Designing the Everyday
Creating art with the everyday.
Whether it’s showcasing original art spaced along the everyday paths of thousands of commuters or questioning the status of the public space in the city, these works help us to experience the everyday world around us in new ways. We found these works inspiring and we hope you will too!
1. PINK GHOST was implemented in Paris, in 2002, with “a rose-coloured resin wrapped around four trees and a street lamp up to 2m50 covering also the square’s total surface.” The exterior urban place thus became “an (interior) exterior lounge and was suddenly questioning the status of the public space in the city.”
2. Leuchtturm located in Hattingen, Germany, conceived by Ail Hwan, Hae-Ryan Jeong and Chung-Ki Park, in 2010, who used cut triangles of Acrylglas to mimic the function of traditional stained glass pieces. Photo from Guenter Pilger.
3. Created by artist Ellen Rutt, located on underpass pillars on I-90W in Cleveland.
INSPIRATION: “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 TED talk where she won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun in 2007.
4. Created by Kat Button, located in Wigan, England.
5. Happy by Studio Cadena, a site-specific installation commissioned for the Flatiron Plaza in New York. This temporary installation featured a series of softly shaped and richly colored screens draped down from an open frame to inscribe an intimate collective space that doubled as an analog filter from where to see the city in a different light. As both a figure and a place, it formed a venue for public events, as well as everyday interactions, by playing with light and shape. “Happy was set as a playful urban devise to make passerby stop, wonder, and most importantly, smile.”
6. Sling Swing by WMB Studio, a part of a public art installation in 2015, as a way to revitalize Toronto's frozen beaches during the cold season. The interactive fabric slings are intended to create “cocoons of warmth” for winter beach visitors, protecting them from the harsh winds. When unoccupied, the loops of material sway in the breeze.