The Whole Room in a Box: Compact Furniture Collapsed! (is there an extra dimension involved?)
Swedish artist Michael Johansson likes tight spaces and effective use of any available area; so much so, that he collapses computers, cars, furniture, trailers (you name it) into artistically arranged cubes - structures that are equally infuriating and pleasing to the eye:
You can't order this futuristic apartment from IKEA, but something tells us, this is indeed the future:
Bruce Willis in the "Fifth Element" might use one of this high-tech furniture walls in his tight living space:
Best use of under-the-stairs space ever! I'm envious:
Why bother parking when you can store your vehicles in a cube and then... well, you can forget about retrieving them later. But you can charge admission just to see this incredible structure. It is called "self-Contained" and consists of containers, a caravan, a tractor, a Volvo car, pallets, refrigerators, etc.
"Rubik's Kitchen" could be the dream of every housewife in need of extra storage space:
"Faded Memories" consists of the vintage TV / Audio equipment and other paraphenalia... it will definitely fit into your closet for future times of reminiscence and recollection:
Want to pack your recyclables? Here is the most compact solution (on the right is the obsolete computer hardware cube):
The whole room, compacted, might look like this - somehow, it seems that it can be compacted even further, but then the artistic factor might totally disappear (the homogenous cube is just not that interesting)... there has to be SOME amount of negative space, don't you think?
This is what a TETRIS room would end up looking, if the blocks would fall quickly, with many mistakes... Speaking of mistakes, Mana once said: "If Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear". So true.
The "matryoshka doll" principle is clearly at work in this wonderful set of suitcases:
This arrangement seems cool, but it is however completely useless, as these "differently sized suitcases fit perfectly inside one another, and thus lose their original purpose."
See a lot more similar "stacked puzzle" projects at the artist's site.
Brave Space DesignTetrad Mega Shelving makes it's own "Tetris Furniture" statement:
Emily Speed shows us how this R2-D2 (or Wall-E) similar creature can find its place in the urban environment. Imagine meeting this creation in the dark alley, being asked for a cigarette and a power boost!
This sculpture made and worn around Linz, Austria, is called "Inhabitant" and is all "about trying to find your own place or identity in a city and the representation of psychological space" - more here.
...can be appreciated from the works of Willi Dorner. Do not try it on your own - hanging between the building blocks upside down can be hazardous to your health! (see more here)
"Bodies in Urban Spaces" can be fit just about anywhere, and the space they occupy comes rent-free and close to all amenities:
My humans say someday I can have conceptual artist Christine Hill build me an entire cat dancer business in a trunk, like she did for other businesses.
I am not sure whether she should include ballet slippers or not, though. I would probably eat the ribbons.
There's an American atom bomb lost somewhere in Northern B.C. and another one had to be self-destructed over the Saint Laurence river because the plane carrying it was going down.
Watch Dr. Strangelove and realize that... it is only -just- satire and not a documentary.
I saw the waterfall thing at Kinder Downfall, years ago. There was about three times as much water actually going down the fall as was going in at the top or coming out at the bottom - most of it was being recycled. It certainly was windy, and not far off freezing.
"Yes, Hill sings his song of Gary with clear sarcasm and bile..."
Well, not really: the song was written in the 1950s, right at the peak of Gary's arc, right? In retrospect we may interpret it as ironic mockery, but that's not built into the song.
I used to work in Gary during 1996-99 years. The first day I joined and went out for lunch to a KFC across the street, my colleagues warned me to get food from home or get mugged. Being new to US and my first visit to Gary was a real eye opener.With the Jobs gone and economy in shambles it was a desolate landscape. There was a shooting 2 blocks from the office the day before I joined , later I learned was lot of gang banging and drugs. I used to live 4 miles away from Gary a beautiful little town called Crown Point and used to wonder what a difference 4 miles was.I was new to driving and took a less menacing route to Chicago Lakeshore drive avoiding the 80/94 Dan Ryan road rage way where honking or driving slow means sure death.Little did I know that I will be venturing past the Gary and its extended neighborhoods past the Amoco refinery and South Chicago. It was eerily a haunting scenario from old hollywood movies showing a desolate town and only the noise of some squawking bird. There were very few people near apartment blocks, the shops boarded or heavily armored , empty parks and no kids. The only successful business near Gary that seems to be crowded would be Al Bundy's favorite nudie bar and casino. During the winter you would notice some burning drums with people huddling to get some warmth and it felt a brutal existence for the people living there.There was some federal grant during Clinton years to revamp Gary, restart the convention center, which I bet was for used for payroll subsidy to keep the dead man walking.
Thank yoi for posting this! My husband is from Gary, and it is very sad to see the ruins of what used to be such a grand city. Whenever we drive through Gary, I always look at the buildings and try to imagine what they looked like when the city was in its prime.
wasn't this suppossed to be the first all black city. Which is the way they wanted it. Even with help from the government it still ends up being a ghetto. So this is the model they wanted to set for the rest of the country for the black community.
My grandfather was a welder and moved frequently from job to job during WWII. One place that he talked about, twenty years later, was Gary and how much he had liked it there.
Absolutely fantastic photos! After two years of urbex in Japan I'm really longing to explore some stuff in a Western country. Time for a trip to the States...
No, Anonymous idiot, Gary was not supposed to be, nor was it ever, "the first all black city." (That would be Eatonville, Florida.) *Gary* was billed as "the city of the century", and it was filled, at least in the early years, with immigrants and their US-born children. For the record, that's *European* immigrants -- Germans, Russians, Poles, etc.
Only after the immigration restrictions that came with WWI did American blacks really start moving to Gary in greater numbers, along with the Mexicans the company also encouraged to immigrate. Not, you understand, that they really wanted to socialise with those blacks and Mexicans, dear me, no. But they got the work done, while there was work.
It is in no small part attitudes and ignorance very like your own that contributed to what Gary is today; prejudice like that does tend to lead to the kind of racial conflict that became Gary's public image. As it turns out, that conflict only gets worse when you combine it with worrying about how you're going to feed your children and knowing you'll be at the end of the line for anything and everything because some people think the color of their skin and the language they learned with their mother's milk add up to virtue on their part instead of pure luck.
I live not to far from here, and I promise this is as beautiful as I've seen the city in 20 years... gary is the one place we "219'ers" wont go after dark, especially since the police are off the clock after 5.
You can thank the labor unions for driving out the big steel mills, textile mills and other manufacturing that employed thousands of people. Vehicle manufacturing went to using lots of robots and other automation, but the automation technology for these other industries didn't come soon enough to keep them in the USA when labor priced itself out of the market.
The rooms with a lone chair and the huge fireplace could have been J F Sebastian's residence in Blade Runner. Unsettling when life and art resemble each other so closely.
Unknown, it wasn't labor unions that drove steel productions overseas. Would YOU want to work for Chinese wages, and try to keep up with the cost of living in the States? Unions promise living wages and health care. I'd hope any American would want those things.
Thank you! I think there is a typo though: "This hood ornament is from a 1954 Chevrolet police car (right image). On the right is the hood ornament from the DeSoto Diplomat". So, which is which?
!!! Jude Law for 46th Karlovy Vary IFF !! not spam, Jude used the prize - small statue - girl with globe for his car.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fNTli9bvRM
"This hood ornament is from a 1954 Chevrolet police car (right image). On the right is the hood ornament from the DeSoto Diplomat"... The ornament on the left is from a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. http://www.flickr.com/photos/44323995@N03/sets/72157624804248321/detail/ This is a 54 Chevy Police Car http://popuppistons.com/2342/1954-chevy-police-car/
@Kaiser Troll: The Viking inspired ornament is the emblem of The Rover Car Company, Vikings, and later pirates were known as 'Sea-Rovers'. Others of their cars carried viking ship ornaments, badges of a ship with dragon prow, red and white striped square-sail, its sides lined with shields. The founders of the company were a bit viking obsessed. In 1948, they built the 'Land-Rover', and have been building them ever since.
It's also worth noting that many of the plastic and glass ornaments were illuminated from inside or underneath and glowed when the car was running at night.
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My humans say someday I can have conceptual artist Christine Hill build me an entire cat dancer business in a trunk, like she did for other businesses.
I am not sure whether she should include ballet slippers or not, though. I would probably eat the ribbons.
http://phoebedancingcat.blogspot.com/
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