CONTEMPORARY WILDERNESS

THE INVISIBLE MAN

Liu Bolin is a chinese artist that’s known for using himself as a blank canvas to blend into his surroundings. He claims they make a statement about his place in society as an outsider whose artistic efforts are not always valued. Liu said he wanted to show how city surroundings affected people living in them. He describes his work as a silent protest, both against the environment for the survival and against the state. His work is a kind of reminder, to remind people what the community we live in really looks like, and what kind of problems exist.'

JUGAAD

What happens when a thousand oil cans decide to fly?
Jugaad explored this idea through a celebratory and constantly evolving process of re-purposing and redefining the cooking oil can. The project borrows its name from a hindi term which refers to attaining any objective with the available resources at hand. Over a period of three months, discarded oil cans were used as a vehicle to explore ideas of sustainability, recycling and re-purposing with 90 other residents from Rajokri, an urban village in New Delhi. Using grass root ingenuity, Jugaad reincarnated 945 such cans into a free-standing shade canopy spread over 70 square metres.
Jugaad was first exhibited at 48°C public art festival held in New Delhi from 12th to 21st December 2008 and was supported by khoj, the Goethe Institute and the German Technical Cooperation. The project has been critically acclaimed in numerous publications worldwide and has recently been published in 'Limited Language: rewriting design: responding to a feedback culture'. Jugaad has also been selected for the Architectural Review Emerging Architecture awards in London 2009 and exhibited at the Centre for Architecture in New York in 2011.

TEMPORARY PAVILION

The temporary pavilion by Matthias Loebermann

Temporary pavilion used as a meeting place for athletes and media space and press to come to after their competition. At the ski competition, it was obviously the winter and structures often covered with snow. As the pavilion was built only a tie rod, rope and pallets, demolition and recycling structures simple enough after the competition finished. Loeberman pallets used to encourage people to look at common items in a new light as a building material back in 2005, is still a relatively new concept for most people. Back in 2005, Matthias Loebermann while building a beautiful pavilion out of shipping pallets reclamation for the Nordic Ski Alpine World Championship in Oberstdorf, Germany. Shipping pallets are found all over the world and makes for a sturdy building materials at low cost, which explains the remarkable resurrection “” Palletecture projects lately. Loebermann this pavilion was designed and built from shipping pallets in 1300 and held them together using a tie rod and pull the rope. At night, the interior was lit with the glare of lights and reflectors that shine brightest out through the cracks of the palette.

URBAN FARM BUILDINGS

The project is headed by the two principals of Studio HT as part of a class of the Design Build Program at the University of Colorado Denver. The Learning Cube is a simple framed structure with shipping pallets as infill. While the materials are rough the careful construction and design give it a refined presence. The building is a gathering point to hold meetings and classes, sell produce, and to get out of a blazing Colorado summer sun.

LONDON'S JELLYFISH THEATRE

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The Jellyfish Theatre opens today with an eco-themed play called Oikos (pronounced “ee-kos”, the Greek root for economy and ecology) by Simon Wu. The piece will be followed by Protozoa by Kay Adshead. Both plays deal with people rebuilding their lives after an environmental and political catastrophe, which goes along nicely with a building constructed out of found materials. The project is a bit of a warning against uncertain times and even an example of what we might have to resort to for future architecture.

Over 800 shipping pallets and 750 sq meters of plywood and other material were donated to construct the theatre. Old-school furniture serves as the seats inside the auditorium, and reused five-gallon water jugs are stacked together to form the wall of the lounge. Pallets, which came from the nearby Covent Gardent market, were stacked and hung vertically, while plywood covers the walls, roof and floors. Although the materials may have started out as junk, when you reuse them, they are no longer junk – they become useful building materials.

SHINJUKU CARDBOARD HOUSE PAINTINGS

These photos show painted cardboard shelters in the homeless city that took root in the underground sprawl of Shinjuku station's western wing in the mid-1990s. A deadly fire swept through the community in February 1998, forcing the inhabitants out and conveniently allowing the city to proceed with long-awaited plans to construct the moving walkway that now exists there. The paintings were also lost in the fire. The cardboard house painters were Junichiro Take, who once spent 22 days in jail for performing his art in Shinjuku station, along with Takeo Yoshizaki, Yasuhiro Yamane, Itohisa Takano and others.