Practices of Looking

As the dissertation and the personal projects become all too real I find myself looking for texts which are not only relevant but also, that I can actually understand!
This is a book given to us to read in NCSU which is really interesting and helped to get my head around some topics that I hadn't even realised were a blur to me!

"Practices Of Looking. An introduction to Visual Culture"

Silas Munroe

This is another inspirational person I met in America, this time it is a tutor. Silas was our tutor for an imaging class and really picked up the mood in the class so I thought I'd post his website too as it is quite different and has a lot of type made to look like image which was something I enjoyed doing in America

http://www.silasmunro.com/

Fellow Blogger - USA side

Over in America I met some interesting characters, but someone who stood out from the crowd was a guy named 'Logan Sayles'. With a keen passion for design and the attitude that life should be lived to the full, he is always inspirational to those around him. So I found out the group we studied with last year are all starting blogs and I thought it would be nice for people to see the thing he talks about as he always inspires me to try new things and think about design in a different (positive) light.
Here is his blog:

http://pseudotect.blogspot.com/

COOL HUNTER

Following my last post I was back on the website I discovered the stadium on.
It is called 'the cool hunter' and has loads of aspects of design, it is an easy to follow layout and updated regularly. Check it out at:


http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/

Mebourne Rectangular Stadium

I was on one of my favourite wesites which has a section about architectre...I'm not normally too interested in that side of design, but since it was part of this project I thought I'd ave a look.

I came across this building, The Melbourne Rectangular Stadium



Reading about it further I was intrigued to find out some of the unique features of the building, such as the LED lights on the top, which will be programmed to change colour and on match days represent the mood of the crowd...it will be interesting to see how that turns out. I think it's due to be finished this year so watch out for it.

If you want more information on the building you can find it at the following places:

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/architecture/

http://www.austadiums.com/stadiums/stadiums.php?id=279

Inspired Architecture

It's always great when you come across a piece of quirky art, but when that art is transformed into a bigger scale such as architechture the mind boggles how someone had the balls to a) suggest it and then b) go ahead and make it.

Personally I love to see things like this, I think it livens up a city and what's better than stating the obvious of a company by making the entire building literally speak the words of 'it does what it says on the tin'.



The Basket Building, Ohio, USA.
The official HQ of the Longaberger Basket Company.



Kansas City Public Library, USA
The general public were asked to help pick the books that would go on the front of this building, based on not only content but appearance and more technical aspects such as binding.

Castle of deams.

I found some pictures of a bizarre looking castle and investigated further.



This castle, known as 'Palais Idéal' is the work of a very dedicate French man, Ferdinand Cheval; mailman by day, architect by night.

He began this hge feat by simple collecting rocks and then proceeded to carve into stone for 34 years to create this masterpiece.

I think it is beautiful and admire the fact that Cheval gave his life to do this work.