Maggie’s Centres are places where people affected by cancer are welcome whenever they need support – from just being diagnosed, or undergoing treatment, to post-treatment, recurrence, end of life or in bereavement.

A £3million centre has recently been completed at the City Hospital Campus at Nottingham University. The architect, Piers Gough CBE, was a personal friend of Maggie Keswick Jencks, and is famous for his bold and imaginative architecture. Nottingham born Sir Paul Smith has designed the interior.

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Cancer, Maggie's Centres, Nottingham, Paul Smith, Piers Gough

I attended the Typo London conference last week. The event which hosted a wide range of speakers from Neville Brody to Lawrence Weiner, had the theme of ‘Places’ but to be honest was much broader than that. It was brilliantly facilitated by Erik Spiekermann and Adrian Shaughnessy (among others) and was easily the best conference I’ve been to in some time. One of the best things about it was that most of the speakers stayed for the duration and watched the other presentation, which created a real feel of community.

It’s the first time this event has been held in England, having previously been in Berlin and judging by the feedback from everyone, it looks like it’s going to return to the capital next year. I will be putting together a presentation covering all the amazing talks which will be shared here but for the time being here’s additional reading about it from Creative Review and Design Assembly.

Conference, Places, Typo 11

Came across this sample of exquisite three dimensional renderings at Aqua-Velvet, from the 1960 publication ‘Structures of Warped Surfaces: Combinations of Units of Hyberbolic Paraboloids’ by notable Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano (1917–2010)… You had me at ‘Hyperbolic’.

The drawings are by Gloria Catalano – more background info and drawings can be seen at Aqua-Velvet.com

Aqua Velvet, Eduardo Catalano, Structures of Warped Surfaces

Shangri’La Projections, Glastonbury Festival 2011 from Darkroom Motion Graphics on Vimeo.

Artists and performers are working ever more closely with architectural designers to extend their installations and performances across entire environments. ‘Projection Mapping’ brings surfaces and structures to life, using the environment as an integral part of the experience. This projection-mapped panoramic structure was built by Darkroom Motion Graphics for the Glastonbury Festival, creating a glowing, pulsing skyline. It seems the canvas as we know it has become truly infinite!

More examples of Projection Mapping can be found at TheCreatorsProject.com.

Glastonbury, Motion Graphics, Projection Mapping, Sculpture

Algerian artist Driss Ouadahi paints enormous public housing developments in his home country, used to accommodate displaced rural populations, embodying the politics of class, religion and ethnicity. Equally expansive and claustrophobic, I find his work mesmerising, so real yet so ‘other-worldly’. Tiled passageways and subway tunnels, built to enable the movement from one place to another, feel strangely labrynthine and prison-like. His work is full of wonderful conflict.

More work by Driss Ouadahi here

Architecture, Art, Driss Ouadahi, Painting

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vacant NL – dutch pavilion at venice architecture biennale 2010

the installation ‘vacant NL’ calls upon the dutch government to make use of the enormous potential of inspiring, temporarily unoccupied buildings from the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries for innovation within the creative knowledge economy.

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NIEUW-WEST It is the name of recently merged Amsterdam districts Osdorp, Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer. The merge also means an end to 20 years of reconstructing Osdorp. Celebrating this +1 was asked to create an intriguing video, featuring the buildings they found most characteristic.

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