New York Bar Oppenheimer has exactly the same size and proportions of the original Bar Oppenheimer, a regular hangout for the artistic community in Frankfurt. It contains the same furniture and details, from the lighting fixture to the tall radiators.

Unlike the original, Rehberger has decorated every surface of the replica bar with black and white stripes, which zigzag in every direction and are interspersed with flashes of red and orange.

The patterns are based on the concept of "dazzle camouflage", a tactic employed during World War I to make it difficult for soldiers to pinpoint a target.

New York Bar Oppenheimer opened last week at Hôtel Americano, coinciding with the annual Frieze New York art fair. Functioning as both an installation and a working bar, it will remain in place until 14 July.

"The way I look at it is like a suitcase," Rehberger told Wallpaper magazine. "I'm going to be in New York for a bit so I'm able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. And because I'm there for the art fair, the bar has to come dressed as a work of art."

Other monochrome interiors featured on Dezeen include a house-shaped cultural centre and a series of fashion boutiques designed by Zaha Hadid. See more black and white interiors.

See more bars on Dezeen, including one made from scrap materials.

Here's some more information from the exhibition organisers:

Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer

Pilar Corrias, London and Hôtel Americano are pleased to announce a new sculptural artwork, Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer by the German artist Tobias Rehberger. Presented from 11 May until 14 July 2013, the piece opened to coincide with Frieze New York and is on view at Hôtel Americano.

Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar. It is in this spirit that Rehberger has created a 'second edition' of Bar Oppenheimer, the Frankfurt late-night hangout he frequents and which is at the heart of the city's artistic community. The work is a sculpture and, at the same time, a fully functioning bar. Rehberger remains faithful to the essence of the original bar: dimensions of space and objects are replicated and re-imagined to produce a familiar yet unfamiliar environment. Vodka Steins, Rehberger's own favourite drink, are seconded to New York, transporting the artist's own Frankfurt Oppenheimer Bar experience to Hôtel Americano for two months only.

A place where creatives and thinkers meet to form, discuss, argue, and pursue ideas and follies late into the night, Bar Oppenheimer acts as a catalyst for change. Repatriated in New York as Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer, the artist is curious as to the effect that its influence will have on a new audience.

11 May – 14 July 2013
Tues – Sat 5pm – midnight
Hôtel Americano, 518 W. 27th Street, New York

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by Tobias Rehberger appeared first on Dezeen.

Called Variations, the project was curated by PS design consultants and involved Burks travelling to Calligaris' production centre in Manzano, where he conducted experiments in composition using the company's range of chairs.

Burks altered the brand's existing products by wrapping and weaving cords around and through their structures.

He also created installations from the chairs by piling them high and binding them in striped ropes.

"The experiments that we're doing now are, in one way or another, helping explore the future of plastic chairs," says Burks. "What happens when we have so many plastic chairs that are all so similar - are there ways that we can use craft to find a unique positioning?"

Thirteen kilometres of multicoloured ropes were strung from floor to ceiling in the showroom during Milan design week to create vitrines for the resulting pieces.

The experiments may form the basis of a new seating collection by Burks' studio Readymade Projects and the installation will be taken to the Paris showroom as part of Paris Designer Days from 4 to 9 June.

Burks often works with communities of artisans and past collaborations include lamps, tables and storage units made with basket weavers in a village outside of Dakar, and wire tables for Artecnica made by craftspeople in Cape Town.

Watch the designer talking about his design collaborations in developing countries in a movie from Design Indaba 2009.

See all our stories about Stephen Burks »
See all our stories about design using rope »
See all our stories about Milan 2013 »

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for Calligaris appeared first on Dezeen.

Called Momentané, the show looks back at the Bouroullec brothers' career so far and features furniture, lighting, spatial designs, drawings, videos and photographs.

The largest room is dominated by a 12-metre-high textile installation and a series of partitions designed by the brothers.

Objects such as the brothers' Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo are displayed on podiums covered with their Pico tiles for Mutina.

In one of the side aisles is a collection of their office furniture, including the Copenhagen furniture designed for the Danish city's university and produced by Hay, and the Ready Made Curtain system for Kvadrat.

Six alcoves contain objects designed for domestic spaces, such as the Alcove sofa for Vitra and the Cloud modular shelving system for Cappellini, as well as drawings and photographs exploring the brothers' creative process.

The Momentané exhibition continues at Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, until 1 September 2013.

Recent work by the Bouroullecs includes a courtyard installation of rotating cork platforms in Milan last month and an aluminium chair and sideboard for Magis – see all design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Here's more information from Les Arts Décoratifs:

From 25 April to 1 September 2013, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are revisiting fifteen years of creation in the Arts Décoratifs nave. Conceived as a gigantic installation combining the spectacular and the intimate, the 1,000 square-metre exhibition covers their entire career, highlighting every facet of their production: their objects and spatial designs, their limited editions and industrially produced pieces, their furniture for public spaces and the home, and their drawings, videos and photographs.

The Bouroullec brothers are focussing on three approaches to their work in the nave and its two side-aisles: in the nave in an installation in a vast architectural space; on the Tuileries side, with their reflection on the office and workspace, and on the Rivoli side with a more intimist approach highlighting their creative process.

Beneath a 12 metre-high textile vault in the nave, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec have created an abstract landscape structured by their partition designs (Algues, North Tiles, Twigs, Clouds), which divide the space and guide visitors through the exhibition. On entering this monumental, surprising universe one is immediately immersed in its singular atmosphere. Like an openwork screen, the polystyrene Nuages opens the exhibition, then one is led by the partitions through a series of their creations displayed on podiums covered with the Pico tiles produced by Mutina, including the Losanges rugs for Nanimarquina and the Assemblages furniture for Galerie Kreo. These confrontations play on changes in scale and highlight their delicate, sensual aspects. Through the Algues screen one has a view of the Textile Field, originally created in 2011 for the Raphael Cartoons room in the Victoria & Albert museum.

In the Tuileries aisle, the Bouroullec brothers are focussing on their reflection on the workspace, which began with the Joyn desks for Vitra, a collaboration they are pursuing with their most recent creations, Workbay and Corktable. The Copenhagen furniture, produced by Hay, was specially designed and created for the new university of Copenhagen. Their designs for the office environment are pragmatic responses to the most recent evolutions in working practices: alone or with others and therefore requiring either intimate spaces conducive to concentration or, on the contrary, collective work areas. Visitors will be able to test the ergonomics and use of these pieces by trying out the furniture themselves. Separate workspaces can also be created with the Ready Made Curtain, a new system of very light, ready-to-install curtains developed for Kvadrat. 300 abstract drawings, either free expressions or linked to a specific design project, are being shown on the walls of this gallery.

The six alcoves in the Rivoli aisle focus on objects designed for more domestic and intimate spaces. These pieces, chosen for the dialogue they create with one another, are contextualised by models and a constellation of images. Preparatory drawings and photographs of factory production and details show the processes of creation and production.

In only fifteen years of prolific creativity, the Bouroullec brothers have produced an impressive body of work – furniture, objects, partitions, etc. – in an always simple and functional style and providing new solutions to contemporary lifestyles. They are particularly interested in problems of space and modularity. They often work on a quasi-architectural scale: one of their first pieces, the Lit Clos bed, created in 2000 for the Milan Furniture Fair, was designed for people living in a single room, and the Alcove Sofa (Vitra, 2007) can be transformed into a sofa or partition. The Cloud modular system (Cappellini) combines shelfs and partitions, the Algues (Vitra) and Twigs (Vitra) modular systems are assembled to create openwork screens, and the North Tiles (Kvadrat) and Clouds (Kvadrat) partitions are designed for acoustic comfort.

Fifteen years of creation

Ronan Bouroullec studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and began his career working alone, immediately showing his originality in the Torique collection of combinatory vases and ceramics he produced at Vallauris in 1997. In 1999, Ronan was joined by his brother Erwan, who trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Paris- Cergy. Their continual creative dialogue and prolific output was concretised by their collaborations with major design publishers. The first of these, Giulio Cappellini, enabled them to rapidly assimilate industrial production methods in creations such as the Hole collection in 1999 and the Spring Chair in 2000. They then began their close creative relationship with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, which produced many of their projects, including the Joyn modular desks (2002), the Algues modular partition system (2004) and more classical types of objects such as the Slow Chair (2007) and Vegetal Chair (2009).

The brothers also produced designs for other design manufacturers in Italy such as Magis (the Striped and Steelwood furniture) and Kartell (the Papyrus chair) and in England such as Established & Sons (the Quilt sofa and Lighthouse lamp). In France, they developed several pieces for Ligne Roset, a manufacturer specialised in seating, including the Outdoor chair, the origami-inspired Facett sofa and armchair collection and the Ploum sofa, whose exceptional comfort is the result of intensive research.

Their collaboration with Galerie Kreo from 2000 onwards enabled them to develop more experimental designs and explore themes dear to them, particularly the frontier between furniture and architecture, in pieces such as Cabane and Brick. Kreo provided them with a free environment in which they could propose projects unaffected by habitual industrial constraints: the Bells lamps, the Rizière table and the Lianes lights.

In parallel, the Bouroullec brothers have also designed exhibitions and interiors, including Issey Miyake's first A-POC shop in Paris in 2000, the Maison Flottante for the Centre National de l'Estampe et de l'Art imprimé at Chatou, and more recently the Camper shops. The design of the showrooms of the textile brand Kvadrat in Stockholm was an opportunity for them to develop the Tiles and Clouds modular textiles partitions. From 2010 to 2013 they began new collaborations and widened their fields of activity. They designed a complete bathroom range for Axor (Hansgrohe group), the Piani and Aim lamps for Flos, the Losanges rug for Nanimarquina, the Ovale table service for Alessi, the Pico ceramic tiles collection for Mutina and university furniture for Hay. Their creations are now in numerous museums, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée National d’Art Moderne–Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Design Museum in London and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Publication

To coincide with this exhibition, DRAWING, a book of 800 drawings dating from 2004 to 2012, is being published by JRP Ringier. Drawing is their main day-to-day activity and the pencil the principal tool in their creative process and means of concretising their emotions, both as part of specific research in a project's development or as a means of free personal expression.

The Arts Décoratifs Museums
107 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
Open Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm (late opening Thursday until 9pm: Temporary exhibitions and jewellery gallery only)

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Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec appeared first on Dezeen.

As one of three architect-designed installations for the Urban Stories exhibition of contemporary living, Kengo Kuma's Naturescape was designed as an interpretation of a traditional Japanese Zen garden.

Cascading stone strata formed a series of undulating curves around the room. Pools of water formed at some of the lowest levels, while others contained clusters of bamboo trees planted in gravel.

"The clean and pure Pietra Serena stone is used so as to recreate a topography that, as in real landscapes, moulds the shape of water, guides our walking and gives a context to the objects to better admire them," says Kengo Kuma and Associates.

The installation was located in one of the buildings of the Porta Nuova Varesine complex, a new skyscraper district designed by architects including Cesar Pelli, Stefano Boeri and Nicholas Grimshaw. It was used as a showroom for furniture between 9 and 14 April, alongside spaces designed by Michele de Lucchi and Diego Grandi.

Other recent projects by Kengo Kuma include an experimental house in Japan and a fashion boutique in China. See more architecture by Kengo Kuma.

See more projects from Milan 2013, including offices of the future imagined by Jean Nouvel and a courtyard installation of rotating cork platforms by the Bouroullecs.

Photography is by Giovanni Desandre, apart from otherwise stated.

Here's some more information from the exhibition organisers:

In the spectacular skyline of Porta Nuova Varesine in Milan, on the occasion of the Fuorisalone collateral event, three exceptional architects are 'staging' three extraordinary suggestions of contemporary living.

Michele De Lucchi, Diego Grandi and Kengo Kuma, 'tell' their Urban Stories, through unique and thrilling installations, for an eagerly-awaited event, which supplements the busy schedule of Fuorisalone events.

Urban Stories, organised by MoscaPartners, with the collaboration of Hines, is a spin-off from the extraordinary success of Bologna Water Design 2012, the exclusive event dedicated to water design, which involved the city's most prestigious venues during the Cersaie show in September.

The limelight is therefore cast on Urban Stories and its stars, who thanks to the enthusiastic participation of major leading companies in a variety of industries will give rise to charming captivating set-ups.

The focus of Urban Stories is the Porta Nuova Varesine complex, which is the result of an ambitious urban and architectural replanning project involving large areas of the Isola, Varesine and Garibaldi districts, developed and implemented by famous architects, including Cesar Pelli, Stefano Boeri and Nicholas Grimshaw, under the direction of Hines Italia Sgr, promoter and investor.

The original installations created by Michele De Lucchi, Diego Grandi and Kengo Kuma will transform the important display spaces of the 'new centre of Milan' into an exceptional cultural box, ready to welcome the curious multifarious public who animates the most important and eagerly-awaited international design event every year.

Urban Stories are therefore not just simple installations, but proper 'seductions', resulting from a sensitive way of designing to imagine the landscape within our cities and outside them.

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by Kengo Kuma appeared first on Dezeen.

The Colors News Machine was created for the latest issue of Colors magazine by Canadian Jonathan Chomko, a interaction designer at Italian communications research centre Fabrica, as a mechanical allegory of contemporary news dissemination.

In the installation, a tweet sent to @colorsmachine is read out by a megaphone, captured on a tape recorder, converted into text and displayed on a television. It's then filmed on a camcorder and converted into a radio signal to be broadcast via an antenna. It's then picked up by a microphone, converted back into text and finally printed out as a headline.

"Sometimes the news comes through perfectly, but usually there's a small change in each stage and that makes for really a big difference at the end," Chomko told Dezeen.

The technological game of Chinese whispers uses common tools like language detection, Google translation, voice recognition and optical character recognition to replicate the errors that humans can make in digesting and passing on news. "In the end it's not really about the technology, it's about humans and the natural bias of hearing what you want to hear," explains Chomko.

"Once it's out there, the news gets replicated and copied and pasted from one media to the other," adds Cosimo Bizzarri, executive editor of Colors magazine. "The increased speed in production of news plus increased channels that it goes through from technology to technology means the final news that gets to you is possibly very different from what was put out there by a journalist."

The installation is on show as part of the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, until 28 April.

Last year we reported on an installation in London that took random snippets of news harvested from the internet, muddled them up and printed the resulting amusing headlines on a traditional wooden letterpress, intended to show that the more information we consume, the less we understand.

Here's some more information from Fabrica:

A behind-the-scenes look at modern journalism

COLORS Magazine will take part in the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, from April 24th to 28th with a preview of its new issue Making The News.

Today, 60% of British newspaper articles are copied from press releases and wire agency dispatches. American newspaper sales have shrunk by half in the last ten years. While traditional journalism is showing signs of crisis, new ways to make news are emerging. In Waziristan, Pakistan, where foreign journalists are forbidden, local photographer Noor Behram gathers and distributes unseen images of the aftermath of American drone attacks. Largely ignored by state television, footage of Egyptian anti-government protests are broadcast by activists in a makeshift outdoor movie theatre in Tahrir Square, Cairo. And in Mexico, where 52 journalists have been killed over the past seven years, the anonymously-run, crowd-sourced Blog del Narco has become a leading source of information on gang-related murders.

COLORS 86 takes a look behind the scenes of modern journalism, revealing tools and mechanisms used by old and new newsmakers: from paparazzi stakeouts to censorship, media hoaxes to photo-retouching tricks, not to mention cameras installed on drones, declarations of war via Twitter and Al Qaeda's activities on Facebook. To learn more, stop by the Raffaello room of Hotel Brufani at 11am on April 24th, where COLORS editor-in-chief Patrick Waterhouse will share his thoughts on making a magazine that, since 1991, has stood out for its striking photography and in-depth “slow journalism”.

The News Machine, an interactive installation designed and created by young talents at FABRICA, will also engage festival attendees from April 24th to 28th at the Spazio Cantarelli in Piazza della Repubblica 9. The installation is in continual motion, creating, transmitting and cannibalizing its own newsfeed across different media to stand as a mechanical allegory of newsmaking today.

COLORS is a quarterly, monothematic magazine founded in 1991 under the direction of Oliviero Toscani and Tibor Kalman. It is distributed internationally and published in six bilingual editions (English+Italian, French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Portuguese). The COLORS editorial team is part of FABRICA, Benetton Group’s communications research centre, and is composed of an international team of young researchers, editors, art directors and photographers. It is assisted by the constant collaboration of a network of correspondents from every corner of the world.

Founded in 2006 by Arianna Ciccone and Christopher Potter, the International Journalism Festival is an event held in April each year in Perugia, Italy. It is a program of meetings, debates, interviews, book presentations, exhibitions and workshops that bring together the worlds of journalism, media and communications.

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by Fabrica appeared first on Dezeen.