Depending on how you feel about Frank Gehry’s work, this building in progress could either be fascinating, monstrous or a combination of both. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that seeing the bones of such a complex structure is more interesting than the renderings of the finished building, which is another of the architect’s mirrored and faceted standouts. Inspired by the silhouettes of the mountain ranges of its southern France setting, ‘LUMA Arles’ will ultimately tower above an experimental contemporary art center.

Set on a former rail depot turned public park, the building is primarily sponsored by Swiss art collector Maja Hoffmann and is scheduled for completion in 2018. The working title for the tower is ‘Centre for Human Dignity and Ecological Justice,’ and it will host spaces for workshops, art studios, exhibitions, seminars and archives.

“We are creating a place where artists, thinkers, scientists – as well as doers and actors of the economic world – can gather and work together on new scripts for the world,” says Hoffmann of the project.

Photographer Victor Picon captured this series of images showing the intricate arrangements of metal ribs that will ultimately support the reflective cladding. Of course, Gehry’s a bit of a controversial figure in the architecture world, with some hailing his creations as visionary and others finding them garish and structurally unsound, noting that his Strata Center design at MIT has leaked, cracked and developed mold. What’s your stance on Gehry’s work?

A giant metallic head splits into segments and rotates in a ‘metamorphosis’ worthy of its subject, author Franz Kafka. All 42 of its layers spin independently, catching the sunlight on their reflective stainless steel edges, magnifying the strange transformation as the head briefly blurs into something more abstract and then comes together again. The 45-ton sculpture was installed in a Prague plaza in 2014, visualizing the inner workings of a psyche the sculptor may identify with, himself. It’s perhaps the tamest and least controversial piece Czech artist David Cerný has ever put out for public consumption.

Entitled ‘K’, the sculpture has a nearly-identical twin called METALMORPHOSIS in Technology Plaza in Charlotte, North Carolina, which even had its own live webcam feed for a while so anyone in the world could watch passersby interact with it at any given moment. The Charlotte version is not based on Kafka, and sits in the center of a fountain, occasionally spitting water. Its mirrored exterior almost makes it seem like an optical illusion in certain lights, like some kind of apparition made of the sky itself.

Born in Prague, David ?erný first gained notoriety in 1991 when he took it upon himself to paint a Soviet tank serving as a war memorial in his home city bright pink. A number of his statues feature grown men peeing, and the literally masturbatory ‘Nation for Itself Forever’ had to be perched on the roof of the National Theater to keep it from being defaced.

Crawling babies with bizarrely punched-in faces scale the Czech Republic’s highest tower and wander blindly around parks, while the nation’s most revered saint, St. Wenceslas, is depicted riding a dead horse. A permanent exhibition at FUTURA gallery Prague features ladders leading up to two white posteriors; climb up and stick your head inside to view a video of two Czech politicians spoon-feeding each other to ‘We Are the Champions.” Czech out a tour of the irreverent sculptor’s works in Prague if you’re ever in the city to see them all.

China has incarcerated him, put him on house arrest and made every attempt to shut artist and activist Ai Weiwei up, but they haven’t stopped him from expressing his scathing criticism of the country’s rapid industrialization and cultural oppression at every turn. Known for investigating government corruption and cover-ups, Weiwei was arrested on highly questionable tax evasion charges and held in a tiny, constantly-lit room overseen by two guards around the clock, and wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a year after his release. He remains under heavy surveillance, and his moments are restricted, but through his art installations around the world, he’s still able to express the views Chinese officials find so threatening. Here are 10 of Weiwei’s most striking projects addressing everything from the current refugee crisis to the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon.

Safe Passage: Life Jackets on the Konzerthaus, Berlin

Life jackets left behind by refugees when they reach the shores of the Greek island of Lesvos adorn the columns of Berlin’s landmark Konzerthaus in a poignant installation completed on February 15th, 2016. Weiwei retrieved the jackets himself and in doing so, was present as even more refugees landed. Drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis, the project provides a striking visual representation of the scale of the problem, with the 14,000 jackets standing out in safety orange.

Forever Bicycles: Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto

3,144 interconnected bicycles come together into one big 3D structure in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square in this reinterpretation of Weiwei’s ‘Forever Bicycles’ exhibition. Presented by Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche in 2013, the sculpture is made of frames from China’s biggest bicycle brand, and represents the rapid changes that are taking place in the nation and across the world.

Er Xi: Silk Dragons at Le Bon Marché, Paris

Figures from Chinese mythology blend with symbolism from Ai Weiwei’s own portfolio in ‘Er Xi’ (Child’s Play), a serene exhibition of three-dimensional white silk and bamboo sculptures at Paris’ Le Bon Marché department store. The display combines 2,000-year-old tales told to Chinese children with the kite making tradition, presenting the narratives in the front store windows and continuing them in the atrium with interpretations of Shan Hai Jing woodcuts.

An Archive: 6,830 Tweets on Rice Paper

Tweets may seem ephemeral and unimportant in the grand scheme of our culture, but what if they were carefully preserved for future generations as a real documentation of the current era? With ‘An Archive,’ Weiwei makes his own history of 6,830 Twitter posts dating back to 2005 into a tangible chronicle of his thoughts, printing them on rice paper sheets and laying them out like a traditional Chinese textbook. “Social media is annoying and distracting in certain ways because we are familiar with an older lifestyle,” says the artist. “The world today is very different. You can sit at your computer and, within minutes, you can see the best ideas and research on any topic. This is in conflict with our old habits, but there can be nothing better than this. Human beings are not created equal and we have never had that opportunity. Technology, especially with computers and the internet, has gone further than anything else in leveling the field.”

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Modern Masters 10 Introspective Installations By Ai Weiwei

A master of Modernism whose architectural legacy includes a range of monumental concrete structures around the world, Marcel Breuer remains divisive among Brutalism’s admirers and detractors decades after his death. From the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the vaguely dystopian IBM headquarters in Paris, Breuer’s work is alternately described as majestic and depressing; cold and clinical to some, and peacefully minimalist to others. Regardless of how you feel about concrete architecture in general and Brutalism in particular, Breuer’s buildings are emblematic of this architectural style. Here are 14 of his most notable creations, as preserved by Syracuse University’s Marcel Breuer Digital Archive.

St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota

After completing a series of modernist residential projects in the 1930s and ‘40s, Breuer moved on to work on a far more ambitious and awe-inspiring scale, starting with the stunning St. John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota. The cast-in-place concrete wonder features a towering bell banner shielding the church’s honeycombed facade. Breuer also designed a number of buildings on the St. John’s University campus, including a dormitory hall (bottom photo.)

Whitney Art Museum, New York City

One critic of Breuer’s 1966 building on the genteel Upper East Side of Manhattan called it “one of the most aggressive, arrogant buildings in New York.” An inverted ziggurat, the structure is undeniably bold. The Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-trained architect “believed that modern architecture needed to reintroduce monumentality and symbolism, age-old characteristics that had been disregarded by modernists earlier in the 20th century.”

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris

As far as surviving Brutalist structures go, the UNESCO headquarters are nothing short of spectacular. Completed in 1958, the Y-shaped administrative building features a sculptural canopy and spiraling fire escape stairs that reach all the way to the roof. The whole building stands on 72 concrete piles.

The Lost El Parador Ariston, Argentina

Among Breuer’s classics is the Ariston Hotel in Argentina, a curving clover-shaped building that has been abandoned and left to deteriorate despite its status as one of Argentina’s modern architectural landmarks. Architecture faculty and students at the University of Buenos Aires are currently flighting to preserve and restore it.

The Pirelli Tire Building, New Haven, Connecticut

Originally built as the headquarters for Armstrong Rubber, what’s now known as the Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven, Connecticut stands out as one of America’s foremost surviving Brutalist structures. Testing of the tires on the ground floor research and development facility would be noisy, so Breuer elevated the administrative spaces. The result is imposing and authoritative; it’s easy to imagine it standing in as the headquarters of a villainous corporation or classified government agency in a movie.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Brutalist Wonders Or Blunders Architecture By Marcel Breuer

While the most theatrical Brutalist buildings remain in the former USSR, there are plenty more of these controversial concrete complexes around the world, and they draw both admiration and ire in Britain and the United States. While Prince Charles of Wales likes to call them ‘monstrous carbuncles,’ and sloppy Brutalist blunders certainly exist, many modernist concrete structures built between the 1950s and ‘80s are striking in their minimalism and solidity.

Geisel Library, San Diego, California

The Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego (named for the author best known as Dr. Seuss) was made of reinforced concrete to save money, which enabled a more sculptural design. The 8-story structure by William Pereira has two subterranean levels and was “deliberately designed to be subordinated to the strong, geometrical form of the existing library” on the campus.

Tricorn Center, Portsmouth, England

This weird building called the Tricorn Center was a retail, nightclub and parking garage complex completed in the mid-1960s and so named because it resembles a tricorn hat from above. It was voted the third ugliest building in the UK in the ‘80s, and demolished in 2004. Charles, Prince of Wales famously called it “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings.”

Barbican Estate, London, England

This residential complex built in the ‘60s and ’70s stands right in the financial district of London, one of the few examples of British brutalist architecture that’s still mostly intact. There are three tower blocks and 13 terrace blocks positioned around a lake and green squares; the towers are each 404 feet tall.

Brunel University, London, England

Built in the ‘60s and designed by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, the Brunel University Lecture Center was one of two ‘high Brutalist’ structures prominently featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange.

Brownfield Estate, East London

Balfron Tower at the Brownfield Estate, an area of social housing in East London, is often considered the sister building of Trellick Tower. Designed by Erno Goldfinger in 1963, it contains 146 residences and features a separate elevator shaft with skybridge connections on every third floor.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Concrete Wonders 13 Brutalist Buildings In The Usa Britain