Beneath the Surface Blog

Lists are contagious.  So are criticism and analysis in the design industry. Here are our favorite compilations that recap this year in culture and design - strange, surprising, innovative, and projects gone awry.

Time’s most surprising pictures of 2011 tweet via @trendplanner

From the world's largest home to tiny printers, here are the strangest and silliest designs of 2011 tweet via @TreeHugger

11 most meaningful architecture moments of 2011 tweet via @bligh

Design Week’s review of the year in retail design tweet via @Design_Week

Azure 2011 in Review: Hits and Misses tweet via @AzureMagazine

Here we are, marching boldly towards a brand new year. Our GPI team is all geared up and excited to discover new lighting trends, innovative cool surfaces, and many more developments in this ever-changing interior design world. So what will happen in 2012? A global economy recovery? Some catastrophe that might extinguish humankind according to the Mayan prophecy? Whoa, let’s not get into that. At least we know clearly that in the lighting world, 2012 is all about LED.

Over the past years, many countries are taking steps to phase out the traditional incandescent light bulbs for use in general lighting. LEDs are taking over because they are more energy-efficient and carry more possibilities for design purposes. This collection called Liquid Light by Tanya Clarke is a great example of the lighting trends for 2012.

Born the daughter of environmental activist Tony Clarke, Tanya was raised with a strong consciousness and deep concern of the environment and natural resources. She precisely expressed her viewpoint in this beautifully installed light collection - the idea that light is just like water, or the other way around, water is just like light; both precious resources that we cannot afford to waste in daily life.

LED lights, recycled plumbing fixtures, hand sculpted glass water drops, and even found objects are utilized to form the Liquid Light. The LEDs shine through translucent glass drops and create a soft lighting effect that is visually dramatic.

Its unique form and experimentation with colors also speak for the trend in 2012. LED technology is so compact that it can basically be used in any size, shape, and structure, opening its potential across many industries. The material pairings and artistic expressions made possible with LED lighting technology are vast.

We’ve already seen so many stunning lighting designs in 2011 (you can find them in this blog or follow @gpidesign). We look forward to LEDs, echo-chic, and expressive structures that will lead to more illuminated creations and continue to wow us in the New Year.

Image Credit: liquidlightsite.com

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Gone with the Wind (Image Credit: hookedonhouses.net)

Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind could never image a Christmas tree lit up in the color of a rainbow that blinks and that could last for days without causing fire. In her days, the best you can do was to carefully glue candles with melted wax to a tree branch, light it up, and put it out before it burned the whole tree down.

Technology has done to change our world into a much more colorful place. Before 1900, only a few American families would light their Christmas tree with candles, and the others just didn’t do it at all. But in 1882, Edward Johnson, vice president of Thomas Edison’s Edison Electric Light Company, took a big step forward. He ordered 80 electric incandescent light bulbs especially made for him and lit his Christmas tree electrically for the first time in history. Guess he not only had the resources and the technology, but also good decorating taste!

Christmas lights became more widely used in 1930 when their price dropped, making them more available to the standard household. For the past decades, merchandisers, governments, organizations, and families in this country were obsessed with lighting for Christmas. Everyone has a unique interpretation of what holiday lighting means to them. The National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony held near the White House has been around since 1923, expressing “our local and national communities coming together to celebrate the season and to share the message of peace.”

National Christmas Tree Lighting 2011 (Image Credit: huffingtonpost.com)

So how far can Christmas tree design go? We’ve heard of Christmas trees made out of books, bicycles, shopping carts, beer bottles, and we’ve seen Christmas trees illuminated in every bizarre color. This year, the tree commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the designer trees displayed in Paris really stand out from the crowd, mostly for their restraint in color, material, or lighting.

The Victoria and Albert Museum Christmas tree is designed by Danish designers Sophie Nielsen and Rolf Knudsen. It is constructed of 1500 strands of elastic cord. Within each bundle, the suspension creates the geometric shapes which resemble Christmas ornaments. Then the shadows on the floor created by the single light source and the ornaments resemble the structure of a huge snowflake. The whole structure has completely conceptualized the idea of a Christmas tree in a magical way. It captures the core shapes of two objects, reinventing the tree icon using minimal construction and reimagining a snowflake with light and shadow.

Victoria and Albert Museum Christmas tree (image credit: Studio Roso)

The designer Christmas trees on display at the Hôtel Salmon de Rothschild, Paris are even more eye-catching. Expressing the individual design sensibilities of each fashion icon, the traditional form of the Christmas tree is preserved while its construction and materials depart from tradition.

Left: Tree by Dior / Center: Tree by Louis Vuitton / Right: Tree by Jean-Claude Jitrois and Jonone (image credits: mydaily.co.uk)

--> If you celebrate Christmas, how are you decorating your tree this year? Do your choices reflect your design sensibility? Send us photos!

Happy Holidays to you all, my dear Beneath the Surface readers!

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For the National Cancer Institute project which we’ve been working on for months, GPI had the pleasure of presenting our mock-up of the very unique backlit wood system last week in Washington, D.C.

Above: Initial project rendering by HOK

Over three years ago, Bill Hellmuth of HOK envisioned these unique backlit feature walls to bring light and texture to the long lobby hallways at the main entrance to the National Cancer Institute.  To translate the initial rendering of the backlit wood lobby feature walls to the photographs of the mock-up taken just last week, there have been countless hours of coordination between the surface, structure, and lighting elements. Our team has become quite captivated with the project.

Above: Mock-up photograph by GPI Design

The surface was the driving element in the conceptual design of the wall.  GPI Design sourced an exotic Redwood burl (yielding large panels), sliced the wood to under half of a millimeter and laminated between glass.  The seamless LED backlighting environment keeps the wood surface as the primary visual focus, pouring through the translucent wood material in an unexpected pairing of the newly redefined material with backlighting illumination.

Next came the custom structural hardware components engineered to hold the wood and lighting systems safely and in a complementary relationship.  The majority of this testing and detailing has occurred internally, communicating with the project team in D.C. via shop drawings and conference calls, so there was much anticipation built up over the unveiling of these illuminated wood panels.

Above: Mock-up installation progress

The GPI Design crew spent a full day assembling four of the wall panels to demonstrate our system (over 250 panels will be installed in the final project).  The mock-up was designed so that pins, joints, lighting controls, and accent lighting were all crafted to represent their appearance in the final installation. As the project team (owner, architect, lighting designer, general contractor) in D.C. arrived to the mock-up the next morning, sentiments of quiet contentment and satisfaction were in the air - a successful review with great dialogue generated.

Above: Mock-up review meeting

It’s creative surfaces and great project teams like these that make us fall in love with our job all over again.

THANK YOU to: HOK, MCLA, James G. Davis Construction Corporation, TSI Architectural Metals, Cleveland Marble, and The JBG Companies

UPDATE AUGUST 2012: See the completed backlit wood walls here!

TWeekly Archive is GPI Design's new blog column that updates every Friday to feature innovative and inspiring architecture, interior, and lighting designs that are shared through Twitter within the week. We always appreciate tweeps who constantly refresh our minds by sharing great articles, pictures, and videos. If you have something that you feel like sharing and want it featured on our blog, leave a link in the comment or simply @gpidesign on Twitter. We are always hungry for cool designs!

chieh ting huang: urban camper lighting objects tweet via @Lighting_Jedi

eL Masterpiece: Daniel Libeskind Designs Limited-Edition Chandelier for Zumtobel tweet via @VALOAdesign

Mind Blasting Lighting Show By Saks Fifth Avenue tweet via @Studio_EM

Americans Waking Up to Light Bulb Changeover tweet via @WilliamsSupply

Living Daylights: Remarkably Sophisticated Sun-Lit Home tweet via @dornobdesign

Sears Tower by SOM

Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright

New Museum by SANAA

Marina City by Bertrand Goldberg

Wait a second. Aren’t those just stacks of knives, old books (and a weird wig), stereos, and ceramic bowls? Why do you put names of iconic modern architectures next to them?

Yes, indeed, the materials presented are very normal household objects. But the architect/designer of this installation project, Luis Urculo, has just turned normal into wow. In his recently released short video “Covers” (below), a female model carefully reconstructed 10 world-renowned buildings using everyday domestic objects. Every move of the performance and the placement of each object are carefully calculated and manipulated to achieve the best replication of the original architecture.

According to Urculo’s Vimeo description, the concept of “Covers” is inspired by the many musical song covers where “the original is revisited to create something new”. Urculo ventured into this particular art form to create both a contrast and a link between people’s perception of great architecture and common things.

You can watch the whole video here:

Covers/Luis Urculo from Luis Urculo on Vimeo.

Image Credits: luisurculo’s photostream on Flickr

During the winter season, nightfall approaches a lot faster than you expect. Well before you are able to finish off a day’s work and leave for your cozy home, it’s already darker than black outside. When you take the exit off the high way, image a garden of colorful light spots to your right, a garden of light that’s sparkling delightfully and that looks almost like starring sky on earth. Stunning, isn’t it?

Bruce Munro, the creator of the installation Field of Light, had this vision during his trip through central Australian Red Desert fifteen years ago. He felt the desert held “an incredible feeling of energy” and “ideas seemed to radiate from it along with the heat.” Immediately, Bruce was inspired to jog down a sketch and for the years to come, he couldn’t let it go. “It just had to be done”, he said.

Field of Light has been on exhibition in five different projects since 2004. The installation, or the “Planting”, changes according to each location’s specific landscape. It was made of 6,000 acrylic stems crowned with a clear glass sphere. The stems themselves didn’t require any electronic power. They were lit by a total of 11 projectors through fiber optic cables that were wrapped inside. Singapore Airlines magazine once commented: “A spectacle of sheer magic when, as night falls, Field of Light comes to life”. The design is unique in a way that the light bulbs blossom like flowers at the wake of each night and quietly manifest the energy flow of our mother earth.

The vitality of the acrylic stems created through lighting really echoes with our designers. One of our goals in designing and installing backlit panels is to create a dynamic and vigorous atmosphere with the right design and the right material. We understand how important a role lighting plays in defining a certain space, and in this case the transformative powers of lighting are pushed to their full potential.

Image Credits: http://www.fieldoflight.co.uk/

Onyx itself is a luxurious material, and when integrated with the proper backlighting techniques the layers and depth of the stone is further brought to life.  You’re investing money and design time into this natural product, so consider the following tips to properly showcase the natural beauty of onyx:

1. Choose an onyx stone variety that has significant visible veining or texture- the natural color and movement will distinguish the high-end natural stone finish from a man-made alternative.

(above image: Tower Oaks Backlit Honey Onyx Feature Wall by GPI Design)

2. White onyx is the least forgiving stone for backlighting applications.  Backlit white onyx is prone to hot and cold spots, so allow more space between the stone and the lighting source or consider using diffusers, scrims, and filters.

(above image: Maker's Mark backlit onyx bar in Indianapolis by GPI Design)

3. When designing with standard dimensional onyx panels, ensure that the light source is bright enough to transfer through the stone surface.

4. When designing with glass-backed stone panels, ensure that the glass is non-leaded.  Leaded glass casts a greenish tint and can alter the color of the onyx panel.

5. When designing a ceiling or wall layout of backlit onyx panels, consider the book matching composition and how the seams will interact with the natural veining of the stone. (Read our previous blog post on book matching natural stone for more details.)

(above image: Signature Place Backlit Onyx Lobby Feature Walls by GPI Design)

Designing with backlighting and natural onyx comes with its own set of limitations, so take time to mock-up the stone and light assemblies or choose a company with experience in integrating the two products.

In our neck of the woods, it’s starting to change seasons. Not just from fall to winter, but from “orange barrel season” into the dreaded “pothole season.” It’s bad enough during summer when highways are lined with miles of orange barrels making any kind of travel frustrating. But all the snow, freezing temperatures, salt, and plows that come with the brutal Ohio winters really start to cause some problems. Potholes become craters in the ground, and often, a simple drive into work can seem more like off-roading in the mountains. In short, it’s a pain.

Juliana Santacruz Herrera, in a make-lemonade-out-of-lemons moment, has decided to do something about those unsightly pot holes. Instead of just complaining, she decided to turn them into works of art. Using a variety of yarn, she fills the potholes, following their intricate contours, creating a very fluid and organic installation. The whimsical patterns and colors, combined with the juxtaposition of the hard and soft materials, make these pesky potholes suddenly playful and quirky. Furthermore, the yarn highlights the shape of the pothole, calling attention to an odd beauty that goes widely unnoticed.

Herrera isn’t the only one going along with this idea of creating art from deteriorating infrastructure, though. Jan Vormann also has a similar mindset and uses Legos to “repair” the cracks and fissures in aging buildings. Similar to the potholes, Vormann follows the contours of the crack, and fashions individual Legos to those parameters, even around curves and corners. It is, no doubt, a time consuming endeavor, but the irony that comes from using childhood building blocks to repair actual buildings, makes it worthwhile and all the more interesting.

While were not entirely sure how functional or permanent these installations are, they do offer an interesting view point on things that are usually considered an eyesore. Both Herrera and Vormann add a breath of fresh air into these deteriorating objects, giving them new life and a little bit of spunk along the way.

Image credits: Dornob