I had a very funny weekend! Instead of going, as usual, to the lake for relaxation, I decided to giva a hand to some friends of mine in a little store (sort of a newsstand but with food and other stuff) they just bought. The old owner, I've realized that getting on location, didn't know about order and left the place in such a bad condition that, as entering the place I asked myself why was I there, since I could have been doing so many other things in clean places. But I gave my word! So we had to clean it up, take out all the mess, repaint it, they got new furniture and, Ikea is so great in this occasions so we had to build all of them. On saturday night I realized that I am no longer 20 years old as I was completely broken up, tired and cranky.

But then the best part of it came on sunday! With the place that seemed coming out form a design magazine! And there they were!

I had to take my camera and just shoot anything that was around!

Suddently was like being a teenager again! Damn...I ate so many of this stuff that isn't even funny!I love the smell of chemical strawberrys! And the feeling when they get stucked in your teeth that sometimes you feel you need a drill to take them out from your mouth! And my favorite of all...Chupa Chups lollipops! I think only Lieutenant Kojac loved them more then I do!

It was a magical "candy-scape"...but then it was over... I still had to take a broom and help to clean up!

My issue between color versus B&W has been huge! I've realized that in the past couple of months I haven't shot any Black and White photos. These two were the first serious photos I took. It was 1994 and my father gave me his Nikon F. Amazing camera. I had just enrolled at SCI-Arc and we had this photography assignment: double exposure shots. The problem though was that I never used the camera before and...I didn't really speak a word of english! Thank god there were amazing people who helped me out (thank you Mick!!!). The shots came out pretty good in my opinion. So, I got so fascinated with photography that I kept doing it. Always with manual cameras. Always black and white. Then, all my friends got into the digital world. But me. And my friend Efrem. We kept going with our manual machines. Then, 2 months ago I gave up! I bought a digital Sony camera. Fabulous! I started shooting like a maniac. Everything. Almost all my posts are with photos I shot. The funny thing is that for some reasons black and white has disappeared. I am not sure why. With my manual camera it was so amazing shooting B&W that capturing colors wasn't really an issue. Now, with me entering the digital world the situation has reversed. Maybe it is the camera, maybe it's just a state of mind!

I was reading about "Someguy" in the real sense since I do not know who he is beside that he is a graphic designer. He is working on an amazing project. He leaves his notebooks around places such as coffee shops, trains, bookstores with the invitation to whoever finds them to fill a page with drawings, collages, writings and to do the same as he does: leave it back somewhere else, waiting for somebody else to find it and move on to the next page. Well some of them got completed and now he is publishing them. "1000 Journals" is out.

More to come since a film maker wants to make a movie out of this story. So she started going around the world to find the people who wrote in Someguy's notebook. she became part of a search around the world that was apparently amazing as the journals themselves.

I love the collective outcome that came out of this project.

So, today I woke up and the rain allowed me to think. Think about my blog. I decided to create another one...my energy has to go somewhere beside my daily job as an architect! The other one is called "ARTemology - Behind and Beyond art architecture and design" and differs from this one only for one thing. It is not personal. I just post things that inspire me and hopefully other people. Go check it out!

It's raining outside. The weather is going to be like this for a week or so. It's ok. It was a long time I said I needed to wash my car!

All this day talking about art, containers, lunch boxes and restaurants got me really hungry! Waiting for me there is this amazing cheese wrapped inside a cabbage leaf! Still talking about it apparently! No more containing things for today!

I have absolutely no clue what got into me today. I am so inspired and I can't think about anything than art, its link to people, to space to whatever that can relate to it. Well, here something I was really happy to read today. I got an email telling me that Containerart has a "container" in Venice too...and, since I will be soon going to the Biennale I looked it up. Fantastic!

Containerart is basically an urban, itinerant and adaptive art exhibit. It transforms your entire city into a living museum. Really interesting is the fact of using the same shell/container inside which artists can express their creativity. Not to mention the concept of bringing art to the people inside their everyday spaces/places. These containers are placed in different cities. The containers link cities, urban centers with suburbs, nations to nations. And the visitors become part of the "box". They are stimulated in a debate. I'll hopefully go check the containers¨ Some of them look amazing. Go check them out!

Are cities just a static and paralyzed entity? Or are they a poetic inspiration for art, architecture and thoughtful urbanism? Yes...I thought so too!

These images are from the artist Lee Jang Sub who reinterpreted some urban maps of cities.

Interesting too, is the Saatchi& Saatchi campaign ads for Sony hearphones. In this case a map of a subway system was used for the ads.

Art, in the deep sense, is everywhere. In museums, galleries, in cities, in books, in shopping malls, in public piazzas, in our brains, in our everyday. Yet, when discussing about art the majority of people think about a museum or an art gallery. But, when dealing with art, one must think about not only the essence behind it, being it a photograph, a poetry, a painting or a scultpure. One must think about the place where art takes place. A room, a glossy page, an art gallery (known as "whitecube") or inside a known or not museum. Art should link people, should talk to them, should make them think and should give them feelings. Happiness, fear, pleasure or disgust it doesn't matter as long as art become the vehicle of/for discussion. Sometimes I wonder if the right vehicle is the museum. I do not believe so since, for some reason, I feel more detached to art when I am inside a museum . I get more involved in the discourse if I find myself in places where restrictions are less present. Art becomes less distant in art galleries and in common places such as restaurants and bars. In a way you become part of the spectacle (as Guy Debord would say). I came across this bar named Karriere Bar in Copenhagen. The place was founded by the danish artist Jeppe Hein. This isn't only a restaurant, a gallery or a dancefloor. It is the place where everyone becomes a performer. Everything inside Karriere Bar is a piece of art: the furniture, drinks, lamps. It is a place to socialize but it also becomes a place of creation. What is unusual is that in here are not only involved the "selected few" of the art world but common people. And the same common people become part of the art unconsciously participating at the art-show. A real interaction between the artist and the viewer takes finally place. And the interesting thing, if you don't have the chance to go to Copenhagen is that you can become sort of a voyeur just by logging onto the restaurant website: clicking the link ‘i’m a voyeur baby’, you can hear fragments of real-time conversations and ambient sound, picked up from an ashtray-shaped microphone on a table of the Karriere Bar. This bar/home interface is the work of Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller, one of the 32 artworks showing in this art gallery for the everyday pleasure.

Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of the Dada mouvement, founded by artists and intellectuals Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Marcel Janco during World War I anarchic could have been forced to close its doors. Its fate of lied in the hands of the voters of Zurich who had to decide whether to end its subsidy of CHF315,000 a year. The right-wing Swiss People‘s Party forced the vote. The party's reason for its closing was "no more public money to places that use art as propaganda"or "“Zurich’s not gaga. No taxes for Dada”. Well, I am glad that Zurich had made the right choice: Cabaret Voltaire will stay, for good. Sometimes politics in this country (as well as in many other) makes me think about the debate about public funding of the arts. Is it possible that the governments often spends money on redundand things but then, but when something historical, that is part of our artstic past (and future) might disappear the money is not available anymore? Fortunately in this case, common people understood the importance af such a place and decided with their own mind (and heart). Sometimes it is about art, not about politics.

'It’s not Dada that is nonsense--but the essence of our age that is nonsense.'-- The Dadaists

When talking about Ikea I never know if I should talk about a store or an art/museum of everyday objects. What is the difference anyway? Ikea is a a place constructed upon specific concepts: visual imaging of a reality displayed through order, structure, domesticity, beauty and, ultimately, about consumption. Entering Ikea is a pretty strange experience. First, you are introduced to the fantastic world of swedish design (at a low price!) through an initial explanation on paper. How you enter the space, how you walk through it, how you shop and yes, on how you pay! The interior is pretty easy to understand due to the fact that what you see is nothing more than the domestic reality of your own everyday. One path takes you systematically through the entire "yellow and Blue Box" in a journey from the inside out. From the living room to the kitchen, fom the office to children furniture, from inside your home to its outside with the gardening section with tools, plants and gadgets. Ikea IS your home, your psychological domesticscape. You are guided through the space with the only available path: a red arrow on the ground forces you to go in one direction. The interesting thing about Ikea is that you never get lost. You always know what the next thing is going to be, since it is your hypothetical home you are walking in. But yet, you will find yourself totally lost in time and space. You never have a clue if you are heading north or south. The outside world is for you totally inexistent. Ikea is a work of genius. A museum of everyday life design. A place where you can test the "sculptures" to feel them, to compare them with your personal taste, A chair is a chair, no matter if you see it or not, a chair is always easy to picutre and contextualize. Unlike a painting, where each one of us (hopefully) will subjectivize the meaning behind it. But Ikea is a place where a chair isn't always a chair. A place where a chair becomes the ultimate piece of art within your museum of the everyday. And, unlike a museum, you can pick up the "everyday work of art and desing" along the way, and at the end you'll pay and go. Maybe to eat some scary swedish meatballs before heading home. And the strange part of this entire trip is the same for everybody: you go to Ikea to buy a set of plates and you go home with a four door cabinet with the strangest name on earth! And that's the entire point of Ikea. You walk through your home and see what's missing...and let me tell you...they just know that something is missing.

In my messy office I found this old school "phenomenology assignment". In this cloudy day reading it was interesting although it's dated almost 10 years ago!

"It's early morning in Amsterdam as I wake up in the tiny room of the hotel Acacia. It is raining outside. The rain is falling down creating a wonderful natural music. I open the blinds. It's very cloudy. Colors have no meaning in this moment. No colors, just the sound of the rain. Today's program is a trip to the Van Gogh Museum.

The museum is located in a Mies Van Der Rohe building. Two experiences in one! As usual I stop at the entrance reading the endlesss resume of the life of the artist, then I start my walk thorugh the spaces. There is such a contrast within the building. Big white spaces and no ornamentation beside the big collection of paintings and the few windows. Two, three, four colored powerful paintings and then one window. A window, a frame for the outside world that today has no colors. I think I was spending more time staring outside the window then at the paintings. I can't hear the sound of the rain like it happened this morning at the hotel. In front of me the grey world. Behind me space and colors. A house, sunflwers, a room, faces, landscapes. Suddently I found myself in a new room. I stop and look outside the new window. Something strange had just happened. Wasn't it grey and raining outside? For some reason the sun is shining. I can feel the wind touching my skin softly. I keep looking until I notice a man working with passion and intensity in a wheatfield. Behind him the space is enclosed by mountains. No sound of rain. The man, although working hard, isn't making any sound. He is dominated by the sound of nature. I realize I feel great. All this is very intriguing and I begin walking towards the man. Should I talk to him or should I just start running in this great landscape with no apparent boundaries?

"Lily! Are you coming upstairs?".

I do not know what happened, the only certain thing is that I "was back" in the museum space. I start walking towards my group when I look back at wheatfield image. It was there but it was static now. The feeling of the wind was now gone, the man wasn't moving anymore. My friends words transformed my reality back to a painting. What happened I really do not know. It was probably what I wanted to see that particular moment. Movement and colors. Not only a fixed image on the wall. The image people usually call "a painting".

Or maybe this was the real window I opened early in the morning at the hotal Acacia".

Interesting writing! Among the so many bullshit I wrote back in that time!!!!

I just came back from a trip to a new site. We got a new job for a house renewal. A mess but interesting. But these two words got me thinking about the reality of architecture in our global urban context. The other night I got the chance to watch (again) the movie Sidney Pollack did about Frank Gehry "Sketches of Frank Gehry". I like Gehry for one and only thing, the same reason I also adore Zaha Hadid: they both were able to detach themselves from the ordinary, they were able to, in a way, deconstruct the already deconstructed world of architecture. I do not like everything he does. I believe his experimentations got, somehow stucked. Nice Bilbao but then he did the Disney Hall in LA that is basically an exact copy, conceptually talking. There is a fondamental issue in architecture which is...money. Rich clients and you get your creativity going, you can dare doing whatever your creative moment (always thinking about functionality) is telling you. But clients with money are kind of rare. Especially in the economic crisis we find ourselves in right now. People do not really want to invest and if they do they want to spent very little. You can do architecture, projects with little money but the result is usually very simple. Architecture has to be on top of everything functional and then, differet, not ordinary, beautiful, provoking, readable. Yet it is not. People usually describes things as "ugly" or "beautiful", never trying to read what's behind it. Frank Gehry buildings are beautifully different form anything else in a city. They provoke and create strange feelings. If you stand in front of the Disney Hall you'll see the building changing colors with the sun, with clouds and becomes a total different construction when it's raining. That's what I call architecture. ugly or beautiful it needs to respect what's around it. But good architecture has to talk to you, like with human interactions. When they asked Gehry what is architecture this is what he said: "Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstanding and provide a beautiful context for life's drama". But still...he got luckier then others!!!

Few are the tv series that I really love and constantly follow. I have to admit that since "The Sopranos" and "Six feet under" left for good I haven't been really into anything in particular. Then, "Brothers and Sisters" showed up. A very interesting show. I love it! Big family, politics and business are the main themes around the plot. I do not have a big family since I am an only child. But my family is huge. Aunts and oncles, cousins and more cousins! We all live next door. We see each other very often. We share a big family house at the lake. When we are all together we talk, about everything: politics, literature, the world and life. My parents have been very active in politics so 90% of every conversations is about that! I work in my family's architecture firm. We fight, we create, we do business together. For some reason, although very differently, we relate to some of the stories in the show! It's a very interesting family, crazy, alternative, and, even though we fight a lot I love it ! Because there is a point in life when you realize that, when in troubles, family will always stand behind you, no matter what. Unlike friends that usually, when in need, come out for what they are. I thought I knew very well my family but, everyday, there is something new to learn. And it's true..."the people you love the most, maybe are the ones you know the less"!

Yes!!! There is a moment in everyone's life when the need to have some house renewal takes place. We all want a nice place to live in. Nice stuff, nice paintings or photos on the wall, nice colors. And nice plants! So, I decided that my apartment needed some green. It has been so long since a plant survived my home reality. I finally decided that, before repainting all the rooms and moving things around, I had to put lots of (living) nature in every corner! Don't we all, deep secretly inside, want to be as good in home improvement as Martha Stewart??? Martha can make miracles with absolutely nothing. And we, when thinking about our home, believe in miracles too. Unfortunately my plants seem not to survive in any space. With all the possible effort I feel like a killer! And Martha smiles. "it's simple...do this, do that and here it comes...nice green...". So here is what is going to happen. Got the plants, gave water, and hopefully natural life will go on inside my home.

Nature is fascinating. Yet annoying! Automn has come and trees, not caring about order, just drop their leaves on the ground. Some of them don't and simply change their colors creating around us an enormous colorful ephemeral canvas that remains there only for some time, until winter comes and everything becomes white. At least I hope so...I really have the need to go ski soon! While picking up all the dead leaves on the ground I found this one. Not only is it dead, but it also lost its skin. Something interesting appears. Its internal structure is a city. Is it? Streets, avenues, neighborhoods, empty spaces. It's like an urban map. Beautiful nature. Something dies and something else has the chance to grow. Our creativity? Our imagination? I kept the leaf and brought it inside to photograph it, while the garden remains there, covered with colorful natural death. I hope the wind will come and just sweap it all away!

The political election for the new US president I guess has never been so interesting as now! I said, after my forced departure from the political world that I would never talk about it ever again. But the presidential 08 are a different thing! Are we really assisting at a debate or an amazing tv-show? Has a politician to be more of an actor than a boring talker? Obama and Mc Cain. People or brands? It's funny, I went back to LA for a short vacation and all I brought back from my trip were Obama gadgets! My "Obama for your mama" T-shirt got really popular among people around me. Obama sounds as good as "Prada", as "Abercrombia and Fitch". Everybody have put so much effort in advertising the candidates as if they were a clothing brand. Or a store one. And it works! It seems up til now that the business plan around the run for presidency has involved more people then 4 years ago. In Europe we constantly hear and talk about the "Obamania"...in Berlin more people attended his public speech then if the Rolling Stones sang in the same place. This morning I was reading something relly interesting. 7 Eleven, same as 4 years ago, is selling coffee cups with the candidates name on it. Blue for Obama and red for Mc Cain. You make your choice and get your coffee. Not only you walk around your city sharing with the world your political choice...but you also, obviously, become the mean by which 7 Eleven get advertised around the streets. Up til now Obama's cups win! And 7 Eleven says that 4 years ago the "coffee poll" was the same as the outcome of the presidential winner! No more to say then go out, find a 7 Eleven and get your coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I just got the october issue of Wallpaper* magazine. Yes! I have to say that Zaha Hadid is never a disappointment! Her covers simply rock! Her gatefold die-cut cover inspired by her "Lotus Room" at the Venice Biennale is extremely fascinating. I am so glad because if it already expresses so much in an inverted "flatness" inside a magazine I believe I'll be totally blown away when i'll see it "live" at the Biennale the 7th of november!

I didn't hear the alarm this morning! I woke up 10 minutes before my doctor appointment! My cough isn't going away! Tired as a truffle's dog after an entire day of search, I had to get ready and go. I finally made it on time although there was so much traffic like I was on the Champs Elysées! I walked in the empty waiting room and the first thing I see is a screen telling me : "do you feel the strong urge to often urinate? Do you?". I turned around but the assistant already closed the door. "Discuss with your doctor if you have the need to urinate too much. You can have a serious disease". I sit down trying not to look at the screen since I am tired and annoyied. "Do you smoke and can't quit? You'll never make it alone. Call a specialist for help". I am trying to quit since a long time. My waiting isn't over: "Are you overweight and have a high colesterole? Be careful. You are at risk to have a heart attack". And the last one: a very beautiful Golden Delicious appears on screen. I have always had a problem with Golden Delicious apples. Who decided that they are in fact delicious?? Anyway: "Eat healthy. People who do not eat healthy are statistically dying sooner than the other". I just have an horrible cough and suddently I am the target of all these health issues! Finally the door opens, the doctor comes in "ciao Lily How are you?". The first thing that came out of my mouth " are you completely insane of showing these things so early in the morning??". "It's the new thing of the health insurances...they put these machines in every doctors offices"...that sucks!!! Now I am thinking about health...I think I am going to eat a Kebab for lunch but right now I go on a break with a coffeee and a cigarette!!!

Heavy day today. My brain is tired. I am going to let it escape through the door of my thoughts.

I am laughing by myself! My mind went back in 1995, Los Angeles California. I bought the crappiest VW Rabbit existing in Southern California. It was red and all broken up but it was THE deal. I didn't drive it for a long time since it had a terminal disease and I was able to sell it for more than it was worthed clearly shutting up my mouth about its imminent death! But I had funny experiences driving around the coast. Especially with my dearest friend Rob. He once gave me a book called "Travels in Hyperreality". A book-essay written by Umberto Eco. I remember being new to all those terms such as hyperreal, simulation and simulacra, and we would just drive around and talk about it for hours. About all the examples he talked about in his essay: about Las Vegas being a simulated city (and then eventually go there and discuss about it), about the Madonna Inn, known as the kitschest hotel on earth. The best example though of hyperreal: each room representing a place, a simulation of a place...whatever room you chose you'll find yourself in the jungle, in the desert, even in portugal...but you are in San Luis Obispo yet you have the feeling of being somewhere totally different. Then my dear VW would take us to the beach and we would go in the nicest place on earth to eat: Sloopy's in Manhattan beach! What a wonderful place! In there too you would find yourself projected into an almost surreal place! Why am I thinking about my old Rabbit and postmodernity?? simply because I bought a new VW, not a rabbit and while waiting for it I cherish those old good times!

I looked outside the window and it is still cloudy. It doesn't matter since I adore when it is like that especially now that the automn has finally arrived. My life these days has become very colored. I started doing the same thing Björk sang in one of her songs: I am organizing freedom! I have been planning a lot lately (not in architecture!!!) and suddently I got all my creative inspiration back. I am so excited I will go to the Venice Biennale soon (7 november), Paris in december and hopefully Berlin for Christmas. I can't wait, I want to take lots of pictures and get back in track now that I have a lot of time to spend entirely for myself! Right now I am deep into the "abstract" moment of my life. My last posts and my new ones are all with totally abstract pictures I took these past couple of weeks. For now no more staged miniatures worlds. Abstraction is what I am interested right now. Colored or with shadows of gray...it doesn't really matter!

I fell asleep last night with a book in my hands (and my glasses still on!). I finished my last one and started the new one right before taking a good sleep. I woke up with the book still in my hands! Anyway, I started my day noticing that the sky was covered with many shadows of gray that ultimately turned into a darkness I haven't seen for a long time in this part of the world. So, I started reading newspapers trying to understand what happened last night at the final debate between Obama and Mc Cain. But swiss journalists were already sleeping when that event took place so I went in my favorite online newspaper "The Huffington Post" to discover that Obama still rocked the night. And that made my day. I wish I could have voted too in the states. I lived there for years and I'm now hoping for the big change. Let's wait for the 4th of november and really hope that intelligent voters will make it happen!

A long time ago, while attending SCI-Arc, I came across a quote that suddently challenged all my world. "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are". A quote that for some probably would not mean a thing since, it's easier in life, to just see what's there without really putting imagination, interpretation, feelings to it. Images are constantly presented to us (and thank god!!!) but we are almost being sucked in , absorbed in a daily routine to just see deeper than what is there. Somebody once said that advertising is the best art form of the 20th century (or something like that!) which is not all wrong ( do not take me wrong! I adore going to museums and galleries too, but I believe our everyday is sometimes a parallel gallery). When I look at a visually beautiful ads I look at what's behind the image. Obviously there is marketing, strategic thinking that ultimately will drag people into buying whatever the ads is publicizing! It's a little like what I said in my previous post (yes I know! Keith Loutit rocked my world today!). He looked deeper at the world that sourrounds him/us and re-presented it back to us in a total different way. The way he saw it! I do not remember when I shot these pictures. I do not even know what they want to represent if not the part of something that I thought was interesting! I saw it the way I am!

I love miniatures! I bought so many in the last couple of years that it's not even funny! I then use them to reproduce worlds that do not exist outside the frame of my photos. But they are in a way real, just because they are there. I did couple of series and some of them are in few posts of this blog (a book's funeral). Shooting them in a particular layout gives them a life of their own. They become human in a shot. They belong to the "unvulnerable ground"(as I called one of my series) a parallel world.
Today I found soemthing really beautiful on the net while doing my daily dose of net-surfing! I was introduced to this amazing photograph named Keith Loutit. He did something that cannot be explained in words simply because it's impossible. You have to watch his work to feel it! If I have to interpret with my personal reading of his work I would say that he did the opposite of my miniature shots. What he does is basically shooting photos of real people in a real context (s) with a tilt-shift camera lens. The shooting I believe lasts hours if not days. Then It assembles them all together and what comes out is simply magnificent. I felt a real "miniaturized" world. To some extent even a fake one. But it's not! It completely changes the way we perceive a place, an action, an urban context. Just watch it!



The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo