Samplings from New World

Vesterheim is a national treasure that explores the diversity of American immigration through the lens of Norwegian-American experience, showcases the best in historic and contemporary Norwegian folk and fine arts, and preserves living traditions through classes in Norwegian culture and folk art, including rosemaling (decorative painting), woodcarving and woodworking, knifemaking, and textile arts.

Vesterheim houses over 24,000 artifacts, which include large samplings from the fine, decorative, and folk arts, and the tools and machinery of early agriculture, lumbering, and other immigrant industries. The lives of the people who settled this nation were often as colorful as their folk art and their stories speak through the objects they left behind.

When Norwegian immigrants wrote back to Norway about Vesterheim, their western home, they spoke for countless others from many cultures who helped build a nation in the New World.

Just as Norwegian immigration to America began to peak in 1877, at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Norwegian Americans began collecting and preserving objects documenting their chapter of the immigrant story, making them pioneers in the preservation of cultural diversity in America.

Today that early collection has grown into Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, an independent not-for-profit organization, and the most comprehensive museum in the United States dedicated to a single immigrant group. Also, Vesterheim is accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM).

But Vesterheim is more than a world-class museum. It is a cultural center dedicated to preserving living traditions by offering classes in Norwegian folk art and culture, Elderhostels, and special programs for pre-school, elementary, secondary, and college students. Vesterheim also hosts events, lectures, and special exhibitions scheduled throughout the year.

We invite you to visit Vesterheim. Help preserve Norwegian immigrant culture and celebrate the variety of our country's rich ethnic traditions.

to Microsonic mUsic

Realitat’s Microsonic Landscapes use 3-D printing machinery and algorithmic mapping to arrive at physical manifestations of recorded musical sound. These handheld sculptures are unique amongst one another because each represents the formalization of a different musical recording. In this instance, each recording is actually a full-length album; the albums chosen were picked according to Realitat’s musical tastes. Their self-stated mission, to create “an algorithmic exploration of the music we love,” is successfully completed. Each album is copied onto a program called Processing which maps and extrapolates the sounds on each song into coordinates that the 3-D printer can turn into solid mass. The objects are printed in a series of rings, but aside from that, the form taken can vary wildly, with each record registering unique patterns of height, depth, solid, and void. The process employed here represents a direct and literal translation of sound into form. There are no variables or inputs applied to the algorithms that would manipulate or affect the final form.

This project represents a successful attempt at using digital means to map, extrapolate, and formalize musical sound. This process is rendered through the use of digital mapping software and a 3-D printer, creating unique and specific formations with differing patterns of solid and void, as well as height and

an Urban Toy

BLOOM is what its designers call an “urban toy.” It is a “distributed social game and collective ‘gardening’ experience that seeks the engagement of people in order to construct fuzzy BLOOM formations.” These formations are aggregate volumes composed of repeated, identical parts, which the designers refer to as “cells.” These “cells” are designed and fabricated by the designers themselves, Alisa Andrasek of Biothing, and Jose Sanchez of Plethora Project, in London. Meant to contribute an air of jovial democratized design in relation to the 2012 London Olympic Games, BLOOM is representative of the artistic, collective act. Each individual component, as the designers explain, can do nothing on its own, but instead, reach their full and limitless potential when arrayed en masse.

Each of the BLOOM pieces has three potential sites for connection along its outline, enabling it to be compiled both two and three dimensionally. This embedded form of connection, however, is all that is provided to the user, who is free to use as few or as many pieces as they choose to construct an installation. It is the simple combinations inherent between these cells that can potentially produce many different mutations. This project is emblematic of democratic design as seen through the lens of digital fabrication, aggregation, and repetition.
 

a Literal Movement

Breakfast New York City is an interactive installation in Midtown Manhattan that both mimics and responds to interactive movement. Located that the intersection of 32nd Street and 6th Avenue, this installation is a revival of an antique sign technology that utilizes over 40,000 metallic spinning dots on a computerized surface to broadcast messages, including scrolling text and images. Because of its analog technology, the mechanism that is analogous to digital pixels, actually mimics the movement and rotation of pistons on a mechanical engine. The dots are either black or white, depending on which side is exposed, creating a binary that, when taken in aggregate and seen from afar, render images and text. This literal movement, however, from black to white, is done so through mechanical means, creating various clicks, like those made on a typewriter.

The digital systems, however, interrupt the analog by allowing the interface to respond to movement located directly in front of the display. Through these means, the display is able to respond to passersby, traffic, and all manner of stimuli, which then interrupt and dematerialize the scrolled information. This system creates a highly unique, ever-changing display of information that takes on the character of urban life. This project features highly-tactile, digitally derived displays that are manifested through analog, mechanical movements. The installation responds to spontaneous urban life through the articulation and juxtaposition of these digital processes and analog displays. The following video previews the installation in greater detail.

vertical Fragmentation

Border Conditions is an academic and hypothetical project by Manuel Torres, Dimitrie Stefanescun that utilizes parametric folding to achieve complex form in an urban housing project for Utrecht, Netherlands. This project, ‘embodies a virtual study of the process of folding with its conjectural actions (re-folding, unfolding);’ creating architecture from a meta-analysis of the folding technique. 
 Here, form is achieved through the interrelation and formalization of different variables, labeled as: ‘horizontal fragmentation,’ ‘proportion blurring,’ ‘vertical fragmentation,’ and ‘plane abstraction.’ These variables are mapped across the site to create points of reference which are then extrapolated into lines and planes. These planes, when merged with circulation routes, generate form and space. The resulting spaces are then further manipulated by varying the points of connections between planes with regards to connection degree, length, and overall number of connections. This form is then deconstructed; unfolded, laid out, and related to the urban site.
 This project focuses on the digital manifestations- parametric form- that result from an analog process- folding and unfolding- and hows these opposing approaches to making can result in varied architectural space. Through  a process of iteration dependent of parametric values, the designers are able to achieve an architectural complexity based on physical variables that is then overlayed on an existing urban fabric.

vertical Towers

Drawing on Shenzhen’s interconnected qualities, Morphosis‘ 2009 proposal for the Four Towers Into One competition pushes the conventional urban grid to organize a complex system of four interwoven towers. The competition asked for an urban plan that would unify the Headquarters of Shenzhen Media Group, China Construction Bank, China Insurance Group, and Southern & Bosera Funds–the new global faces of Shanghai’s Financial District. Instead of vertically extruding their isolated 2D site footprints to four individual skyscrapers, the strategy of transferring air rights helps to extend the zoning envelopes of each of the projects through an interlaced system resembling a traditional Chinese puzzle.

These otherwise vertical towers overlap at the base, creating multi-dimensional traffic through meeting, office, and green spaces that presents a new icon and philosophy within the Financial District. Like the Chinese puzzle, each project retains its original identity and form while still engaging with the surrounding projects. While Steven Holl won this competition, Morphosis’ intention to create a composition greater than the sum of its parts is successful in the implementation of metaphor and manipulation of the urban grid, symbolizing Shenzhen’s financial potential in the global spectrum.

a Muscle Ski sequence

The Big Sky Ski Lodge designed by Nikita Troufanov at the Illinois Institute of Technology takes cue from the muscle system. Actions of tension, overlap, pushing / pulling are explored both formally and programatically. Working from coarse to fine grain, linear program ‘muscle’ chunks fuse and overlap and then tesselate into cellular aggregations. Spaces and structure are placed in a feedback loop where each informs another, evolving until a desired amount of coherence and unity is achieved.

Hospitality and patrol programs are overlapped and placed in spatial tension against each other through connecting views and geometry. Hospitality space is distributed on 3 half-stories that step up to gain views out into the valley, creating a spatial sequence with plateaus of specific activity and experience.

Site-cast concrete structure becomes expressed by adapting to spacial conditions. Alternating between slab and frame behaviors, deep beams become shallower until they fuse and become slabs, and slabs in turn splinter into beams, branching out and weaving through the building.

across Le Corbusier

The vision of the New Sky Condos by Los Angeles based B+U Architects is to develop a unique spatial experience for each condo unit by, on the one hand, utilizing an L‐shape sectional diagram that maximizes double height spaces and outdoor areas through interlocking the units in plan and in section (an evolution on the Le Corbusier cross section of L’Unite d’Habitation) and simultaneously developing a window typology that aims to dissolve the edges of the window frame creating a unique view to the outside. The window itself is not just a flat aperture but a three dimensional spatial object that shapes the interior walls and aims ones view to key features of the surrounding cityscape. For example it allows for views towards the San Isidro Golf Club to the north and the Ocean to the south even from spaces along the east and west facade of the tower.

The building massing was the result of intersecting several cone shaped towers dividing each floor plan into four discrete segments that coincide with the division of the program on each floor and maximize the exterior surface. The articulation of the exterior of the building is a direct result of the placement and the aiming of the apertures and their relationship between the interior spaces and points in the city. The linear extensions along the window frames create the effect of a “soft” building edge that aims at dissolving the sharp lines of a typical building skyline and creates an iconic addition for Lima.

for Congested Urban Areas

For the green innovative house, architects Achawin Laohavichairat, Montakan Manosong, and Peerapon karunwiwat designed a building that provided infrastructure, urban facilities, green area, and living space. They designed the house for congested urban areas in this case they choose “Metropolitan Bangkok”. Ecological living uses of clean, non-pollution energies, gathering of organic and inorganic waste, creation of green spaces. The green innovative house is designed with self-sufficient considerations planed to take care of the management of energy.

Bangkok area is a congested urban area; there are many types of building such as low-rise building, mid-rise building, and high-rise. The design proposed to use existing building as high rise building that produced the waste pollutions as waste water, rubbish and also use more energy in the day. From the research, the high-rise building produces the waste water 30,000 liter/day. So, according the result, we proposed to design a self-sufficient house that use the waste products to support itself, it becomes a “Zero Energy Living”. It becomes a self-sufficient as “Zero Energy Living” by using the waste products those come from the existing building to support itself in term of energy. In essence a mechanism for living, breathing, producing energy, reusing the waste products, and recycling the waste products those are come from the existing building.

an Apple option

Launched in 2009, Uncommon‘s mission is to offer its clients the option to individualize Apple product accessories with unique designs. Currently, customers have the option to print their own digital photos or featured designs by a selection of artists onto their accessories. Uncommon is the first manufacturer to offer mass customization with proprietary 3D TATT® printing on plastic to customers. Clients may also buy ready-made cases.

For an average price of $40, Uncommon features case designs that are not commonly available in the market. Established in the design world, featured artists Izak Zenou, Yellena James, and Jill Bliss, to name a few, offer a wide selection illustrations easily adored by the typical Apple product user.

Recently featured illustrator Izak Zenou, known for his chic and fun illustrations featuring Paris street life, has a collection of pre-made iPhone cases ready to buy on Uncommon’s website. The cases are examples of Zenou’s iconic illustrations that convey a breezy, fashionable lifestyle–a fresh print to have on beloved Apple products. Uncommon helps promote the work of the best designers in the market, revolutionizing individual expression in everyday accessories through art.