Maverick Cult

Apparatus. Interlude modernist inspired furniture collection

The US based design firm Apparatus launched a new collection of furniture, Interlude, a homage to music as every piece of the edition has its shape reminiscent of melodic symbols.

“The collection is conceived as a suite of furnishings designed for an imagined, modernist concert hall. Musical references inform the collection, with motifs evoking synesthetic interpretations of notes on a…

Wuyuan Skywells Hotel. Anyscale Architecture Design revives a 300-year-old Chinese inn

After decades of decay, the beautiful 300-year-old inn from the Chinese region of Jiangxi has been restored to its former glory.

The new owners chose the Beijing based architecture studio Anyscale Architecture Design to restore and design the dwelling which has been carefully transformed in a boutique hotel with 14 guests suites that overlook the beautiful scenery for which the region of…

Zaha Hadid Design. The first porcelain collection for Rosenthal

The design studio Zaha Hadid created three collections of porcelain vases and bowls for Rosenthal named Lapp, Weave and Strip. The tableware aesthetics are inspired by the distinct design approach of the late architect Zaha Hadid: fluid, organic shapes, a dynamic play between void and mass.

“The Lapp collection comprises a family of vases of different sizes in varying combinations of…

Thierry Mugler: Couturissime. A fashion retrospective at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The famous fashion designer Thierry Mugler accepted for the first time to put on a retrospective exhibition of his creations. Thierry-Maxime Loriot is the curator of the fashion display that is already showcased at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada.

The exhibition features more than 150 outfits created between 1977 and 2014, sketches, unreleased footage, accessories and new designs part…

Teresa van Dongen Electric Life. A lamp powered by living bacteria

Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen together with scientists from Ghent University developed a revolutionary complex micro-ecosystem that is able to light up a lamp without down-time.

 The installation named Electric Life is on show at Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and features a robot-like design that hosts an entire eco-system of bacteria that excrete electrons that furnish the base for producing…

Hiroshi Sambuichi. Naoshima Hall, redefining Japanese traditional building techniques

The Naoshima Hall multifunctional building is the new addition to the extensive architectural project initiated over 20 years ago by the businessman Soichiro Fukutake that spreads across tree islands set in the Seto Inland Sea: Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima.

Hiroshi Sambuichi is the architect who planned the 1000 sq m eco-friendly building after carefully researching the movement of the wind…

Melike Altınışık Architects. Robot Science Museum in Seoul to build itself

The Turkish architects firm Melike Altınışık Architects (MAA) won the international competition of building projects for the Robot Science Museum (RSM) in Seoul, South Korea, a pioneering space dedicated to technology and robotics that is aimed at educating and familiarizing the public with robots and new technology.

The proposal of the Turkish architects is a museum that builds itself…

The designer Constance Guisset launched a collection of sculptural plates created for the brand Moustache during the design and lifestyle event Maison et Objet 2017.

Though they give the sensation of being soft at the touch and flexible, the plates are actually made out of ceramic. Each one of the pieces that make the set are molded by hand and then dyed in five colors – green, water mint, burgundy, white and light pink.

“Canova is a collection of trompe-l’oeil plates, a tribute to sculpture. Their shapes were first carefully modelled by hand. This patient work creates an illusion of smoothness in the lively and tense matter of the ceramics,” said Guisset.

Photo credits: Constance Guisset

The British designer Giles Miller created an installation called Perspectives that is located in the middle of the English Winterfold forest, an ingenious elliptical-shaped structure with a steel framework that supports cedar wood shingles.

The shingles are mobile and can be closed to create a shelter for the hikers or left open for stunning views from the top of a hillside. Also, most of the cedar wood pieces have a personal message carved on them.

“The site is at the top of a natural vista that was then cleared and flattened ready for the piece. Both the elliptical shape and the overlapping surface of Perspectives are organic architectural references inspired by the natural surroundings of the forest at Winterfold,” Miller told Dezeen, the design magazine.

Giles Miller has been nominated on the shortlist of Emerging Talents by the jury of Maison et Objet 2017 .

Photo credits: Giles Miller

Best known in the art world for his wearable sculptures Soundsuits, the singer, artist and writer Nick Cave unveiled at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA) an immersive installation entitled Until, a strong visual manifesto on racism, violence and humanity.

“I had been thinking about gun violence and racism colliding. And then I wondered: Is there racism in heaven? That’s how this piece came about,” said Cave.

Until is, as the artist emphasized, a visual expression of the popular phrase “innocent until proven guilty” or in this case “guilty until proven innocent”, an extensive installation on discrimination based on gender or race.

Nick Cave’s installation is a kaleidoscopic universe that begins with an oasis of scattered lawn ornaments that leads to a dream-like crystal cloud topped by a garden populated by flowers, birds and chandeliers that give way to a complex net made out of hand-woven shoelaces and pony beads. After passing through this fairy-tale like areas, the viewer is immersed in a space made out of violent images of targets, guns and bullets in which one feels in danger of an imminent attack.

Nick Cave "Until" Exhibition 

Nick Cave "Until" Exhibition 

Nick Cave "Until" Exhibition 

Nick Cave "Until" Exhibition 

Nick Cave "Until" Exhibition 

Cave’s Until installation will be on display at Mass MoCA until August 2017.

Photo credits: MASS MoCA

The Belgian photographer Annelie Vandendael challenges the general perception on beauty and fashion photography by creating surrealist and mesmerizing scenarios in which the human body appears unaltered and in perfect symbiosis with the surrounding nature.

The photographic series suggestively entitled Sois Belle has a melancholic vibe, a sepia character and a soft warm light that enhances the human features and adds drama exactly as in the paintings of the Great Flemish Masters.

“These photos are my reaction against the examples of fashion photography in which the personality of the individual is irrelevant. Instead, I aim to let the authenticity of the body speak for itself. A manipulated body is harmful for our perception of reality,” said Annelie Vandendael.

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

 Photo credits: Annelie Vandendael

With the new haute couture collection created for Maison Margiela, John Galliano showcased his creative genius as never before. The collection entitled Artisanal is Galliano’s razor-sharp statement against the social media era we are living in.

Artisanal is a visual exploration of the selfie phenonomena, of  “a reality veiled in filters and conveyed through symbols”, so he went to extremes, over-layering garments, hiding the silhouettes and personalities underneath hyperbolical constructed dresses. A feast of colors and bias-cuts, pop-art, hand painted lace and daring mixes of textures and lengths created the canvas of his visual essay, but the pinnacle of his creative display was the unprecedented use of his famous deconstruction technique (the same that defines the Maison Margiela brand) to dismantle some of the garments to the core, to create, as he said, a mere memory of the item.

Galliano worked with the artist Benjamin Shine on the hand-crafted embroidery pieces and the astonishing painted tulle piece applied on the beige trench coat.

  Photo credits: Maison Margiela

The Naoshima Hall is a public multifunctional building designed by the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi. The public edifice is a new addition to the extensive architectural project initiated over 20 years ago by the businessman Soichiro Fukutake that spreads across tree islands set in the Seto Inland Sea: Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima.

Hiroshi Sambuichi  planned the 1000 sq m eco-friendly building after carefully researching the movement of the wind, water and sun on the island. Therefore, the Naoshima Hall has a traditional irimoya hip-and-gable roof that controls airflow and the interior features washi paper, shikkui plastering and hinoki cypress walls. The Naoshima Hall serves as a hub for various pass-time activities that range from art to sports.

Photo credits: Shigeo Ogawa

The German photographer Rudolf Herfort has a unique sensibility and a predilection for nostalgic, melancholic scenes that depict in just a few strokes a whole captivating story of how people cling to the past as a shelter from the fast paced present.

The project Russian Fairy Tales started as a visual exposé on public spaces and waiting rooms in Moscow but over the years it developed into a more complex study on the modernization process that is going on in Russia and how it is organically interlaced with elements that belong to the communist period, creating therefore surreal scenarios and a latent reluctance to change amidst the Moscovits.

“I photograph real, unmodified scenes—nothing is ever staged—but am always looking to draw out surrealist elements. My eye looks for incomprehensible situations, moments where you can’t quite put your finger on what’s happening. I aim to make mysterious images from abstract circumstance,” stated the photographer Rudolf Herfort in an interview for Lens Culture.

Photo credits: Rudolf Herfort

Konieczny’s Ark is one of the most talked about architectural projects of 2016, a private dwelling created by the design firm KWK Promes.

Nested on the picturesque Polish hills, the concrete house has the shape of a traditional barn but with a cut-out base that permits the flow of rain water and prevents the negative impact on the natural environment.

The Ark seems like a bridge between the two parts of the meadow with its walls created from glass so the residents can fully connect with the surrounding nature no matter in which room they are in.

“I was thinking how to design a garden around the house. After some time I realized that our building site is a part of the whole mountain, therefore the best garden design would be the lack of it, so on the best fence would be a temporary herding fence, the best path – few rocks. Therefore, with that approach I finally got the best garden – pure, the surrounding nature,” said Robert Konieczny, architect at KWK promes and owner of the Ark.

 Photo credits: Jakub Certowicz 

In a world infested by discrimination of many kinds, Alia Ali’s project, People of Pattern, is a plea for reconciliation and peace and in the same time a display of the human potential of creating beauty.

“It became clear to me that this discourse of discrimination had to be balanced with knowledge and beauty by means of interactive art. If we have forgotten that we have our humanity in common, then I propose something else we have in common- fabric,” said the Alia Ali.

The research took the artist on a long, almost six months journey in which she documented the textile making techniques in eight different countries: Mexico, Senegal, Morocco, Uzbekistan, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan.

Photo credits: Alia Ali 

Eyal Gever, NASA & Made In Space. The first 3D sculpture launched in space

In early 2017, the contemporary artist Eyal Gever will launch in space the first 3D printed sculpture entitled #Laugh, a project developed in collaboration with Made In Space, an enterprise that aims to colonize the cosmos, and NASA. Gever’s concept is to send into space the sound of human happiness, therefore he created a special application and invited the public to record laughter on the app.…