August 26, 2015

Look Again: 6 Art Installations Defy Expectations

 

Six unparalleled art installations demand a double-take.

 

1. Firm: Gijs Van Vaerenbergh

Project: Labyrinth

Location: Genk, Belgium

Standout: A maze formed from 16-foot-tall steel panels, which would measure nearly 1 mile laid end-to-end, covers 15,000 square feet at a former coal mine. 

 

2. Firm: Tokujin Yoshioka

Project: Tornado

Location: Saga, Japan.

Standout: To inaugurate the renovation of the Saga Prefectural Art Museum, 2 million custom plastic straws spilled out of a gallery also containing the artist’s inventive furniture. 

 

3. Firm: Marc Fornes/TheVeryMany

Project: Vaulted Willow

Location: Edmonton, Alberta

Standout: Inspired by tree roots, then modeled with complex computatinos in Rhinoceros software, painted aluminum shingles rose to form a folly. 

4. Firm: Robert Gober and Damien Hirst

Projects: Corner Door and Doorframe and Trittico

Location: Milan

Standout: Housing a wide variety of artwork was the goal for Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture in transforming a former distillery complex into the Fondazione Prada. 

 

5. Firm: Patrick Dougherty

Project: What the Birds Know

Location: Salem, Massachusetts

Standout: Intertwined basswood, maple, and beech saplings form five giant birdhouses on the grounds of the Peabody Essex Museum. 

 

6. Firm: Miguel Arraiz García and David Moreno Terrón

Project: Ekklesia

Location: Valencia, Spain

Standout: Ritualistically ignited as a rite of spring, cardboard columns sprouted from a mosaic that mimicked local patterned tile in painted wood instead of ceramic. 

 

 

>>See more from the August 2015 issue of Interior Design.

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