Third Nature Studio / blog » Art

A Wave Organ Proposal with Peter Richards

randi — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:58:23 +0000

Third Nature Studio and graphic designer & landscape architect Leah Elamin are assisting Peter Richards with a wave organ project for the City of Marseille. As an artist in residence at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Richards created a Wave Organ in the San Francisco Bay 1986.

The Marseille wave organ is inspired by the graceful form of a fish, with undulating, silvery, expanded metal mesh decking that is hidden and revealed by the changes in the tides. The organ pipes turn the form into a piece of habitable, sonic sculpture.

Marseille is undergoing extensive renovation along its central harbor or Vieux Port, including a new Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations just opposite the site of the organ at Fort Saint Jean.

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Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry

greg — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:09:45 +0000

With a one-year-old daughter, I think about geometry more than usual, along with the other essentials – language, music, numbers, etc. She seems naturally drawn to everyday patterns like these and absorbs them effortlessly. You can practically hear the synapses crackle as it happens.

I recently discovered the work of Anne Tyng, San Francisco-based architect, who developed a means of spatial exploration using some of the most elemental structures known, the Platonic solids. Although the study of advanced geometry and its application to design is nothing new, Tyng set a clear precedent more than fifty years ago for the current crop of artists and architects working along similar lines.

“…geometry is both rational and expressive, as much a means of contemplation as of calculation and construction.”

Let’s hope she’s working on a line of toddler bedroom furniture.

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Brody House La Gerbe Courtyard

randi — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:19:22 +0000

I love this photo from the old Brody House in LA. The interplay of the Matisse mural and the dappled light of the tree is absolutely amazing to me. LACMA’s got the mural now, but I am going to imagine that it’s 1954 and I’m having a cocktail riiight here.

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Greenland goes BIG

greg — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:55:09 +0000

An appropriately otherworldly design by BIG for Greenland’s new National Gallery was recently unveiled, the winner chosen from six invited architects. The concept is a response to the rugged and somewhat exotic conditions of Greenland itself, one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Greenland has about 60,000 permanent residents, spread out in isolated communities on the southern tip. The largest city, Nuuk, where the museum will be located, has no roads connecting it to the few other small cities, since enormous fjords traverse most of the country’s geography.

I work at a cultural institution here in San Francisco, and let’s just say I don’t envy whoever is responsible for driving ticket sales at Nuuk’s latest architectural gem. Practicalities aside, the geometric purity of the design and how it’s assimilated into the site’s topography make for an eye-popping set of renderings.

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Diego Rivera in San Francisco

randi — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:25:09 +0000

I recently discovered the Diego Rivera Pan American Unity mural at the Ocean campus of City College of San Francisco. I live and work in the Mission, a neighborhood filled with mural art, but seeing work by Rivera reminded me that his work is something else altogether. Despite my own passion for politics, I usually gravitate towards the apolitical in art. After all, once things get too political don’t they turn from art into propaganda? But Rivera is an exception. Amazing composition, energy and color.

Little did I know, but he has four mural projects in the Bay Area: Pan American Unity at City College, The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City at the San Francisco Art Institute, The Allegory of California at the City Club of San Francisco, and Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees at Stern Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus.

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Gravel and Gold: New & Vintage in the Mission

randi — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:32:42 +0000

Have you ever walked into a store & just wanted to move in? It’s been there nearly a year now, but I have somehow missed Gravel & Gold on 21st & Lexington, right off of Valencia. They have local honey, Swedish clogs, 70’s design books, great clothes, and they host some impressive art shows, pickling workshops and neighborhood parties. The woman in there was also incredibly friendly, offering me tea and a window seat. I wanted to buy everything! I managed to escape only with a Sunset book on hot tubs and saunas from 1979. I plan to return…

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The Mannahatta Project

randi — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0000

I’m not sure if the goal of “restoring New York to what it once was” can ever be physically perceptible, but the virtual restoration on themannahattaproject.org is fascinating. There is something very small and poetic about reintroducing native plant species to an environment like New York, and something very elegiac about seeing the same seasonal changes that were once happening on the island 400 years ago. For an introduction to the project, see the Restoring Mannahatta article in the Home and Garden section of the New York Times.

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Radical Nature at the Barbican

randi — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:04:22 +0000

Too bad this exhibit is at the Barbican Center now rather than when I was in London 6 months ago! The Barbican itself is a treat: Le Corbusier inspired, Brutalist, 1970’s design insanity, and the exhibit looks like a refreshing, multigenerational look at land art, utopianism and experimental architecture.

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Photography by Hans Christian Schink

randi — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:35:39 +0000

These photographs are part of a series done by Schink using true solarization, showing the movement of the sun across the sky. I love it that they look like crosses between ancient photos and contemporary drawings or paintings. Otherworldly.

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SFMOMA’s New Roof Garden

randi — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:18:23 +0000

Greg and I visited the recently completed sculpture garden on the roof of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art today. We had a great afternoon, it was sunny and hot, and we had the best iced coffee ever at the new Blue Bottle Coffee cafe anchoring the space. I enjoyed it, and looked forward to many more afternoons there in the future, though we both had some mixed feelings about the overall project. The highlight for me was the furniture and plant palette: it was truly refreshing to see a break from monoculture planting, and an amazing treat to be able to sit and sip in such an inspiring setting.

All of that aside, this is the essential bit of information:

Blue Bottle’s New Orleans Style Iced Coffee

1 pound coarse ground coffee
2 oz. roasted and ground chicory
2.5 liters of cold water
1 fine mesh sieve
2 quarts whole milk
3-4 oz. sugar

Soak the coffee & chicory in the cold water over night at room temperature. The next day strain it through your fine mesh sieve. This should render about a quart of concentrate. Add 2 quarts whole milk and sugar (make a warm slurry with a little of the milk first so the sugar melts well). Ice it.

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