the magic roundabout

More from Cardiff! We drove past a roundabout with these sculptures in the middle and I was hanging out from the car window trying to take a photo. There was an international competition to design sculpture for this important road junction at an entrance to a large residental area and the winner was Pierre Vivant. He designed these five huge geometric shapes constructed with aluminium frames and covered by traffic signs. When we drove past again at night the sculptures looked completely different, the car headlights make the fraffic signs light up and it looked quite beautiful. It's popularly known as 'the magic roundabout'. 

Pierre Vivant also designed this sculpture in London called the Traffic Light Tree. 

Wall-e

I didn't really have a good idea what this film was about until I just saw it and was blown away! I think it's more a film for adults than for children really. It gives a really awful picture of the future where the Earth is so covered with rubbish that people have to leave and are now living on a giant spaceship sitting around doing nothing and getting so fat and lazy they can't move.

It was very interesting to see how they've made a film about robots who don't really speak, just make weird noises, and it worked so well! If Wall-e and the other robots were able to speak properly it would completely have ruined it. My favourite character was the tiny robot on the spaceship who was supposed to keep it clean. It had such a weird and interesting personality, especially when it got completely frustrated trying to clean the place. The filmmakers have been very creative when they have come up with all the different kinds of robots! The whole film is just so cleverly done I thought it definitely deserved a blog entry. 

Here's a clip of Mo the cleaner robot.

A Book of Wonder

This is one of those books you really don't need but it's so nice to have on the shelf! I like the typeface on the glittery cover but it's very hard to read except from a certain angle! A Book of Wonder is a kind of illustrated encyclopedia of collected wonders of the world. People from the UK and around the world wrote things that they think are somehow amazing or wonderful. The book was designed by graphic design studio Kerr Noble and I think they did a fantastic job. I especially like the decorative drop capitals at the start of each section and the almost childlike doodles by James and James. I love how random the things are that people have come up with for the book! 

For example:

  Bunny. When I am on the train on my way to work I know it's going to be a good day if I see a bunny in the field. Holly, recruitment consultant, London. 

Sea Horses. The only species that I know of where the male becomes pregnant. Debbie Roberts, helpdesk administrator, Leicester.

Wine. Glug, glug, glug. Oliver Reynolds, amateur viticulturalist, London.

Cardiff

I went to Cardiff for the weekend and took photos of some of the buildings and places I found interesting. I really liked the combination of old and modern architecture, most of the modern buildings were in Cardiff Bay. 

National Assembly for Wales and a wavy wooden roof. The building design reflects the idea of 'transparency' and it's also a good example of sustainable building design. 

I don't know what this building was, it wasn't even finished yet but this wall is kind of interesting..

FITZHAMON EMBANKMENT: this artwork represents a range of popular spices including mustard seed, coriander, saffron, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger. It was created by artists from Cardiff and Riverside residents as a part of a publis art project. Until we read what the artwork was about we thought they were of tomatoes, peas and pepper...

Cardiff Castle, there was a beautiful park behind it!

The Millenium Arts Centre in Cardiff Bay. It was constructed with slate, wood, steel and other materials traditionally used in Wales. On the front of the building in large Celtic lettering there is an inscription:  "CREU GWIR GWYDR O FFWRNAIS AWEN" and another in English: "IN THESE STONES HORIZONS SING". The letters are over 2m tall and they are windows for those inside the building. It looks a lot better when it's dark.

construct

amour 2007

mothership 2007

Construct is a series of images of places that exist only in the imagination of photographer/graphic designer Laura Kicey! She collected together pieces of different buildings over three years and blended them together creating these very surreal places. They look so much fun and so warm and friendly. I would love to live in one of these buildings, when they look like this on the outside there must be something very interesting inside...

Laura Kicey has a photoblog 'seen but not heard' which is also worth a look!

Mauri Kunnas

Mauri Kunnas' books are very well known in Finland and I'm not surprised! He does mostly children's books and I still enjoy reading them, probably because of the humour and his illustrations which are amazing! There are so many details in most of the illustrations that you can look at them for ages and always find a small character in a corner somewhere that you hadn't noticed before. Most of the characters are dogs but there is also for example a sleepwalking goat called Mr Hakkarainen who never really has a role in the stories but you can always spot him sleepwalking in the most random places!
More about Mauri Kunnas : www.maurikunnas.net

Air de Paris

This enormous helium balloon 'Air de Paris' by Aerophile was designed to show the people of Paris the levels of pollution in the city air. When the balloon is glowing red the air is highly polluted, orange for polluted, yellow for moderate and green for clean air ! You can see it from 20 km away! It's an interesting concept but I wonder how it works during daytime?