I love the efficiency of this tiny Hong Kong apartment! Architect Gary Chang designed an elaborate system of movable walls with folding furniture, allowing a flexible configuration of twenty-four spaces within a tiny footprint of 300 square feet.
Chang gutted the interior, opening up the entire space for a fresh overhaul. He also warmed up the interior by tinting the windows yellow, instantly banishing grey days from entering the flat. Check out the video to see how he fits two beds into this space, along with a full kitchen, living room, library, video game room, laundry facilities, wet bar, and even a private theater complete with a hammock.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted back here — amidst holiday travels, I’ve been mostly blogging at Logos Graphics. For friends who have been patient with me, a very happy belated new year!
There are works from some of the best known names of the era — El Lissitzky (see his Soviet poster, below), Malevich, Kamensky, even Lenin and Trotsky — though to my great delight, I learned of seemingly countless other groups and their often humorous counter groups:
El Lissitzky, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919)
The somewhat staid Ego-Futurists, mostly in the literary camp, were later superceded by the Imaginists who indulged in long, deeply metaphoric poetry; there were also the painterly Cubo-Futurists, who counted Malevich and Mayakovsky as primary leaders. Then there were the Acmeists, the Suprematists (Malevich at his finest), the Neo-Primitivists, the Rayonists, the Bicosmists, the Luminists, the Electroorganists, the Constructivists and the Productivists.
The funniest groups were the Eggists, who formed as a joke in a newspaper article; the Everythingists, who embraced all styles of expression; and the Nothingists, whose slogan was “Write nothing! Read nothing! Say nothing! Print nothing!”
But these groups seem disappointingly shallow when compared to artists like Iakov Chernikhov, who is worth mentioning here as one of the most imaginative minds in modern architecture — even if his perspective is missing from Baku. Though best known for the Flying City, his body of work (especially his collection of Architectural Fantasies) is well worth a peek.
Iakov Chernikhov, Fundamentals of Modern Architecture (1925-30)
One of the album’s highlights is About Two Squares – A Suprematist Story by El Lissitzky (1920-22), a children’s tale about a red square and a black square. They travel toward a red circle (Earth) and smash into each other, creating abstract forms on Earth.
El Lissitzky, About Two Squares (1920-22)
It’s a futuristic narrative that combines experimental typography with the fun of reading aloud “colour-blocks of Word”… a synesthetic experience from one of the Russian greats! View the entire story here.
Here are a few shots from my trip to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston over Thanksgiving. From the road, the museum appeared a bit small against the dramatic Boston Harbor, but once inside the layout and scale of exhibitions felt just right.
On the top floor, I fell in love with Tara Donovan‘s delicate installations which were made of everyday materials like film, scotch tape, drinking straws and styrofoam cups. The repetitive patterns revealed beautifully organic forms that captured and reflected light in subtle ways, shifting as I walked around them. The photo below is of layered polyester film from Untitled (2008).
