December 2009
4 posts
November 2009
8 posts
Fall 2005 - Suspension Suits
Ralph Rucci’s “suspension” garments are less about gravity than they are about the complex engineering that goes into the composition and finishing of a garment, some of which comprise more than eighty-five individual pattern pieces. “Suspension” refers to the way the pieces of fabric seem to hang in the final garment, held together by almost indiscernible layers of hand-stitching.
Fall 2004
Ralph Rucci is known for the remarkable construction of his garments. All of his designs demonstrate refined and impeccable craftsmanship and each one features one or more elements of fine handwork, including embroidery, knotting, stitching, and beading. Rucci favors toothy fabrics—such as heavy silk jersey, doublefaced wool, duchesse satin, faille, moiré, and silk gabardine, as well as double-,...
Spring 2003
This skirt features hand-looped ribbons loosely appliquéd to an underskirt, creating an elaborate three-dimensional surface and a sculptural silhouette.
Ralph Rucci
Chado Ralph Rucci is a luxury clothing line designed by Ralph Rucci, the first American designer to receive an invitation to the Paris haute couture shows in more than 60 years. The name of the collection comes from chado, the Japanese tea ceremony noted for its attention to detail, exactitude, sense of austere style, and intensive expertise on the part of the practitioner. The garments are...
October 2009
4 posts
Fall 2004
“Architecture has been a constant source of inspiration for my work throughout my career. An architect’s thought process, his choice of materials, the combination of these materials to create a structure, and the practicality and function of a structure are all things that I try to incorporate in my own work.” Narciso Rodriguez
Spring 2003
Every detail of Narciso Rodriguez’s clothing is carefully composed; seams and fit lines follow curves of the body and show how a garment is put together. After an initial period of sketching, Rodriguez’s design process is characterised by many hours spent draping and fitting garments on a live fit model rather than on a dressmaker’s form. He repeatedly marks, tapes, pins, and re-tapes fit lines...
Narcisco Rodriguez
Narciso Rodriguez’s style is american with a european influence and latin at heart. American, because he masters to perfection the art of precise streamlined tailoring to serve a practical purpose. With a european influence, because both the tradition and the vitality of “haute couture” have been a source of inspiration for him, and he has developed a very personal vision of...
September 2009
9 posts
Seattle Public Library
OMA’s Seattle Library : The programmatic spaces were conceived as compartments in a vertical stack: the building’s physical shape emerged from the pushing or pulling of forms in one direction or another. Such manipulations created four dramatically different façades, each undulating with recessions and cantilevered projections. The entire building is wrapped in a mesh skin of...
Rem Koolhaas / OMA
Rem Koolhaas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He graduated from the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and...
New England House
There is nothing simple about this cube, which twists and turns in plan and section in an almost dizzying profusion of material and formal explorations.
Tehrani and Ponce de Leon wanted the house to mine - as well as undermine - local building traditions. For the east elevation, which visitors see from the driveway, and the south facade, which they pass on their way to the front door, the...
Office dA
Office dA is a Boston-based architecture and design firm led by principal partners Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani. The firm’s work ranges in scale from furniture to urban design and infrastructure, with a focus on architecture. Office dA seizes on the challenges unique to each project - the peculiarities of a site, requirements of program, and the specifics of a target audience -...
Institut du Monde Arabe
A cultural position in architecture is a necessity. This involves refusing ready-made or facile solutions in favor of an approach that is both global and specific. The Arab World Institute is a showcase for the Arab World in Paris. It is therefore not an Arab building but an occidental one. The representatives of the 19 Arab states that commissioned it were surprised by it. Some had wished for...
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l’Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural...
August 2009
16 posts
Concert Hall, Bruges
The design for the concert hall has the ambition to create a powerful architectural sculpture. It should give the concert hall the ability to go beyond its primary function and become a permanent icon for the new Bruges. The two main auditoria are cantilevered out from the central flight tower to avoid the existing underground infrastructure of motorways and parking garage. The girder space is...
Neutelings Riedijk Architects
Neutelings Riedijk Architects offers a commitment to design excellence: realizing high-quality architecture through the development of powerful concepts into clear built form.
The practice was established in 1990 in Rotterdam. At present the office has a staff of about thirty people, all architects. This design force is complemented by technical support through a strategic association with...
Sun Tower
We were first able to experiment dramatically with a second skin, where we could separate the formal demands of the surface from the pragmatic requirements of the body, with the Sun Tower in Seoul, South Korea. The rigid constraints of a very constricted site, a generic program, and a requirement to maximize the zoning envelope posed a challenge to create a form liberated from the direct impact...
Morphosis
Thom Mayne founded Morphosis in 1972. As design director and thought leader of Morphosis, Mayne provides overall vision, project leadership and direction to the firm.
With Morphosis, Mayne has been the recipient of the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize, 25 Progressive Architecture Awards, 75 American Institute of Architecture Awards and numerous other design recognitions. Under Mayne’s...
A-POC
The machine itself is amazing: Computer-controlled levers move the warp threads into the up or down position according to the digitized pattern instructions, and an automated shuttle pulls the weft thread through a dizzying 200 times a minute. Your eyes can hardly follow the shuttles as they fly back and forth, accompanied by the pounding of an army of needles. Brilliant yellow and pink threads...
A-POC
Research by Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara: ‘a-poc’ (a piece of cloth). Overlength sweaters, dresses off the roll - ‘a-poc’ is based upon miyake’s first design concept, a piece of cloth, is a new and unique suggestion for everyday life, which goes far beyond the boundaries of fashion. It is made using an industrial knitting or weaving machine programed by a computer....
Rhythm Pleats
Miyake Issey is renowned for innovation in both textile and clothing design. His technological explorations into clothes-making and the resulting organic sculptural creations have left an indelible mark on the design industry. Miyake pioneered a pleating process by which a piece of polyester is cut and sewn in the shape of a given garment, then sandwiched and pleated between layers of paper and...
Issey Miyake
Miyake was born 22 April 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan. As a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.[1] He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. After graduation, he worked in Paris and New York City. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he founded the Miyake Design Studio.
In the late ’80s, he began to...
Santa Caterina Market
Completed in 2005 by EMBT. Ciutat Vella, unlike other quarters of Barcelona, is a city in itself… this city within a city seems to be the main feature of historical centers starting from this point everything gets complicated. The present planning is unable to manage the complexity of the situation. and looking for short-term results, has unbearably limited the rules of the game.
To...
Enric Miralles / EMBT
Enric Miralles trained at ETSAB (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona) until 1974.
From 1973-83 he collaborated with Albert Viaplana and Helio Piñon and in 1985 began the practice of Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. In 1990 he set up practice with his wife and partner Benedetta Tagliabue.
He was highly regarded as a very inventive architect. He was defined the enfant terrible...
July 2009
20 posts
Widows of Culloden
The fantastical sets for McQueen’s runway showsoften serve as a foil for his clothing, echoing its architectonic construction. His Widows of Culloden collection includes garments that hearken back to the slashed tartans of his notorious Highland Rape collection (autumn/winter 1995-96). The show was presented inside a simple wooden box containing a large pyramid of glass and steel that models...
It's Only a Game
Alexander McQueen is known for his clothing construction—in particular, the impeccable tailoring and precise execution of architectonic forms—as well as the elaborate sets he uses in his collection presentations. McQueen’s ability to combine contrasting qualities—such as hard and soft, rigid and fluid, violent and fragile—in the same garment is evident in the molded leather bustier and the way a...
Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen was born in London on March 17th 1969 as the youngest of six children. He left school at the age of 16 and was immediately offered an apprenticeship at the traditional Saville Row tailors Anderson and Shephard and then at neighbouring Gieves and Hawkes, both masters in the technical construction of clothing.
From there he moved to the theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans...
Reconstructed Vintage Tea Dress
While fashion’s adoption of deconstructive strategies is not as theoretically influenced as that of architecture, deconstructed garments with frayed edges, exposed seams, and deliberate holes and slashes began to appear in high fashion in the influential early collections of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, which were shown in Paris around the same time deconstructivist theories were being...