All posts tagged: london

Archigram – ‘every generation must make its own city’

Sketches and collages from ARCHIGRAM are a recurring reference point for Fat Nancy. The magazine dominated the architectural avant garde in the 1960s and early 1970s with its playful, pop-inspired visions of a technocratic future after its formation in 1961 by a group of young London architects – Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. “A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of ‘Modern’ yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge – they didn’t worry.” So wrote David Greene in a poem published in the first issue of Archigram magazine or, as Greene’s co-editor, Peter Cook, called it “a message, or abstract communication”. It was published in 1961 on a large sheet of the …

Click That Dial. FNND’s Internet Radio Selection II

Thanks to Mark at Rushour Records, we’ve got some more stations to add to the list: NTS, London – At 9am on the morning of Monday the 4th of April ’13 NTS streamed live for the first official time…  Born from the nutstosoup.com blog, NTS aims to fill a void in the community of musically minded progressive thinking people in London.  An idea bigger than just another online community radio station – NTS is a unique platform for inspired people to present their findings, passions and obsessions. East Village Radio – Located in the heart of New York City’s famed East Village, EVR.com carries the neighbourhood’s tradition of producing and nurturing vital music and culture. EVR.com’s original programming streams live from a storefront studio, providing a tangible look into the legendary history of downtown NYC for worldwide listeners. EVR.com streams two-hour live shows covering all genres of music, talk, variety and comedy including in-studio interviews and performances conducted by an eclectic group of presenters, producers, tastemakers and personalities. EVR.com produces and co-produces many special programmes and exclusively …

Designs for city cyclists

Top of the list. The bicycle coffee cup holder Swedish bicycle accessory brand Bookman has created a cup holder that snaps onto handlebars so city bikers can cycle with their takeaway coffees. The Bookman cup holder is constructed out of two rings and a steel spring, completely free of screws and glue. “The Cup Holder sits firmly in place never losing grip even during rides over bumps and potholes,” said Bookman. The rings are different sizes so cyclists can flip the cup holder over depending on whether they ordered a small or large drink. The cup holder comes with a little storage cube that fits inside the spring, holding the two rings together to keep it neat and tidy when not in use. It is available in black, white, red and green. These magnetic bicycle lights by Copenhagen Parts turn on as soon as they come into contact with the steel frame. The magnets mean it’s easier to take the lights with you when leaving the bike chained up and also enable them to be …

In conversation V: Hassan Sharif

Hassan Sharif lives and works in Dubai. He has made a vital contribution to conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East through 40 years of performances, installations, drawing, painting, and assemblage. In his early artistic maturation, Sharif rejected calligraphic abstraction, which was becoming the predominant art discourse in the region in the 1970s. Instead, he pursued a pointedly different art vocabulary, drawing on the non-elitism and intermedia of Fluxus and the potential in British Constructionism’s systemic processes of making. Sharif graduated from the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, in 1984 and returned to the UAE shortly after. He set about staging artistic interventions and the first exhibitions of contemporary art in Sharjah, as well as translating art historical texts and manifestos into Arabic, so as to provoke a local audience into engaging with contemporary art discourse. In addition to his own practice, Sharif has encouraged and supported several generations of artists in the Emirates. He is a founding member of the Emirates Fine Art Society (founded 1980) and of the Art Atelier …