STUmbling over

STUpendous

STUpid

STUff

This set of photos brought up couple of interesting issues! Since it is quite strange for some that even here in the land of chocolate we cultivate rice, in fact we actually do! And I never expected that some of the one I am eating is from a land next door. So, since I grabbed some of it I decided to extract some of its beauty before it gets cleaned and processed for culinary use. I took a piece of paper with words on it. So, while I am shooting these pictures my mother asks me "do you know what that paper is?" Obviously I didn't even look, I just thought it was a nice old piece of papers with words on it. "We wrote that in 1971, me and your father, while eating. It was sort of a list of what we owned back then". A memory of what rice looks before getting processed overlaid over the memory of family possessions! Now they are captured in one thing!

I was downloading the images I took today and I started laughing by myself while this one came up on screen! I totally fucked up something because what you see here has absolutely nothing to do with what I shot! My mom got bunch of roses last night at a conference she was attending. While exploring the properties of my digital I decided to try out with flowers. I am not really a fan of nature when it comes to photography but what the hell, I am just experimenting! So, the roses were a shiny strong red-bloodish color and behind them was a really black (really black!!!) cabinet!!! I fucked up something because as you can see none of the colors came out right!!!! Bt I love this photo even though it's not real...but still...at the end.... "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"

Today I still don't feel that great. The flu this time takes a little too much to get away. I felt dizzy all afternoon, and obviously I thought it was the cold! Somebody from the other room starts screaming "you didn't eat enough today that's way you are dizzy, plus you are very pissy...you didn't eat enough"!!! It's true!!! If I dont eat enough I get into this aweful mood and treat everybody like hell! I guess they are right! Since I woke up this morning I walked around with my camera: at the table, kitchen, in the park with the dog, and I kept taking pictures all day, of everything. At lunch I was too busy trying to capture the hidden content of my food that I didn't even finish it!! And seriously there wasn't any hidden content!!! Just a baguette filled with roastbeef and a funky salad. Visually though I seriously believe the hidden beauty came out..this macro lens transforms everything into a better thing!!!

LETTERS

NUMBERS

Remember when we still had to draw by hand those crappy projects at the office? No typing, all by hand. Even letters, word and entire sentences! I adored that though! With the ink spreading all over the place! Thinking back I realized how much importance we gave to this words. But funnily the importance was more an aesthetic issue, not really of meaning!

I got this nickname at sciarc. This instructor once told me "Lily you are a rebel and on top of that you are very funny...you should have your own sit com on tv". I remember me and Efrem laughing so hard about this. Then, I opened my email account (hotmail was brand new) I I was so into the rebel thing that it became rebel28. Years have passed, and people still call me "the rebel". In politics I was the "political rebel", which at the end didn't really pay much being like that. In architecture same thing. But then, ultimately, I think I just am a rebel. A more tired one. More tired than 10 years ago when life seemed so easy. But let me tell you: I love being a rebel. Eventhought it doesn't always turn out good, but at least I live my life like I want. Like a non diplomatic rebel!!!This image I just shot was a page from a german newspaper my mother kept and hanged on her wall (both my parents are architects and are around here at the office)...it was the right shot done the right day!!!!

Then, after being inspired by Mel and Vezzoli I started really doing my thing!!!! RockingRose! I love rocks and stones. Everytime I have a chance I start collecting them! Sometimes I find myself at the site for work and instead of looking up I look for a perfect stone!!! Well everybody has an obsession! I guess mine are stones and trash!!

My friend Mel today searched an artist named Vezzoli. I didn't know about him nor about his work. So I looked him up on the web. Very interesting work. I really liked his art. So, after looking for inspiration all day, I just took my camera around the office trying to capture the moment.

Today I am just looking around for inspiratons! This one is seriously one of them! Beautiful creation of an artist, Anna Garforth, who wrote a poem on a wall with moss. So inspiring!

I was wondering about the meaning of the word architect. So, does an architect only have to build a house? Or can he/she design a purse? Or a chair? or a lamp? What if I don't want to design building but I want to design funky bandaids? I actually had this dream couple of years ago, to design a huge selection of bandaid because I thought: "well lily, two thing s are for sure in business, blood and death" seriously...think about it. If you design coffins you know for sure your job is going to last forever because the thing is people die. If you design houses well, there can be an economic crisis, or people simply don't have money or they just want to rent it...well, then you are really screwed! Even with bandaids. People cut themselves, always. And they need bandaids. So, my idea, I thought at that time, was very interesting. I could design an entire line. But then somebody invented the "spray-bandaid" and my idea just died. Bottom line: how do you categorize a person? By the degree, by the phD, by what? Is Zaha an artist because her work is hanging at Moma next to a Miro? Was Rocco Barocco a fashion designer? Yet he was named "the architect of fashion". No wonder!

When I think about ink all I can think about is the liquid inside my pen. Its odor, its color, its temperature when it gets on my fingers! I do not think about magnetism neither of music. That's what I found! Magnetic Ink combined with music and video. Superbe! Space and music!!!



Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo

This is another interpretation of space use. A temporary yet contemporary use of empty spaces. This is a temporary Benetton store in Milan. What the brand did is simple. Open a store only for a period of time. Which is nothing new if you think about farmers market (a temporary use of the city), but here I guess is part of a marketing agenda.. Smart. Sell what you still have (maybe the last things of the summer collection) and wait for the new one. I wish I had this space for myself and just hang photos, writings, and stuff. Together with my virtual artist friends!

When I was living in LA I found myself wondering, from time to time, why can't we build in the so called "inbetween spaces". So much space in cities is just left there without knowing how to use it. Space, even if it is the tiniest one, has potentials. Either if you build in it or if you plant some green. Many ideas come to mind when talking about small inbetween space. How can you use it? This image is one solution: a building!! Two belgian architects (Pieter Peerlings and Silvia Mertens) found an interesting solution for an inbetween space in Antwerp. 2.5 meters to fill. And that's what they did. With a building composed by 4 containers. Each one is lit by a specific light during the night differentiating every single space (or container). Idea, space, light. The idea is not new, using container to construct a building, since already others have done it. The bast example is, in my opinion, the Freitag Store in Zurich. But here, in Antwerp, the beauty of the project, is about using a space that is left there with no apparent future.

Here is the news of the day: "dear participants at the architecture competition...you did not pass the first round...we are sorry ...blah blah blah".
I didn't pass the first round of a competition and the strange part of it is that I do not really care!!! I have to be honest though, I worked very hard on it, but I know how the architecture world works here in Switzerland. It's like a music contest that you already know before it starts who is gonna win it. Stupid me that I even did it! But it was fun, I had fun doing it and that's the important part of the entire experience. At the office we put a name in an envelope. We'll open it after the winner will be announced and guess what? I am sure the name in the envelope is going to be the same!
I hate this freakin way of doing things. In some part of the world they call it mafia. Here they call it open competition...

Are we architects? Are we artists? Are we designers? Are we all of that? My answer is yes we are! This lamp named Vortexx was made by the architect Zaha Hadid in collaboration with Patrick Schumacher. I think it is a very beautiful object, more than a lamp. Yet it is a lamp!Is this art? Architecture? Design? Again: I think it is everything combined. There is no way (Mel) that we have to categorize ourselves into architects. But yet we are!Confusing and strange world we live in!!

Is Zaha Hadid an architect or an artist? I think we are ARCHISTS...it sounds better!

I will try and stop smoking too... one day.

right now I feel like a bag of cigarette butts. and the only marks I make are these butts of cigarettes.

the only marks I make, I keep to myself, and share with you all.
for this image I placed a postcard on magazine article quote. this is a postcard I am sending out to you!
(the ones on my blog were secondary attempts with my slr. this one was taken with my sister's point and shoot! but really says much more, it's direct!)

To tell the truth I've never been on a camper. I've never liked the idea of living "on the move". But things change sometimes! Although I still prefer to sleep in a hotel and then drive a car and travel the day after, the other day I came across this idea. Wonderful!

It was announced at the Caravan Salon in Düsseldorf and apparently is already changing the concept of tourism. The idea comes from a thesis project developed by two architecture students of the Graz University.It is based on a cell-design (that's where the name comes from: Mehrzeller) that can be personalized by the client which is a brilliant idea since, like Freitag bags, there is not one same as another.I really love the architecture behind the idea but still I consider myself, in this specific case, a lazy tourist. I travel a lot, visit a lot of places, but on vacation I like doing absolutely nothing. No cooking, no laundry, no cleaning, no phone and no driving!!!

I guess I will have to go on vacation with someone who does because this camper is awesome!

Sometimes when I look at my blog I feel that I am just writing words on an old dirty wall. I feel that writing only about my life and its sourroundings isn't enough for my brain, and for my mental graffiti.
I see a lot in my life. I read a lot during the day. I capture a lot throough my camera. Yet, on this virtual wall what happens is just a fragment of the totality of my everyday, which, in a way, it is the point. But the point is also writing about stuff people read. Stuff that maybe some do not know about. Beautiful stuff. Stupid stuff. Poetic stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff.
Stuff that are here to stay and that hopefully will not be washed down at the first big rain!
So, beside my personl messy life there is also a lot to think about!

Expo 2010 will be held in Shanghai, China. The theme of the exposition will be "Better City – Better Life". I am already quite intrigued by the announced architectures from the different countries attending the event.

To be honest I was somehow disappointed by many of the projects. The Swiss Pavillion, to say what needs to be said...SUCKS big time!

Two Pavillions though, really came out beautifully, at least on screen! The Polish and the Danish.

Great job! Let's hope reality is as good as these virtual images!

I received this video link to youtube! Really funny Nike commercial with Roger Federer!

I was talking about this "saying" with Mel: Just do it!

I have to apply the same for a different reason! So, as I said we had a blast of a weekend. Just one thing went actually wrong. I have the flu (which, thank god is getting better) with a cough that got evil on me and transformed itself into a kind of asthma.

I had a really major attack on saturday that I sooooo freaked out that I started wondering...

I know I shouldn't have been smoking with cough...but hey!

But let me tell you...I really got scared I couldn't breath...so I decided to try to quit smoking (again). Starting today!

I have to Just Do It!!!

I had an excellent weekend! Family, my friend Aris, good food and great wine.

Foie Gras, fiorentina, risotto with sea food, goat cheese (9 different ones!!!), and again foie gras! I adore it! I would eat it day and night!

We had, as usual, the apéro, and then a variety of wines that perfectly accompanied the food. Gattinara, Morellino di Scansano and so on!

And after all that...relax on the big terrasse facing the lake, with tons of magazines, a hot Nespresso (what else??) and a cigarette.

We'll do it again, hopefully next week.

I am still playing with my camera, still playing with my figurines, still creating what in a previous serie I called "Unvulnerable Grounds".

This time they are travelling through oceans, ads and who knows!