samantha hahn

an illustrator who is not afraid of colour, hahn, uses pen and inks to bring her whimsical drawings to life. the new york times referred to her watercolor work as “winsome”. now she's doing wallpapers to brighten up our homes. take a look.

http://samanthahahn.com/

museum of glass

shanghai has launched a campaign to launch 100 museums in a decade with the intention of becoming a ‘globally important culture and creative centre’. It was designed by Logon, a shanghai based german architectural design agency.

‘germany’s glashütte lambets supplied the enameled glass used for the museum’s façade inscribed with glass-industry terms in ten languages.’

while coordination asia art directed, designed and managed the overall concept.

‘designwise, we wanted to create a piece of black crystal glass. sparkling, reflecting, sleek and deep.’

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/article/detail/1946/shanghai-museum-of-glass

koshi kawachi

“manga farming” is the brainchild of koshi kawachi, a tokyo-based artist. the concept is simple: take an old manga comic book and place it upright in a dish; sprinkle some plant seeds of your choice on top (radish seems to work well, but buckwheat, broccoli, rocket and basil would surely do); and water them.

the idea opens up a whole new range of possibilities for book recycling and indoor farming. paper is potentially a wonderful fertilizer and planting ground, and according to an usda study, pulp and paper waste recycling to produce fertilizer is very much the need of the hour: “the u.s. pulp and paper industry produces 5 million mg of solid waste each year in the form of sludge. currently, most of this waste is landfilled.”

a common problem is that the nitrogen content of pulp and paper sludge is quite low and its use as a fertilizer is thus hampered. that said, processes that can enrich such sludgy waste using bacteria and wood decay fungi are being developed. and the ink? we’re sure environmentally friendly options like soy ink could be used more and further the cause of recycling paper for use as a fertilizer.

http://www.koshikawachi.com/gallery/01mn

judge a book by its cover

polish literature has a long-standing tradition of using unique, alternative and often intricate designs for book covers. (probably) originating from the avant-garde style of constructivism, as imposed upon society by the propaganda of the soviet union, artists pushed the boundaries beyond political constraints and created something as significant as the words within.

with the release of ‘1000 polish book covers’, a competition was held to redesign more recent books, based on the polish tradition, but from a more modern creative perspective. some of the results are pretty amazing.

http://1000okladek.pl/?lang=en - Originals

http://50watts.com/#1542390/Polish-Book-Cover-Contest-Winners - New Designs

fred eerdekens

“entering the artistic space of fred eerdekens places the spectator in a semantic landscape in which what one had thought of as stable meanings are continually twisted and turned. what better way to figurise this than by letting the spectators themselves ‘twist and turn’ in trying to make sense of the objects.

in spiralling around the objects, they in fact become direct figures of the play of logic that rules the objects. after the linguistic turn, and in the wake of post-structuralist thought, the topography of our mental landscapes has become increasingly intricate. the work of fred eerdekens attests to this fact and it provides a conceptual map of this, in many places still unknown territory.”

http://www.fred-eerdekens.be/