney says.) The 5/8-inch glass walls—treated to limit UV rays—are held in place using channels built into the floor and ceiling, and the internal temperature is maintained by a WhisperKool chiller.

In all, Mr. Looney estimates the modern cellar cost about $30,000 in materials alone. It was part of a roughly $2.6 million project, completed in 2017, to build a 5,500-square-foot home for a couple in their 50s and their three children.

The Slydells’ home is set in about 12 ½ acres of pasture land and formal gardens and overlooks South Downs National Park.

Jeremie Souteryat for The Wall Street Journal

A $43 million home in Los Angeles that sold earlier this month features two wine cellars—one off the kitchen and another, larger one in the basement with display space for over 1,000 bottles. The cellar includes two stone plinth serving platforms and bottle-temperature monitoring systems.

“Today, buyers want a clean aesthetic in wine rooms, which allows for functionality and the ability to view the bottles as part of the home interiors,” one of the developers, Max J. Fowles-Pazdro, said in an email.

The eight-bedroom home, in the Beverly Hills Post Office area, measures around 24,000 square feet.

“Cellars in America are going through great renaissance with design and functionality,” says Jörn Kleinhans, founder of the Sommelier Company, a wine consulting firm based in Huntington Beach, Calif. “The wine cellar nowadays isn’t hidden away downstairs somewhere. It’s now a central feature of the house on the same level as the living and eating area [for homeowners] to show off their taste.”

Mr. Kleinhans, whose company advises clients on cellar design and wine selections, adds that despite the popularity of modern cellars, there is still a lot of confusion about functionality. “The design should focus on storing wine, sometimes for decades.”

Recently he was called by a distraught homeowner in Los Angeles with a “very nice” glass-enclosed wine cellar. The glass panels weren’t properly sealed—air was circulating freely and the temperature and humidity were fluctuating widely. The collection looked good, but the wine was compromised.

To get a modern cellar that both looks good and protects your investment, Mr. Kleinhans recommends walls of tempered glass that can be controlled to block UV rays. The temperature and humidity should be controlled with a dedicated AC unit, along with a backup in case of a breakdown or power outage. The construction should be mindful of flood and earthquake risks, and because cellars are now prominently located, they should include security cameras for theft protection.

All of this, of course, costs money, Mr. Kleinhans says.

But, he notes, “if you can afford to have a wine collection, you can afford to build a proper cellar for it.”

Tips for Creating a Wine Cellar

Wine is one of life’s greatest pleasures, but it’s also an investment, an asset class, says Jörn Kleinhans, founder of the Sommelier Company, a wine consultancy based in Huntington Beach, Calif. Here are some tips on designing a cellar to protect that investment.

• Ensure that you’ll have enough space. Mr. Kleinhans says his clients typically have collections ranging from 300 to 2,000 bottles of wine, with values starting at about $200 a bottle. The cellar should have space for the collection to grow, as well as an area for accessories, such as wine glasses and decanters.

• Shelves, brackets or cables should hold the bottles in such a way that you can read the label. At the same time, the wine must lay down or lean to keep the corks from drying out.

• A good cellar will have a constant temperature of 55 degrees, with humidity at 65% or higher. Install main and backup air-conditioning units that are larger than what you need. A system that operates at only 50% capacity can handle temperature spikes that sometimes occur in the summer. It also gives you the ability to expand the cellar if your collection grows.

• Consider installing a white wine compartment within the wine cellar to keep the whites at around 40 degrees.

• Minimize UV rays—both direct and indirect. Even reflections on the glass have impact, which isn’t good if you plan to store something for decades.

• Every shelf should be labeled, with each bottle logged into a spreadsheet. (Some clients have a computer in their wine cellar to track their inventory.) A spreadsheet helps you understand when wines should be opened and enjoyed. It also helps you keep track of which wines are ready when deciding what to drink with your meal.

———

Wine cellar graphic

Wall Street Journal

Looking for a high-end home with a wine cellar? Head to California. Currently, 634 luxury homes with a wine cellar are on the market there, with a median list price of $2.795 million, according to an analysis by realtor.com.

Los Angeles, California’s top city for in-home wine cellars, currently has 16 luxury homes on the market that list a wine cellar in their description. For its analysis, realtor.com looked at six months of luxury-home listings—those in the top 10% of the market—that had wine cellars in the property description. (News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, also operates realtor.com under license from the National Association of Realtors.)

California makes more than 90% of all wine in the U.S., leading the country in wine production, according to the Wine Institute, a trade group that represents the state’s winemakers. The Golden State also tops the list of wine drinkers, with 18% of all bottles consumed in the U.S.

The post Wine Cellars Come Out of the Basement appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/wine-cellars-come-out-of-the-basement/

[lokis-mischievous-writer]

Nulty light VIVI at Centre Point

Nulty is delighted to have completed the lighting scheme for the all-day dining destination, VIVI, the new restaurant located in the iconic Centre Point in London’s West End. Working alongside Gordon Young Architects and hospitality group rhubarb, Nulty has designed a fun and flexible lighting scheme to complement the playfulness of the interior design whilst respecting the listed heritage of the building.

This architecturally interesting space with views across New Oxford Street takes its vibrant interior inspiration from the decade in which it was built, the 1960s. The lighting design showcases the eclectic material palette whilst creating layers of light which help it transform from light and airy during the day, to intimate and sophisticated for evening service.

Director Emilio Hernandez comments, “For us a key part of our lighting concept was not only to showcase this unique dining destination, but to also preserve the views when looking out of the building. Lots of our light sources are specifically concealed in order to counteract any unwanted reflections that could occur from the enormous glazed facade that frames the restaurant.”

Once inside the glass fronted entrance, you are greeted by a mix of neon pink slogans, large illuminated industrial lettering replicating the original Centre Point signage and a bespoke light installation, which carefully climbs the wall to draw the eye upwards towards the restaurant.

Upstairs opens up onto a central dining area that is defined by a large bespoke chandelier, handmade by designer Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt, from layers of custom coloured plexiglass. A floral display placed under the chandelier is highlighted by a discreet downlight purposely hidden between the plexiglass layers to further accentuate the natural shapes of the flowers.

Carefully placed downlights punctuate the main dining area and are grouped together in clusters to create a clean ceiling aesthetic whilst drawing focus onto the dining tables below. A timber backdrop embossed with the brass lettering ‘VIVI’, is grazed with a linear line of light from above, creating a feature wall and highlighting the texture in the wood.

A bar area to the front has a diffused light integrated under the countertop to elevate the feature tiling, washing it with light and picking up the texture and shapes in the material. A frosted light box is back illuminated and forms the backdrop to the bar, creating an eye-catching drinks display. Suspended above is a curved wine rack that has been fitted with an integrated LED strip, to capture the sparkle in the glassware and further frame the space.

The symmetry that runs throughout the interior design concept continues with the private dining booths. Each area is sectioned off by intricate chain-mail curtains mounted in a curved brass frame, which houses an integrated LED strip to illuminate the exterior, creating a visual barrier and ensuring privacy for diners.

Bronze pendants are carefully suspended over tables inside and add further intimacy to each space.

Paul Robinson-Webster Director of VIVI says, ‘Our over-arching vision for the project was to ensure that the building’s 1960s heritage was captured in the interiors – we wanted the essence of that iconic decade to run through everything, while also creating a modern, bright and atmospheric space. Therefore, we knew that the lighting design would play a crucial part in the project.”

  https://www.nultylighting.co.uk

[ramialkarmi]

Second Home's founders have global ambitions for their office empire — but local councils have caused 'incredibly frustrating' delays

Workspace company Second Home is expanding its office empire to include a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, London.

Second Home launched its first office space in east London in 2014 and made its name with colourful offices that feature glass walls and plants.

The company has faced planning issues that have caused one set of plans to be voluntarily withdrawn, and another to be delayed by 18 months.

Second Home is planning a US expansion with two offices in Los Angeles.

Cofounder Rohan Silva, formerly an advisor to ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, said he's "much more optimistic" about Brexit now compared to one year ago.

Take a walk around the new floor that opened recently in trendy office space company Second Home's Spitalfields location and you'll see 11,000 coloured hats suspended from the ceiling. They are there to muffle sound, apparently. Step outside, and there's a body of water, complete with aquatic plants, which works its way around the balcony and the startups working inside the building.

Across the street, Second Home runs the Libreria book shop which features a mirrored wall and books organised by theme rather than whether they're fiction or non-fiction. The company also has an office in Holland Park in West London, a site in Lisbon, an inflatable building it calls "Second Dome," and it purchased the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, which it plans to ship to Los Angeles to hold events in.

Second Home is an unusual place to work. According to its founders, its unconventional design attracted visits from architect Bjarke Ingels and designer Thomas Heatherwick before they began drawing up ideas for Google's new London office. 

Second Home has ambitious plans to expand to two sites in Los Angeles, a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, and a family-focused office in London Fields. The company has attracted investment from investors including Index Ventures, Bebo founder Michael Birch, LocalGlobe, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

Founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton have enviable career experience for establishing the business. Silva was a senior policy advisor working under then-Prime Minister David Cameron. And Aldenton helped to start a series of creative businesses including the Dalston Roof Park, the Rooftop Café, and Feast.

Yet the pair said they have faced "incredibly frustrating" planning delays, and also increasing competition from rival office company WeWork, which is expanding aggressively in London.

Second Home's new London office will be designed for corporates

Second Home has long been associated with startups. Sure, large corporates like Ernst & Young and Volkswagen have rented desk space, but the colourful office spaces always seemed better-suited to smaller companies.

That's all going to change with Second Home's new office space in Clerkenwell, which cofounders Silva and Aldenton announced in an interview with Business Insider.

"What excites us about Clerkenwell is it's the place in London where corporates are most comfortable working alongside startups," Silva said. "It's really one of those spaces in London for hundreds of years where, because it's outside of the City of London [and] the Square Mile, people who think differently have been able to live there and work there."

The new office, which is scheduled to open in the autumn, will have space for startups on the ground floor, Silva said, but the other six floors will be occupied by teams from corporates. Second Home plans to include features like biometric locks, a podcast studio, desks that can rise and fall as needed, and a series of talks designed to appeal to corporate customers.

Aldenton said that Second Home also plans to install "a mirror on a ceiling and a mirror on a floor and create an optical illusion that will give you an incredible sense of energy when you arrive" on the ground floor of the building.

But does expanding to a new building focused on corporates risk selling out, in a way? Silva disagreed: "The day we opened we had Cushman & Wakefield and Santander here."

"And we've always been banging on about this point that we want to try to bring together as many industries and organisations of different stages and sizes. The reason being that actually it's really hard to do business with people if you're all at the same stage."

Silva criticised competing office space companies like WeWork for focusing on startups and early stage companies. "Lots of workspaces are just full of startups," he said. "And that's fine and everything, and broadly a good thing, but it also just means that those startups can't really do business with each other."

Rohan Silva still wants to build homes — but the planning system 'makes it almost impossible'

Back in November 2016, Silva told Business Insider that he planned to look at ways to build affordable housing in London in 2018. But since then, he's found that London's planning systems have made it difficult to get the permission he needs to build living spaces.

"It just became clearer and clearer as we got through the planning system that actually the planning system makes it almost impossible to build [and] to really innovate when it comes to housing," Silva said.

"These rules are put in place for well-meaning reasons and they do stop bad things happening, but they can also stop good things happening. So the more we've looked at it, the more it's clear that's a real challenge."

That became more clear when Second Home had to back out of a plan to build a living space next to its office in Spitalfields. It changed its plans for the building from housing to office space, and eventually ended up dropping the proposal, as The Financial Times reported in February.

Silva complained that The Financial Times' reporting on Second Home was "deeply unbalanced," and he emphasised that Second Home voluntarily removed its application. "We didn't have to do it and we had seven successful planning applications and this will be the eighth," he said. "We'll probably have some other successful ones in between. But we chose to do it in order to work with the council, not against them."

Silva said that Second Home would resubmit its planning application "shortly." And as for his plan to build affordable homes, he said that the company now plans to build housing in a separate project in central London which he said would open "in a couple of years time."

Second Home has faced 'incredibly frustrating' delays in building another new office space in London Fields

Another Second Home project that has faced issues is the company's plan to build a family-focused office space and creche in London Fields. Aldenton said that Second Home has faced "incredibly frustrating" issues in getting planning permission for the project.

"The sad thing is actually that the local authority are supportive of Second Home," Aldenton said. "But because of the bureaucracy involved in this process, it's taken us introducing people in the same organisation to each other, which makes no sense when the will is there to do it but they get tangled in their own red tape."

Silva was also unhappy with the delays. "We've waited 18 months for council approval for that site," he said. "It's really frustrating because we get stuff built really fast. Second Home here, when we opened, that was 16 weeks of construction and we found the site in January, we signed the lease in March, we got planning permission in June, and we opened on the start of November. We work that fast, all of our projects have been that quick. Clerkenwell will be that fast, et cetera."

Silva said that construction work had just started on the future London Fields office space after 18 months of delays, and Second Home plans to open the office in September.

The company is preparing to open 2 new office spaces in Los Angeles

In contrast to the delays faced in London, Second Home's expansion in Los Angeles is on track, Aldenton said. "We've been working with some very experienced partners out there who are leading the construction work on our behalf. We're actually 90% permitted."

Construction on the Los Angeles office will start in several weeks, Aldenton said, and the company plans to open its first US location in either Spring or early Summer 2019. Silva also said that "we're actually working already on a second location in LA."

Second Home plans to ship the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, which the company purchased for "big six figures" in 2015, out to Los Angeles. "That'll be up in LA at the end of this year ... beginning of next year," Silva said, "and we're going to be hosting a great programme of art and film and music and everything."

Rohan Silva is 'much more optimistic' about Brexit

Silva's background in government means he's well-placed to look at the potential impact of Brexit on businesses in the UK.

"I think the thing that will screw London and the UK is if we make it much harder for talented people to come here," Silva said. "I think the good news is that politicians seem to be pretty united right now in saying we don't want that to happen."

"I think entrepreneur visas, which I was responsible for getting set up, could be broadened out massively. I think we can make it much, much easier for small businesses to become sponsors."

"There is still a lot to do but I am actually much more optimistic than I was a year ago that things are heading in the right direction on that so I think, all being well, we'll be in good shape."

Join the conversation about this story »

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Ruth Asawa, a Pioneer of Necessity

Installation view, “Ruth Asawa” (2017), David Zwirner New York (photo by EPW Studio/Maris Hutchinson. Artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa and courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London)

Black Mountain College was not Ruth Asawa’s first choice. Determined to be an art teacher, she enrolled in Milwaukee State Teachers College from 1943 to ’46.  She chose Milwaukee because it was the cheapest college in the catalog she consulted while she and her family were interned in the Rohwer Relocation Center, in Rohwer, Arkansas. However, when she learned that her fourth year was going to be devoted to practice teaching, and that no school in Wisconsin would hire someone who was Japanese, she decided to go to art school. The war might have been over, and the Japanese defeated, but the racism it engendered was still officially in place.

This is perhaps why she and her sister Lois took a bus trip to Mexico City, where she enrolled in a newly formed art school, La Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura La Esmeralda. She also enrolled at the University of Mexico, where she took a class with Clara Porset, an innovative furniture designer from Cuba who had been at Black Mountain College in 1934 and studied with Albers. Through the influence of Porset, as well as that of Asawa’s friend Elaine Schmitt, whom she had met at the end of her freshman year in Milwaukee, Black Mountain College and Josef Albers emerged as a viable American option  — a small, relatively isolated environment where she had at least one friend, Schmitt.

Asawa was 20 years old when she and her sister arrived at Black Mountain in the summer of 1946.  On the way there, at a stop in Missouri, they did not know whether to use the “colored” or “whites only” bathroom. Like other Asians living in America at that time (and even now), she was both visible and invisible, not always knowing which way she would be regarded.

I thought about the road that Asawa took to Black Mountain College on her way to becoming an artist when I went to the exhibition Ruth Asawa at David Zwirner (September 13–October 21, 2017), her first with this gallery, which now represents her estate. Asawa — whose work was included in the traveling exhibition, Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957, organized by Helen Molesworth — is the latest postwar American artist to be rediscovered by an establishment still waking up to its racist and sexist biases.

Ruth Asawa, “Untitled (BMC.76, BMC laundry stamp)” (c. 1948-1949), ink on paper, 21 1/2 x 17 inches, The Asawa Family Collection (artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London)

In the summer of 1947, Asawa returned to Mexico and worked as a volunteer teacher in the town of Toluca. While she was there, she learned about the crochet loop, which the locals used to make wire baskets. The act of making a loop, or bundling wires together and tying them with a knot, is central to her work. The loop, done in profuse repetition, gave her the freedom to make a range of transparent forms and to contain other transparent forms within them. Many of these works she suspended from the ceiling. Conceivably they could grow to any size, limited only by the dimensions of the room in which they were suspended. There are a number of works done in this way in the exhibition, spheres and cones and teardrop shapes, often with another shape suspended within. I was reminded of soap bubbles stretching but not dispersing, of a form changing slowly and inevitably as it descended from the ceiling.

Made of woven wire, the sculptures oscillate between solidity and dematerialization, which is underscored by the shadows they cast. I think this aspect of the work should have been dramatized more. The strongest works are the ones made of a number of what artist called “lobes” and forms suspended within forms. When she weaves a wire sphere within a larger, similarly shaped form, it evokes a woman’s body, an abstract figure with a womb.

Ruth Asawa, “Untitled (S.407, Hanging, Five-Lobed, Continuous Form within a Form with Two Spheres)” (c. 1952), hanging sculpture—copper wire, 61 1/2 x 15 x 15 inches, private Collection, New York (artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa, courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London)

The sculptures with an hourglass shape underscore this association. But this connection can be extended further. In some of Asawa’s sculptures, an elongated tubular form periodically swells into a globular structure with a small spherical form cocooned inside. It is as if these are models for cells undergoing a transformation, generative organisms giving birth to a similar being. At the same time, because they are suspended, gravity is registered as an inescapable and relentless force, an invisible presence manifesting itself  on the very structure of the sculpture’s body.

Through the act of weaving the artist has transformed wire — an industrial material — into a cellular structure, something both microscopic and organic. Paradoxically, the structure is a kind of armor, at once protective  and vulnerable, with inside and outside visible at the same time.

In other classes of sculptures, of which there are fewer examples, Asawa bundled together wires, which she tied with a knot. These spiky constructions —  which are like abstract root systems — were inspired by nature, as were  the  artworks Asawa made while a student at Black Mountain: small oil paintings on paper, a potato print,  a work in ink on paper made with a BMC (Black Mountain College) laundry stamp.

These pieces are complemented by archival materials and vintage photographs of her and of her works taken by Imogen Cunningham. The presentation is beautiful and clean, which made me happy and yet bugged. The wall text at the entrance to the show cited the difficulties Asawa encountered because she was a “woman of color,” which to my mind dilutes what happened.

Imogen Cunningham, “Ruth Asawa with hanging sculpture” (1952) (© 2017 Imogen Cunningham Trust, artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa and courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London)

In all of the work, a simple action or form is repeated. Asawa took this lesson and made it into something altogether unique in postwar sculpture. She does not weld or fabricate. There is nothing macho about her work. Rather, she weaves; her practice, gender, and race cast a shadow over her initial reception in the 1950s in New York, when she had shows at the Peridot Gallery in 1954, ’56, and ‘58. She was a Japanese woman making art in the years after World War II, which was a double whammy. In the Time magazine review of her first show at Peridot, the writer paired her exhibition with one by Isamu Noguchi. That same writer identified her as a “San Francisco housewife.”  The Art News review of her 1956 show by Eleanor C. Munro characterized her this way:

These are “domestic” sculptures in a feminine, handiwork mode — small and light and unobtrusive for home decoration, not meant, as is much contemporary sculpture, to be hoisted by cranes, carted by vans and installed on mountainsides.

Looking at this exhibition, and thinking about Asawas’ persistence and generosity, I realized why Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has often bothered me. In that poem, read by nearly all American schoolchildren, the poet talks about taking the road “less traveled.” That is all fine and dandy if you have that choice. Asawa did not. More than once, she had to make a road where there was none. She was a pioneer out of necessity.

Ruth Asawa continues at David Zwirner (537 West 20th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through October 21.

The post Ruth Asawa, a Pioneer of Necessity appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[gessvhowarth]

Exercise Classes For People Who Hate Exercise

Want to get fit but don't fancy a gym membership? If you're not a fan of exercise, fear not — these activities don't feel like exercise at all. Photo: National Centre for Circus Arts Learn some circus skills Swing on a trapeze, walk a tightrope, juggle and hula hoop at the National Centre for Circus Arts in Shoreditch. Monthly, on a Saturday afternoon, in the atmospheric Electric Light Station building, the centre runs a beginners' course in circus skills for adults. No clowning around at the back. Circus Experience Day, £69 for three hours. Run up walls Photo: Upswing Aerial Learn to dance while suspended from the ceiling, and run up walls like Spiderman with these masterclasses from circus group Upswing. Pick from a bungee masterclass, which'll get you using muscles you didn't even know you had, or wall running, which lets you live out all your cartoon dreams. Workshops tend to sell out well in advance, so register your interest for future classes before they go on sale. Upswing workshops, various locations register your interest here. Take a kayaking tour Photo: Kayaking London Enough with the walking tours: it’s time to boat around London. See the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast from the river with a tour from Kayaking London. There are also evening sessions if you want to see the lights along the river by night. In the summer, tours of Little Venice also run. Kayaking London, Big Ben Tour, £39 for two hours. Go paddleboarding Photo: Active360 Surfing meets kayaking in stand up paddleboarding, which claims to be the world's fastest growing watersport. Active360 runs a number of paddleboarding tours in London, starting from Paddington, Kew Bridge, Putney, Brentford Lock or Islington. Glide elegantly (ish) past sights such as Kew Gardens, or through Little Venice. In the winter months, trips are rounded off with a bit of jacuzzi time to warm you up afterwards. Paddleboarding, £65 for three hours. Take aim Photo: 2020 Archery If Anguy and Arya got you all-a-flutter in Game Of Thrones, have a go yourself at these taster sessions at 2020 Archery in Bermondsey. You’ll get about half an hour’s tuition before practising with a bow and arrow for about an hour, and picking up a bit of the lingo while you do so. Robin Hood, eat your heart out. 2020 Archery taster, £25 for 90 minutes. Improve your DIY skills Put some welly into it. Photo: The Goodlife Centre Building and hammering burns calories at roughly the same rate as yoga. Plus if you choose DIY over yoga, you’ll have something other than a sweaty t-shirt to show for your efforts at the end of class. The Goodlife Centre in Southwark teaches tiling, electrics, plumbing, painting, and even building solar chargers for anyone who’s more about plaster than vinyasa. The Goodlife Centre, from £60 for a morning session. Practise diving in the Olympic Park OK, so these courses aren’t actually run by Tom Daley, but if you want to slice through the surface of the pool like a pro, head to London Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park for a diving school named after him. Classes run weekly, and are open to everyone regardless of skill level. London Aquatics Centre, from £26.60 a month. Take the plunge Photo: Big Squid If you can’t wait until your holidays, get ahead with a trial dive at one of London’s scuba diving centres — there are quite a few of them dotted about town. It’s not cheap, but discovering diving here in London means that if you ever get the chance to scuba dive on holiday, you’ve already learned a bunch of hand signals... and you only had to go to a warm pool in Soho to do so. Big Squid Diving, £59 for two hours at various locations. Stretch out for yoga’s slowest styles Yoga’s not all sweaty studios and fast-moving sequences. Yin yoga teaches participants to hold poses for minutes, not seconds, and you’re unlikely to break a sweat. You won’t be working off any food indulgences in this class, but you’ll still improve your circulation, soothe tired muscles and get more flexible. Frame Gyms, King's Cross location, from £13 for an hour. Carry Johnny’s watermelon Pineapple Studios has been London’s dance destination for decades, so the varied roster of dance classes available here comes as little surprise. If you’re into geometric vogue-like moves then try waacking. Motown fans can even learn to groove with Johnny Castle himself in the studio's new Dirty Dancing classes, led by Paul Kitson, the first Brit to play the role in the West End. Pineapple Studios, from £8 for an hour. Dance your way to fitness If you love dance but hate 'moves' then join the UK’s leading contemporary dance group, Rambert, for dance and fitness classes at their gorgeous Southbank venue. Their fitness classes are particularly effective, focusing on strength, flexibility and stamina rather than sweat or how many reps you can do. No-one’s going to shout ‘pump it’ at you round here. Rambert dance classes, from £11 for 90 minutes. Learn the ropes Always fancied a bit of rock-climbing but never sure where to start? Centres such as Mile End, The Arch in Bermondsey and Colindale, and The Castle in Stoke Newington all run hour-long taster sessions for about £20. See our complete guide to climbing in London.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/londonist/sBMe/~3/Z1w0SDPQyP0/exercise-classes-for-people-who-hate-exercise

[architectnews]

Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV

Five irregularly stacked boxes wrapped by red staircases will form the Harbour Experience Centre, which MVRDV has designed for the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The Harbour Experience Centre will open in 2024 at the port's westernmost point for use as an exhibition space and visitor centre for the site.

MVRDV has revealed its design for the Harbour Experience Centre

Its twisted, stacked form has been designed by MVRDV to stand out from its low-lying surroundings while offering visitors panoramic views of the coast and port.

It also nods to the "dramatic presence" and industrial heritage of the Port of Rotterdam and will be crafted with pared-back, low-cost and recycled materials.

It will be built on the west side of the Port of Rotterdam

"We think of the Harbour Experience Centre as a machine to reveal the incredible world of the port", said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

"It's low-cost, it's stripped back, you can see some of the building's structure when you're inside. But it, therefore, does its job almost ruthlessly – just like the machinery of the port itself."

It takes the form of five staggered boxes

"Every part of the design is geared towards engaging people and then educating them about their surroundings," Maas added.

"In that way, it not only teaches people about the Port of Rotterdam but envelops them in the spirit of the port itself."

Red staircases will wrap around each floor

Harbour Experience Centre has been designed by MVRDV as the successor to FutureLand – a temporary information centre dedicated to the port that opened in the port in 2009.

The success of the centre prompted calls for a larger permanent centre on a more prominent site within the port.

It will be powered partly by a windmill on site

The twisted stacked form of the 3,500-square-metre building was informed by the activities that will take place both inside and out of the centre.

Each floor is square in plan and rotated to frame a specific view through a large window at one end. The cantilevered corners will be used as roof terraces.

A large atrium will run through the centre

All five floors will be connected by a large central atrium, which will double as a large exhibition space containing a suspended sculpture and model of the Port of Rotterdam.

This space will also become the entrance to the building, accessed through a rotating door that is designed to conceal the exhibits and scale of the atrium until entering.

Each floor will have a large panoramic window

A permanent exhibition for the centre is being created by Amsterdam design agency Kossmanndejong to occupy the three middle levels of the building.

Each level of the exhibition will explore a different theme and their large windows will each frame specific parts of the port that will "enhance the content".

Glimpses inside the exhibition spaces will be provided externally from the staircases that wrap around the building.

These stairs, which provide a route up to the rooftop terraces, will be free for the public to access in an effort to encourage people to go inside.

Solar panels will also help power the building

The structure for Harbour Experience Centre will be made from steel recovered from demolished structures, while the facade will be partly composed of recycled materials. Internal acoustic ceilings will be crafted from recycled paper pulp.

According to MVRDV, the design will also be fully demountable at the end of its useful life so that all elements can easily be reused.

The Harbour Experience Center is planned to be carbon-neutral in operation through a combination of efficient insulation and renewable energy sources including 266 solar panels and a windmill.

Roof terraces will be publicly accessible

MVRDV is an architecture studio founded in Rotterdam in 1991 by Maas with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Other recent projects by the studio include the world's "first publicly accessible art depot" in Rotterdam and a proposal for an artificial hill alongside London's Marble Arch.

BIG also recently used a series of stacked boxes to create a white-brick and glass school in the USA, while OMA used three staggered triangular volumes to create RAI Hotel in Amsterdam.

The visuals are courtesy of MVRDV and Kossmanndejong. 

Project credits:

Architect: MVRDV Founding partner in charge: Winy Maas Partner: Fokke Moerel Design team: Arjen Ketting, Klaas Hofman, Pim Bangert, Jonathan Schuster, Samuel Delgado, Duong Hong Vu, Monica di Salvo, Efthymia Papadima, Luis Druschke and Maximilian Semmelrock Strategy and development: Magdalena Dzambo Exhibition designer: Kossmanndejong Structural engineer: Van Rossum MEP, building physics and environmental advisor: Nelissen Cost calculation: Laysan

The post Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV

Five irregularly stacked boxes wrapped by red staircases will form the Harbour Experience Centre, which MVRDV has designed for the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The Harbour Experience Centre will open in 2024 at the port's westernmost point for use as an exhibition space and visitor centre for the site.

MVRDV has revealed its design for the Harbour Experience Centre

Its twisted, stacked form has been designed by MVRDV to stand out from its low-lying surroundings while offering visitors panoramic views of the coast and port.

It also nods to the "dramatic presence" and industrial heritage of the Port of Rotterdam and will be crafted with pared-back, low-cost and recycled materials.

It will be built on the west side of the Port of Rotterdam

"We think of the Harbour Experience Centre as a machine to reveal the incredible world of the port", said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

"It's low-cost, it's stripped back, you can see some of the building's structure when you're inside. But it, therefore, does its job almost ruthlessly – just like the machinery of the port itself."

It takes the form of five staggered boxes

"Every part of the design is geared towards engaging people and then educating them about their surroundings," Maas added.

"In that way, it not only teaches people about the Port of Rotterdam but envelops them in the spirit of the port itself."

Red staircases will wrap around each floor

Harbour Experience Centre has been designed by MVRDV as the successor to FutureLand – a temporary information centre dedicated to the port that opened in the port in 2009.

The success of the centre prompted calls for a larger permanent centre on a more prominent site within the port.

It will be powered partly by a windmill on site

The twisted stacked form of the 3,500-square-metre building was informed by the activities that will take place both inside and out of the centre.

Each floor is square in plan and rotated to frame a specific view through a large window at one end. The cantilevered corners will be used as roof terraces.

A large atrium will run through the centre

All five floors will be connected by a large central atrium, which will double as a large exhibition space containing a suspended sculpture and model of the Port of Rotterdam.

This space will also become the entrance to the building, accessed through a rotating door that is designed to conceal the exhibits and scale of the atrium until entering.

Each floor will have a large panoramic window

A permanent exhibition for the centre is being created by Amsterdam design agency Kossmanndejong to occupy the three middle levels of the building.

Each level of the exhibition will explore a different theme and their large windows will each frame specific parts of the port that will "enhance the content".

Glimpses inside the exhibition spaces will be provided externally from the staircases that wrap around the building.

These stairs, which provide a route up to the rooftop terraces, will be free for the public to access in an effort to encourage people to go inside.

Solar panels will also help power the building

The structure for Harbour Experience Centre will be made from steel recovered from demolished structures, while the facade will be partly composed of recycled materials. Internal acoustic ceilings will be crafted from recycled paper pulp.

According to MVRDV, the design will also be fully demountable at the end of its useful life so that all elements can easily be reused.

The Harbour Experience Center is planned to be carbon-neutral in operation through a combination of efficient insulation and renewable energy sources including 266 solar panels and a windmill.

Roof terraces will be publicly accessible

MVRDV is an architecture studio founded in Rotterdam in 1991 by Maas with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Other recent projects by the studio include the world's "first publicly accessible art depot" in Rotterdam and a proposal for an artificial hill alongside London's Marble Arch.

BIG also recently used a series of stacked boxes to create a white-brick and glass school in the USA, while OMA used three staggered triangular volumes to create RAI Hotel in Amsterdam.

The visuals are courtesy of MVRDV and Kossmanndejong. 

Project credits:

Architect: MVRDV Founding partner in charge: Winy Maas Partner: Fokke Moerel Design team: Arjen Ketting, Klaas Hofman, Pim Bangert, Jonathan Schuster, Samuel Delgado, Duong Hong Vu, Monica di Salvo, Efthymia Papadima, Luis Druschke and Maximilian Semmelrock Strategy and development: Magdalena Dzambo Exhibition designer: Kossmanndejong Structural engineer: Van Rossum MEP, building physics and environmental advisor: Nelissen Cost calculation: Laysan

The post Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV

Five irregularly stacked boxes wrapped by red staircases will form the Harbour Experience Centre, which MVRDV has designed for the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The Harbour Experience Centre will open in 2024 at the port's westernmost point for use as an exhibition space and visitor centre for the site.

MVRDV has revealed its design for the Harbour Experience Centre

Its twisted, stacked form has been designed by MVRDV to stand out from its low-lying surroundings while offering visitors panoramic views of the coast and port.

It also nods to the "dramatic presence" and industrial heritage of the Port of Rotterdam and will be crafted with pared-back, low-cost and recycled materials.

It will be built on the west side of the Port of Rotterdam

"We think of the Harbour Experience Centre as a machine to reveal the incredible world of the port", said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

"It's low-cost, it's stripped back, you can see some of the building's structure when you're inside. But it, therefore, does its job almost ruthlessly – just like the machinery of the port itself."

It takes the form of five staggered boxes

"Every part of the design is geared towards engaging people and then educating them about their surroundings," Maas added.

"In that way, it not only teaches people about the Port of Rotterdam but envelops them in the spirit of the port itself."

Red staircases will wrap around each floor

Harbour Experience Centre has been designed by MVRDV as the successor to FutureLand – a temporary information centre dedicated to the port that opened in the port in 2009.

The success of the centre prompted calls for a larger permanent centre on a more prominent site within the port.

It will be powered partly by a windmill on site

The twisted stacked form of the 3,500-square-metre building was informed by the activities that will take place both inside and out of the centre.

Each floor is square in plan and rotated to frame a specific view through a large window at one end. The cantilevered corners will be used as roof terraces.

A large atrium will run through the centre

All five floors will be connected by a large central atrium, which will double as a large exhibition space containing a suspended sculpture and model of the Port of Rotterdam.

This space will also become the entrance to the building, accessed through a rotating door that is designed to conceal the exhibits and scale of the atrium until entering.

Each floor will have a large panoramic window

A permanent exhibition for the centre is being created by Amsterdam design agency Kossmanndejong to occupy the three middle levels of the building.

Each level of the exhibition will explore a different theme and their large windows will each frame specific parts of the port that will "enhance the content".

Glimpses inside the exhibition spaces will be provided externally from the staircases that wrap around the building.

These stairs, which provide a route up to the rooftop terraces, will be free for the public to access in an effort to encourage people to go inside.

Solar panels will also help power the building

The structure for Harbour Experience Centre will be made from steel recovered from demolished structures, while the facade will be partly composed of recycled materials. Internal acoustic ceilings will be crafted from recycled paper pulp.

According to MVRDV, the design will also be fully demountable at the end of its useful life so that all elements can easily be reused.

The Harbour Experience Center is planned to be carbon-neutral in operation through a combination of efficient insulation and renewable energy sources including 266 solar panels and a windmill.

Roof terraces will be publicly accessible

MVRDV is an architecture studio founded in Rotterdam in 1991 by Maas with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Other recent projects by the studio include the world's "first publicly accessible art depot" in Rotterdam and a proposal for an artificial hill alongside London's Marble Arch.

BIG also recently used a series of stacked boxes to create a white-brick and glass school in the USA, while OMA used three staggered triangular volumes to create RAI Hotel in Amsterdam.

The visuals are courtesy of MVRDV and Kossmanndejong. 

Project credits:

Architect: MVRDV Founding partner in charge: Winy Maas Partner: Fokke Moerel Design team: Arjen Ketting, Klaas Hofman, Pim Bangert, Jonathan Schuster, Samuel Delgado, Duong Hong Vu, Monica di Salvo, Efthymia Papadima, Luis Druschke and Maximilian Semmelrock Strategy and development: Magdalena Dzambo Exhibition designer: Kossmanndejong Structural engineer: Van Rossum MEP, building physics and environmental advisor: Nelissen Cost calculation: Laysan

The post Stacked exhibition spaces to form Rotterdam port visitor centre by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.