Architexts
Lately I've been power-editing; less publicly writing. Here is a catch-up of some recent pieces on design and art. Each approaches the idea of architectural construction, or the relationships between text and space.
A profile on French designer Nathalie Du Pasquier for Disegno No. 6, launched as part of Milan's Salone 2014.
Nathalie Du Pasquier, Construction, 2012.
"Set colour palettes recur in ways that seem to reference the industrial qualities of Milan, a city whose greyscale is intercepted by flashes of 1960s Metro interiors and early 20th-century painted facades. It is hard not to read Milan as a constant reference point in Du Pasquier’s work. She loves its juxtaposition of building styles, and there is an obvious architectural influence in her constructions’ occupation of space."
On Visual Editions' wayfinding compilation, a box-book of maps, Where You Are, in Icon 128:
"Each 'map' plots a select number of co-ordinates, rather than a comprehensive plan; most deal with the microscopic scale of daily life more than a macroscopic overview. Yet many of these personal plans reach out to communal concerns: the places where childhood experiences were unlocked, the topography of the work space, or the lines traced by writing itself, as Joe Dunthorne tells of New York poet Bill Kushner: 'He writes a line of poetry for each block of Manhattan he walks.'"
On the Victoria & Albert Museum's Memory Palace exhibition, an experiment in visual storytelling, in Icon 124:
Illustration by Robert Frank Hunter for Memory Palace.
"'Here is how to remember. First you must pick a place.' So begins Hari Kunzru’s Memory Palace, a fiction that is the foundation for an exhibition exploring the relationships between text and space, site and story. A memory palace is a mnemonic device, attributed to the ancient Greek lyric poet Simonides, that involves placing images of memories in physical locations. [...] The exhibition itself embodies a Memory Palace, with minimal turrets and cream walls."
On Elmgreen & Dragset's installation at the V & A, "Tomorrow", which transformed several of the museum's galleries into the apartment of a fictional architect.
"As I enter over faded rugs into the living room, it is clear that this is not the abode of a Corbusian, nor a purveyor of minimalist design. A gallery assistant dressed as a butler glides by, and I perceive the faint tones of a classical refrain. [...] The installation recontextualises the experience of the museum to supply it with a lingering sub-plot – the behind-the-scenes fictions which, we are reminded, all objects and places possess."
In Domus - read more.
