Best of the Week

From the story behind the making of CERN's Large Hadron Collider to a giant sphere covered in fabric, a look at this week's best.

The survey of this week's best stories starts with an in-depth interview with Michael Stoll, a professor and collector of maps and axonometries online, whose Flickr account contains a panorama of information design from the early 20th century to the present day. We revisit one of Mies van der Rohe's works, recently reconverted from a gas station to a youth and senior centre. Paola Antonelli surveys the panorama of social design and the many implications of this complex field, while Crystal Bennes tells the story of how CERN's Large Hadron Collider came to be, demystifying the wondrous images we've all seen. Finally, Ethel Baraona Pohl visits the new iGuzzini headquarters in Spain, where a futuristic sphere seems to rise up from the sky.

The importance of being axonometric
An interview from Augsburg by Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasqual
For years Michael Stoll has been collecting and publishing paper material online that would otherwise be lost. His Flickr account now contains more than 100 sets of images personally scanned from his archive: a panorama of information design spanning from the early 20th century to the present day, including user and instruction manuals, illustrated reports, urban representations and maps. This heritage is also an obstinate record of the power of information. When we arrived at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, one of the three universities at which he teaches Media Theory and Information Design, he promptly took us on an extensive tour of lecture theatres and workshops, while describing the work of his students and how the goal of his teaching is to produce designers who appreciate the autonomy of all forms of knowledge.
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Top: A view of the iGuzzini headquarters in Spain. Above: <em>Statistical Atlas of the United States 1900 </em>(1903), prepared under the supervision of Henry Gannett (1846–1914), geographer of the Twelfth United States Census (24 x 30 cm, 91 pp. plus 207 plates)
Top: A view of the iGuzzini headquarters in Spain. Above: Statistical Atlas of the United States 1900 (1903), prepared under the supervision of Henry Gannett (1846–1914), geographer of the Twelfth United States Census (24 x 30 cm, 91 pp. plus 207 plates)
Mies van der Rohe gas station reconversion
A news report from Verdun
A former Standard Oil gas station by Mies van der Rohe, which ceased to be commercially operated in 2008, has been recently renovated by Canadian architecture firm FABG, who transformed the space to cater to a youth and senior activity centre. The simple program requires an open space for each group to congregate and participate in communal activities.
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States of Design 10: Social Design
A design report from New York by Paola Antonelli
What is Social Design, anyway? The term is typically used to label the work of those designers and architects who focus on tasks born out of humanitarian and socio-political issues, but the term is deeply unsatisfying. For instance, it suggests a type of design that is not conceived for the benefit of individuals, but rather for idealised and averaged groupings thereof, with the intent of improving their conditions. But isn't the generalisation dangerous? And isn't it what designers do? Isn't all design "social"? It also suggests outside intervention and, indeed, a teacher-pupil relationship.
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FABG, <em>Mies van der Rohe Gas station reconversion</em>, 2011
FABG, Mies van der Rohe Gas station reconversion, 2011
Beautiful Propaganda: the myth of the Large Hadron Collider
An op-ed from London by Crystal Bennes
The LHC is perhaps the most complex and fascinating engineering project of our time and not one architecture publication bothered to tell the story of how it was built. Instead, as Michelangelo presented the Sistine Chapel to Pope Julius II, so too were we presented with images of creation, awe and wonder, as if the LHC was fashioned out of thin air. Even the language used by journalists to describe the experiment and its aims was resonant of Godly creation: here was the machine that would discover the "God particle" if it existed to be discovered.
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iGuzzini Illuminazione Headquarters
An architecture report from Sant Cugat del Vallès by Ethel Baraona Pohl
The new headquarters of iGuzzini Illuminazione in Sant Cugat del Vallès, near Barcelona, emerges from the ground like a balloon seeking the sky. The project is a radical intervention sandwiched between the Montserrat highway and Avenida de la Generalitat. In a place where traffic surrounds everything, the building is characterized by its lightness, which is a perfect metaphor for a company that produces one of the world's most innovative lightning systems.
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Participle, <em>Activmobs</em> and <em>Me2</em>, services supporting healthier lifestyles
Participle, Activmobs and Me2, services supporting healthier lifestyles

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