Domenique Mora: Where Design Meets Vision

Cristina Parreño Architecture worked with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the Paper Chandeliers installation in the VIP area of ARCO Madrid. The team from MIT comprised James Coleman, Sharon Xu, Koharu Usui, Natthida Wiwatwicha and Hannah Ahlblad. Paper Chandeliers installation in the VIP area of ARCO Madrid. .  ..

Quartz is one of the most common minerals in the Earth’s crust. As a mineral name, quartz refers to a specific chemical compound (silicon dioxide, or silica, SiO2), having a specific crystalline form (hexagonal). It is found is all forms of rock: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. Quartz is physically and chemically resistant to weathering. When quartz-bearing rocks become weathered and eroded, the grains of resistant quartz are concentrated in the soil, in rivers, and on beaches. The white sands typically found in river beds and on beaches are usually composed mainly of quartz, with some white or pink feldspar as well Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust. Quartz crystal is found in many countries and many geologic environments. Major producers of natural quartz crystals are the United States (particularly Arkansas) and Brazil. Natural quartz is rarely used as found in nature (especially in electrical applications), except as a gems...

Pietre dure is an Italian plural meaning "hard rocks" the term embraces all gem engravings and hard stone carvings artistically carved into three-dimensional objects.  The Pietre dure, Italian hard stone, is made from finely sliced colored stones and precisely matched to create a pictorial scene similar to a Florentine mosaic.  In the Pietra dura "inlay technique", highly polished colored stones are cut and fitted to create images.  The stonework is assembled loosely and glued individually, stone-by-stone to a substrate,  after having previously been sliced and cut into different shape sections and assembled together with precision.  Stability is created by grooving the undersides of the stones so that the stones interlock and held in place by an encircling frame. The pieces are generally crafted on green, white or black marble base stones. Typically the  panel is flat, some where the image was in low relief were made by hard stone carving. It fir...

The Archaeology of Art sculptures are based on the forms of real shells - the most perfect pre-existing sculptural 'readymades' in our natural world. The found forms are enlarged using a 3D printer and cast in aluminium, concrete, stainless steel or bronze. Marc Quinn polishes the inside of the shells to a high sheen, contrasting with their heavily textured surfaces. Like the rings on a tree, these surfaces tell of the age and history of the object, like some kind of found structural diagram, whereas the sculpture’s highly polished, reflective insides remain in the present moment, continually reflecting the present. The Broken Sublime sculptures are modelled from shells which have been broken into by humans in order to eat the flesh inside, and highlight how our relationship to nature is shaped by needs of the moment.   Marc Quinn (British, born 1964) is a leading contemporary artist. He first came to prominence in the early 1990s, when he and several peers redefined wh...

For the London Design Festival, award-winning architects Amanda Levete Architects and engineering firm Arup have simultaneously framed and opened up the Cromwell Road entrance to the V&A. The installation is incredibly successful; perhaps surprisingly so, given its simplicity. Three stories high and 12 meters in diameter, the wave is made of oil-treated American red oak, using laminating techniques traditionally used in furniture making. Its three-dimensional latticework spiral draws you into it, and then into the V&A .  

Tucked in an alleyway perpendicular to Maison Hermès are Hong Taek and Kim Chanjoong’s Paul Smith building, and Cho Minseok’s Ann Demeulemeester Shop. Paul Smith’s former flagship store is a striking white polished monolith with a seductive organic shape not unlike a gigantic tooth. In spite of the colored sign now painted on the surface, it’s still well worth a visit. A few doors down, the Demeulemeester shop is a curious creation with a green skin of living plants. Whether some might call it a chia building or the result of a sordid affair between Oscar the Grouch and a concrete culvert, it’s pretty cool and definitely a must see. Further south on the corner of Dosandae-ro and Eonju-ro, the Hyundai Motorstudio houses galleries, a café and lots of cars – tilted sideways and displayed in the front window. Conceived by local architect Suh Eulho of Suh Architects, he used 36,000 meters of steel pipes and anodized steel panels supplied by affiliates within the Hyundai Motor Group t...