So the end has come, and after a month of selfless fluff-growing it’s time to say goodbye to our lovingly nurtured face-space. We’ve managed to raise over £250, supported by a fantastic moustachioed cupcake bonanza, and donations continue to rolling in for our Best ‘Tache Vote. Click through to view the final results of our top-lip works of art… and don’t forget to give what you can for such a worthy cause by visiting the Movember website.

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Cancer, Charity, Design, Linney, Movember

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

Last week I visited the Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition in the rolling gardens of Chatsworth, Derbyshire. The exhibition is on until the end of October and it’s well worth a look. If you know a Russian oligarch or two, persuade them to fly in and pick up a piece – they’ll be spoilt for choice.

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chatsworth, derbyshire

The Maker Bot Thing-o-Matic arrived last week. After some serious head scratching we’ve managed to make it produce pretty reliably. It’s a proper geek-project involving some inside knowledge on stepper-motors, COMport USB connections, Skeinforge profiles and an extremely convoluted wiki…but…we can now make things that exist outside of the computer!

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A stratochrome is an image or object developed or executed in multiple planes or layers of colour’. Chinese artist Xia Xiaowan has produced these amazing pieces of art using paint on multiple layers of glass, creating a surreal holographic experience for the viewer. While his choice of imagery is a little scary, it’s ideal for this medium. His pieces seem to take on the feel of scientific exhibits suspended in jars. (more…)

David Spriggs, Stratochrome, Xia Xiaowan

I visited Yorkshire Sculpture Park over the bank holiday weekend, and there are some fantastic temporary installations on there at the moment. Jaume Plensa’s enormous figures built from typographic characters from different cultures are beautiful, especially when viewed up close, and the scale models on display are equally interesting for their intricacy and the way the artificial lighting interacts with their forms.

But for me, Aeneas Wilder’s work really steals the show. Untitled #155 is a free-standing structure built from 10,000 equally sized pieces of wood destined for parquet flooring, supported by nothing more than their own weight – no glue, no nails, no fixings. There’s an amazing sense of scale and fragility, and the fact that viewers are able to walk right up to the structure (no touching!) is brilliant. The installation reaches its climax on 3rd November with a big ‘Kick Down’.

Well worth a visit if you’re looking for something to do this weekend. I’ll post a few pics shortly.

Aeneas Wilder, Jaume Plensa, Untitled #155, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, YSP

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

This beach in Fort Bragg, California, has for decades been a dumping ground for local residents disposing of everything from household appliances to cars. In the 60’s the North Coast Water Quality Board closed the area for a series of clean-ups to reverse years of pollution. Large objects were easily taken away, however millions of tiny shards of glass proved too costly to remove. I’m amazed at how nature has found its own way of restoring ‘Glass Beach‘ to its natural beauty, shaping and smoothing the glass into a bed of sparkling gems.

More images at ThisColossal.com (http://thisiscolossal.com/2011/08/glass-beach/)

California, Glass Beach, Nature, Photography, Pollution