Glasstress: © Jaume Plensa, Glassman, 2004

Glasstress is an arts project that sponsors and exhibits artists, architects, designers working in the medium of glass – The exhibition in Venice was conceived by Adriano Berengo of the Berengo Centre for Contemporary Art and Glass, and produced by Venice Projects and the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) of New York, who will be hosting the exhibition at a future date.

Works were exhibited by artists Jaume Plensa, Vik Muniz, Nabil Nahas, Kiki Smith, Doug and Mike Starn, Pharrell Williams, Zaha Hadid (whose work was not completed in time) and Erwin Wurm among many others. Plensa’s glass body above with its blood red fluid is a reminder of the flow of gravity after death.

Installation View at Glasstress Venice 2011

© Pharrell Williams - Glasstress

© Patricia Urquiola Glasstress 2011

© Luke Jerram, E Coli - Glasstress: 2011

Luke Jerram’s glass Escherichia coli, (commonly abbreviated E. coli), is a ‘Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms)’.

© Luke Jerram - Glasstress: 2011

© Javier Perez Glasstress

© Javier Perez Glasstress

Glasstress: © Maria Roosen

Glasstress: © Marya Kazoun

http://www.glasstress.org

Vincent Callebaut Lilypad, A Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees, 2008 Digital rendering, dimensions variable © Vincent Callebaut Architectures

Ant Farm's 1969 work, 50×50′ Pillow for the Whole Earth Catalog led to the commission to build the medical tent at Altamont.

By Kiša Lala

The new independent film Space Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm, directed by Laura Harrison and Elizabeth Federici is a biography of the renegade architecture outfit Ant Farm that operated in the 60s and 70s counter-culture movement and pioneered the use of many architectural design devices, technologically ahead of their times.

In Europe there were other radical /guerilla architecture organizations around like Archigrams (UK) and SuperStudio (Italy) whose theoretical inventions were then put to practice by AntFarm in the USA. Their subversive, alternative ideas fertilized the possibility of overturning old-habits. As an ‘underground’ collective, Ant Farm, funded most of their own projects and focused on urban designs that were temporary, nomadic and malleable – opposite of the dominant style. They were also exponents of Buckminster Fuller’s assault against the right angles of traditional architecture.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, Shoji Sadao Dome over Manhattan, ca. 1960 Silver gelatine print, 34.9 x 46.7 cm Courtesy: The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Ant Farm (Chip Lord, Doug Michels and Curtis Schreier) Clean Air Pod, 1970 Polyethylene, dimensions unknown Chip Lord, Courtesy Ant Farm

Zaha Hadid, Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Paris 2008–2010, New York, Photography © John Linden

Many failed projects and architectural follies now seem more technologically feasible with today’s new plastics and smarter, durable skins. Concepts like Dolphin Embassy a project used to envision one living space for multiple species, in this case, marine and human, can be of potential use to natural history museums. Highly poly-urethaned carved wood molded interiors can be seen as style influences today in Marc Newson’s Aqua Riva speed boat. And Cargo parachutes, supported by wind, used to create living spaces, can be seen as early evolutions of modern inflatables-technology.

Consider other modern day off-shoots of these early precursors in nomadic structures and inflatables such as the Water Cube – Olympic stadium in Beijing, Diller Scofidio’s Bubble, an inflatable event space planned for Hirshhorn Museum, the temporary structures of the Burning Man event, Zaha Hadid’s Chanel mobile art pavilion, and the many pop-up stores and exhibition spaces of today.

Diller Scofidio’s Bubble, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, museum expansion: Washington DC, 2012

Dolphin Embassy, 1974, Drawing, Photo: François Lauginie Courtesy Frac Centre.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 Designed by Jean Nouvel© Ateliers Jean Nouvel Photo: Philippe Ruault

The Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park is having a slumber party right at the heels of their annual summer party, which took place around their 10^th and latest eye-catching Pavilion, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel.

Nouvel’s scarlet Pavilion set the scene for the darlings of the British art set attending. Ron Arad, Antony Gormley, Gavin Turk, Dinos Chapman,  Sir Peter Blake, Grace Jones, Tracey Emin and model Lily Cole were among the guests invited to play ping-pong and tennis with champion players and have their heartbeats recorded by French artist Christian Boltanski’s installation The Heart Archive. Also on view in the permanent galleries inside was the summer show of new inkjet prints by Wolfgang Tillmans.

July 8 2010 Summer Party at Serpentine Gallery, London, England. L to R: Dinos Chapman and Keith Tyson, Sir Peter Blake and Chrissie Blake, Tracey Emin. Photo: Nick Harvey

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 Designed by Jean Nouvel © Ateliers Jean Nouvel Photograph: Philippe Ruault

Julia Peyton-Jones, the director who had originally envisioned this fund-raising concept, hosted this 40^th anniversary party for the gallery with the new, much talked about co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist. This year’s Pavilion is built on impressive cantilevered structures painted in vivid red, set in dramatic contrast to the green of the Hyde Park lawns. Nouvel said in his opening speech, “I want more disorder in this place,” imagining a relaxed place for people to play. The Pavilion is canopied by large retractable awnings and a sloping freestanding wall that allows the park to inhabit the interiors.

Notable architects that had been invited in previous years to design the free-form Pavilion include Daniel Libeskind (2001), Frank Gehry (2008), and Rem Koolhaas/Cecil Balmond (2006). The architect Zaha Hadid who had designed the 2000 Pavilion also came along for the celebration.

Spending the night in the park may not be as sordid as it sounds, because as part of the summer program, the gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum are staging a sleepover event inside the Pavilion, beginning late at night with films, music, talks and a midnight banquet that will continue on until breakfast is served the next day at 8am. Artists, psychologists and scientists will host experiments throughout the night for the wired, sleepless guests to explore the psychedelic qualities of insomnia and alternative sleep-states.

Guests might be treated to some lullabies as well.

Sleepover at the Serpentine Pavilion: A night of creative thinking: 30-31 July 2010 from 10pm – 8am
Wolfgang Tillmans 26 June – 19 September 2010, Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens   London W2

Anish Kapoor, "Widow" (courtesy of Anish Kapoor Studio)

Rome is the home of classical art and architecture such as the Coliseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel, but its art scene is changing as the city attempts to modernize itself. Several years ago, Richard Meier updated the Roman architectural landscape with the Ara Pacis Museum. The structure was built over an existing building that houses the Ara Pacis Augustae, a sacrificial altar dating to 9 B.C.

Rome’s latest venture, the Maxxi, or the National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, is the city’s first national museum of contemporary art. No relics lie in Maxxi, where Zaha Hadid’s flowing lights and staircases wind through the space ensconced in concrete. The debut collection includes work from artists such as Gilbert and George, William Kentridge, and Gerhard Richter. Not to be missed is Anish Kapoor’s 2004 sculpture “Widow,” a 15 meter long black tube consisting of PVC coasted polyester fabric that flares out like a horn.

Anish Kapoor, "The Farm" (photo by David Hartley, courtesy of Gibbs estate)

The long, flared tube shape in “Widow” recurs in Kapoor’s “The Farm” at Kaipara Bay, New Zealand, shown in the current issue of SPREAD|Artculture magazine. Kapoor describes his tubular sculptures as “colostomy bags.” Unlike “The Widow,” a sculpture in black, “The Farm” is a vibrant, unmissable red. Says Kapoor, “It’s the color of the interior of our bodies. In a way, it’s inside-out, red.”

Kapoor is currently working on ArcelorMittal Orbit, a 380 feet tower for the 2012 Olympics in London. The planned tower would dominate the London skyline, rising higher than the Statue of Liberty. To learn more about Anish Kapoor and take a look into his studio, flip to page 52 of SPREAD|Artculture magazine.