As promised last night, today’s review is dedicated to realities:united featuring, edited by Florian Heilmeyer (available on amazon UK
Publisher Ruby Press says: Founded in Berlin in 2000 by the brothers Jan and Tim Edler, realities:united have built a unique reputation for their spectacular art and media extensions to buildings all across the globe. Working together with some of the most prominent figures of contemporary architecture – including Peter Cook, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Foster & Partners, Will Alsop, Nieto Sobejano, Bjarke Ingels, Minsuk Cho and WOHA – realities:united have established an ingenious type of collaboration they refer to as featuring: Usually invited by architects to cooperate on a project, realities:united have a special gift to detect the idiosyncratic strength of a design and amplify its qualities by techniques and procedures that exceed the realm in which architects usually work. Inversely, realities:united can only work their magic by designing in a dialog with an architect featuring them.
This book offers the first complete survey of the work of realities:united to date. A lavishly illustrated tour de force of their manifold oeuvre, Featuring provides the reader also with rich background information by virtue of a detailed project documentation. Finally, a series of resourceful essays of reputed architects, critics and other thinkers will answer any questions you always wanted to know about realities:united but were afraid to ask.
SPOTS, Construction Site
realites:united, Contemporary Architecture, 2007
I’ve stopped counting the number of times i’ve seen the work of realities:united in a book about architecture, dynamic architecture, interactive architecture, interactive design, interface design, ‘media facades’ or media art. The BIX communicative skin display they completed in 2003 for the Kunsthaus Graz could have turned them into a one-hit wonder. But years passed and their work has never ceased to catch the attention of magazine editors, publishers, bloggers and journalists alike. It was high time that the Edler brothers gave the public an extensive overview of their practice and published a book.
realities:united featuring has the elegance, appeal and clarity you’d expect from the architects. The inside of the first cover is printed with very short comments about their work. They range from “Jan and Tim Edler are the Neo and Morpheus of architecture” by Bjarke Ingels, to “Sweaty, loud and ugly” (??!?) by Christian Moeller. My favourite quote is obviously Jackie Chan’s: “I saw your video.” The book goes deeper into the study of their practice with essays by art critiques, artists, curators, academics who either profess their admiration for their creativity or bring analysis and context to their work.
Roughly 2/3 of the volume is dedicated entirely to the glorious images of their projects. The details about them can be found further down the book in a section that lists alphabetically and explain the works finished, the ones that are still in progress as well as the proposals that didn’t go through.
AAmp, 2008
Kungfusoft, 1998
Leafing through the book reminded me how ingenious the Edler brothers are. Yes, they do lavish, luminous and dynamic but their work also take more experimental paths in projects that investigate themes as diverse as energy-saving and mobile clubbing.
Check out the projects below if ever you still need to be convinced…
realities:united +43 316 8017 9242, 2005. Photo: LMJ / Nicolas Lackner
realites:united have a unique way of being both inside and outside the new media art world. In 2005, With the interactive installation 43-316/8017 9242, the designers of the BIX media façade returned to the Kunsthaus Graz with a work that invites passersby to interact with a façade as much as it triggers in their mind questions about interactivity and communication, two concepts that have sometimes defined and limited the computer art scene of the time. Does the installation do what we want, or is it the other way round and we do what the machine wants?
Cokpit, 1991
Cokpit, the universe’s first cabriolet roof-top, made a summer bed-room out of an unheated, unused attic in Berlin.
Open the House, 2006
Open the House proposes intelligent climate clothing worn like underwear that would enable a person to sit comfortably in spaces where the temperature is far below or above what is normally considered acceptable. The design opens up new possibilities to design houses and save energy.
ReinRaus, 2001
ReinRaus, Extreme furniture and instant one-person balcony! One of my favourite works by realities:united.
Crystal Mesh, Facade Detail, 2009
Crystal Mesh, Software Testing, 2009
Crystal Mesh, an ornamental and granulated light and media façade for the building complex “ILUMA” in Singapore.
MuseumX, 2006
MuseumX was conceived as a temporary installation to act as a surrogate and social placeholder for the Museum Abteiberg (Fine Arts) while it was closed for reconstruction. It took three comparatively small elements to turn the hulk of the 65,000 m3 structure of the city’s empty theater building into a simulated museum: a flag on the top of the building, a new foyer and a set of printed façade panels strapped in front of the theater’s façade from the 1950s.
Stereo Transformer, 2002
Stereo Transformer is a vehicle system designed both to enable real mobile clubbing experiences and to stimulate innovation around the technical equipment of mega-sized urban pop-music events: Dividing the vehicle into two halves provides the structural precondition for putting the people in the center and surrounding them with the sound system, not the other way around.
C4 Facade, Scale Model, 2011
C4 is a media skin developed in close cooperation with Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos for the “Espacio de Creación ArtÃstica Contemporánea” in Córdoba.
If you want to follow more closely on realities:united, i’d recommend that you swing by their facebook page which lists their upcoming talks, the competition they participate to and the projects or causes that interest them.
Their youtube channel is a gold mine.
Image on the homepage from the project Big Vortex.