Jacob Paul Wiegmann's Blog – December 2011 Archive (57)

For the Discovery Chanel's upcoming documentary Frozen Planet, director Chadden Hunter, cameraman Didier Noiret, and a small team were sent to the Polar regions of the Earth to document the beautiful and ever-changing icy surroundings. Emperor penguins swimming through freezing waters, Minke whales surfacing for a breath, and the occasional polar bear cavorting around are just…

Bourrasque, by London-based designer Paul Cocksedge, is meant to represent a large collection of papers blowing away in the wind. Made for France's City of Lyon's annual Festival of Lights, each sheet of "paper" is made from a special conductive material that lights up when a current is passed through it. All are the exact size of a standard piece of printer paper and were…

Cake Sprinkles

What does our food look like at a microscopic level? This is the kind of question that prompted San-Francisco photographer Caren Alpert to begin her impressive series entitled Terra Cibus. By sending off a wide variety of food ingredients to a lab in Arizona, she was able to find out the answer. There, a scanning…

Vincent Van Gogh

Artist Molly B. Right has made an impressive series of portraits using the unique medium of bottle caps. By first starting off with a painted figure on a piece of sheet metal, Right then attaches the caps so that they overlap, causing a scaling effect. These bottle cap can date anywhere from the 1930's to the 70's. Great care is taken so that no glue shows and they are covered in a transparent glaze to help…

David Mach is an artist who loves using new and different mediums. We've seen him make an enormous King Kong and a crucifix out of thousands of wire hangers. Now, the…

Designed by Frankfurt-based architect Boris Banozic, the simINN Flight Simulation Center in Stuggart, Germany is an interesting take on introducing beginners to flying. Using an exact replica of a Boeing 737 on the outside and a Learjet 45x cockpit on the inside, the center strives to make your flight as comfortable and realistic as possible. To do this, a number of features are…

Located on the Andes mountains in Chile, the Mountain Refuge Chalet C7 was created by architecture firm DRN architects. This building offers the most amazing views of Inca Lake and the Tres Hermanos mountain range while keeping the viewer safely out of the elements. It features two main parts, the stone foundation and upper glass facade. The lower half is…

Design practice JDS architects have submitted the winning proposal for a new building in Hangzhou, China. A dual office complex and hotel, Hangzhou Waves is comprised of two buildings that seem to mimic each other's form. While together they form a wave, their outside facades are very different.

The hotel is made up of a number of roof terraces that start at the highest…

Artist Josh Keyes has had quite an eventful year, creating many of his trademark acrylic paintings in 2011. Less surreal than his previous pieces, Keyes still likes to focus on wild animals. In these compositions, humans are nowhere in sight and, instead, animal have broken out of jail,…

Artist Chow Martin has created some unique and creepy pieces of work for his Tank Series. The drawings are mostly rendered in ink but charcoal and oil have been used in some of them. Each one highlights Martin's excellent understanding of anatomical structures and proportions even if the works introduce highly surreal elements. Looking as if they have been…

Miha Artnak, the artist behind the brilliant Layers series, has recently finished his newest piece of street art entitiled The Rise of The Fall. Found inf Slovenia, in this piece Artnak covered the branches of a tree with a number…

Design studio Super Nature Design submitted Weaving Forest, an installation made of two large reindeer and smaller structures all to be wound in yarn by viewers. The pieces are made of wood and outfitted with screws sticking out of the forms that help to hold the strings together. The piece debuted at Detour…

Only Zaha Hadid could make a parking garage look this stylish. The world-renowned architect will be designing the new structure for Miami. After the city's previous success with famous architects Frank Gehry, Enrique Norton and others, it's created new, visually striking car parks that have attracted worldwide attention. The mayor, Matti Bower says "even our parking garages are more than a group of parking spaces. Some have become destinations within themselves…

Belgium-based designer Mia Schmallenbach has a set of knives out that has been getting a good amount of attention. This design is different from other knife sets because each one nests within the larger one, all coming together into one clean space-saving package. The set features a paring, carving, chef's, and filleting knife and their base that have all been made out of one piece of…

Just how beautiful is this room incredibly lit room? Taiwanese designer Jeff Dah-Yue Shi, has won the 2011 Gold Pin design mark from the Taiwan Design Center for his LED Bamboo concept.

To create these beautiful lights, Dah-Yue Shi placed LEDs behind the bases of each rhombus. On top of the LEDs is a layer of…

Check out this gorgeous design. L&A Design Group has a proposal for a new bridge in the Jiangsu province of China. The Wuxi Xidong bridge would connect the north and south shores of the park and would also create an accessible path to the island on the lake which would feature cafes, gardens, and other sights and venues.

The design team hopes to create both a modern and iconic…

Designer Aaron Kuehn has just finished up his latest typographic piece entitled Skeleton Typogram. The skeletal system is composed of nearly every bone spelled out, each representing their specific part. A total of 676 letters were used in creating this poster. You can order a limited addition screen print of it through Kuehn's website. Be sure to also check out his…

If you still need to put up some last minute Christmas decorations, consider these whimsical homemade snowflakes featuring some of your favorite characters from the Star Wars universe. From C-3PO, R2-D2, Vader, Yoda, and many more, you'll be sure to at least get a laugh out of your guests this holiday season. And, if your favorite…

Designed by Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa, the House and Garden building is quite an unusual sight in the bustling city of Tokyo. Built on a small lot, only 26ft x 13ft or 8 x 4 meters, this four-story house is overshadowed by the two buildings it has been wedged between. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the design is that there is no real facade.

Rather, Nishizawa chose…