#olly wainwright

[xxm0thm4n-ph4nt0mxx]

What if olly joins the 919 adventures like Jack somehow meets them and joins the gang

[artemx746]

Olly Wainwright...Olly Wainwright my beloved...

[theleoisallinthemind]

Olly Wainwright

[nevermoor-ship-polls]

(Platonic) Olly Wainwright & Morrigan Crow

I love this ship/BroTP

I like this ship

I feel neutral about this ship

I dislike this ship

I very much dislike this ship/Not BroTP

Voting ended onMar 14

[helloyojo]

These designers are rethinking how we dress, recycle waste and even dye our hair. Their innovations could change the world – and the way you think about squid, coconuts and rubble

Continue reading...#designguardian

[rmcclan-newsletter-blog]

Jean Nouvel / Louvre Abu Dhabi/ Petrodollar Glitz

This article by NYMag is currently my favourite architectural profile; It is equal parts expose of the man Jean Nouvel and an insight into the architectural practice "Atelier Jean Nouvel". It is over the top, glamorous, ridiculous, and fascinating.  Apparently Jean Nouvel doesn't wake up and go to work, he instead stays in bed and visualizes projects? Then turns up at lunch to relay his findings to his associates over wine? Amazing:

Lunch is an important ritual in his workday, a discussion lubricated by copious amounts of wine. Often, it’s the first time his staff gets to see him, since he spends mornings in solitude. “I wake up, perform my little ablutions, then get back into bed with my eye mask on and my earplugs in, and I work. I imagine. I visualize. I create a film in my head.” Nouvel insists that there’s nothing meandering about these sessions: They’re intensive bouts of problem solving, preceded by weeks of preparation — but who’s to say if he dozes off?

He also takes off to his sunny villa in the south of France for an extended period of the year to work through specific projects with some of his staff. 

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Jean Nouvel does great work. He is also the man who brought us this gem from the movie "The Competition". The film is set around a real-life competition to design a museum in Andorra. Nouvel arrives to review the in-progress work and notices that the building facade is not working yet:

What size holes would you prefer Mr. Nouvel?

Not like these ones?

He is dead serious. It's an interesting movie and having worked on two invited architectural competitions (one against Mr. Nouvel) the movie is pretty true to the process. Creative work is rough because it doesn't matter sometimes how much effort goes into it if it's not good.

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The architectural work of the Atelier Jean Nouvel practice is undeniably bold, very technical, and always surprising. I can't recall where I found it, but I wrote it down at the time because it was such a clearly stated architectural position. Jean Nouvel's describes his approach to architecture as geography, history, and emotion:

“Architecture responds to a situation, there is no architecture per se. It needs to be clearly and historically situated. I always try to establish a relationship between history and geography, which means involving the people who will eventually use the building. The pleasure of being able to respond with a precise piece of architecture that satisfies someone produces a unique situation, especially on an emotional level. Without emotion, there is no architecture.

There is a fantastic 15 min short about Jean Nouvel

"Reflections"

if you want some more Jean:

"Each project is an adventure, a passion. The biggest temptation is to jump right in. There are solutions that come to you. There are images that spontaneously appear. My method is to hold back as long as possible to really imagine it spatially so, to be sure that I really have something to say."

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Like many of his global superstar jet-set contemporaries (Koolhaas, Hadid, et al.), Nouvel has accepted commissions from the Gulf countries despite poor human rights records:

Western architects, who are paid handsomely for their work in the Gulf and are often granted unusual artistic freedom, have kept their distance from the disputes. In 2014, Zaha Hadid told the Guardian that it was not her “duty” to account for workers on a stadium that she had designed in Qatar. Rem Koolhaas told me that his library “would make a whole generation eager to read,” adding, “I find it surprising that countries like Qatar and the Emirates are attacked when they are trying to make Islam and modernity compatible.” Among the Saadiyat architects, only Gehry has tacitly acknowledged the potential for abuse: in 2009, he retained a human-rights lawyer. When I asked him whether his contract with the Emiratis included labor stipulations, he replied that he was not at liberty to say.

The absolutely stunning Louvre Abu Dhabi, one of Jean Nouvel's latest projects is one part of a series projects on a cultural island. The review of the project by The Guardian's architecture critic Olly Wainwright nails it in the subheading, but the whole piece is good:

With its cosmic dome and starry latticework, the French architect’s water-lapped Gulf outpost shuns the petrodollar glitz of its neighbours. But there’s no whitewashing the appalling treatment of the labourers who built its light-filled halls.

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Another perfect application of the phrase "petrodollar glitz", remember this?

Again, excellent by Olly Wainwright in this longread on the back-from-the-brink "The World" development in Dubai.`

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à bientôt mes amis