Dambo explains, “As humans we often have a way of choosing the beaten path and the main roads. So when the municipalities of west Copenhagan contacted me about a project it seemed natural to make something which could get people out and explore the beautiful nature in hidden outskirts which you wouldn’t usually see.”

Whether he’s designing furniture, interior spaces, or huge art installations, Dambo likes to integrate the people and places around him into all of his work. Since 2013, he’s made 25 recycled sculptures that have been placed around the world. His ”Six Forgotten Giants” were completed last year, and they have since been positioned next to boulders with poetry inscribed on them. By using these snippets (and a map) as clues, travelers can successfully make their way from one “forgotten” giant to the next. With the help of local volunteers, Dambo made these sculptures out of old floorboards, over 600 wooden pallets, a fence, a watermill, and “whatever else [they were] able to scavenge.” As a token of gratitude to his helpers, Dambo has named each giant after a different volunteer.

In Hakkemosen, on the shore of a picturesque lake in Høje Taastrup, ”Teddy Friendly” forms a small bridge with his outstretched arm while sitting on the opposite side of a narrow stream. Four unemployed people, and a teacher from a local activation center named Teddy,volunteered to help build this giant, whose fur was made from the cutoffs of locally felled trees.

”Sleeping Louis” was put in a part of Rødovre that had previously attracted a lot of homeless people — food waste, pieces of trash, and old sleeping bags were found scattered across the site. In an effort to alleviate this problem, Dambo hollowed this giant out to allow people to sleep inside of him. The real-life Louis is none other than the artist’s personal assistant, who hails from Bristol.

”Little Tilde” peeks out from behind a tree in Vallensbaek Mose, an area prone to extremely cold weather. Inside Tilde are 28 birdhouses, which were inserted into the giant for birds and squirrels to take shelter in during the winter. Even an 86-year-old craftsman offered to lend a hand in Tilde’s construction!

In Ishøj, you’ll find ”Oscar Under The Bridge,” a giant whose fingers clutch the bridge running over his hideout. He’s made from the scraps of an old watermill and takes his name from the Chilean artist who helped build him.

Elsewhere, two other sculptures provide the perfect vantage points for viewing their surrounding nature. ”Thomas On The Mountain” reclines on a small hillside to look out over Albertslund. While you might think this piece is referencing Dambo himself, it was actually named after an intern who worked on all six Forgotten Giants. In Hvidovre, ”Hill Top Trine” reclines as she overlooks the grazing sheep and picturesque meadows of Avedøresletten.

Ultimately, Dambo ”[hopes his] art will inspire people to see the big potential in recycling and taking better care of our planet.”

The post Artist Hides Giant Sculptures in Copenhagen Forest first appeared on Dornob.

We take the quirks of small-scale design, craft and construction in stride when looking at miniatures or models, but they change in more than just scale when sized up to a 1:1 ratio with human users.

For her thesis project at Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Silva Lovasová (images by Peter Sit) took dollhouse furniture and other little objects, scanned them in three dimensions and printed them out large … or normal, relative to people.

The results show off both the oddities of the original designs and manufacturing processes as well as the accidents and byproducts of large-scale printing methods. It all comes together to tell hybrid tale as the objects reveal both the story of their (original and final) absolute size and of their shift in scale at the same time.

Here’s more about the project from the designer. “1:1” was an entry in the Make Me! international design contest in Lodz, Poland.

“1:1 is an experimental collection of straightforward blown-ups of grotesque miniatures,” Lovasová explains. “It deliberately manipulates the provocative kitsch and suggests contemporary possibilities of digital technologies in design. The miniatures found in various dolls’ houses are influenced by the real items of the grown ups’ world. However, they are sadly misshapen and disproportional.”

“After scanning the pieces designer decided to completely avoid altering, improving and prettifying. She simply enlarged them to functional size, in which the whimsicality of mini-world is fully expressed. The collection is made of different materials – from prototyping to final ones. The tool path is untouched, as it holds emotional and aesthetic potential – in Silva Lovasova’s opinion it represents contemporary digital decor. Furthermore, all the other traits are preserved, as a way of describing the making process.”

“Silva Lovasova got a title of Master of Art at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2013. Currently is working at Trivjednom Design Studio based in Bratislava.”

The post Scanned & Scaled: Full-Size 3D-Printed Dollhouse Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

Posting a birdhouse in the backyard is a great way to attract feathered friends, but some of the greatest fun tends to remain hidden from view behind wooden walls.

This project by Nendo in Japan for a regional nature center provides small spaces for flying creatures but a larger viewing area for visitors as well.

One-way peepholes facilitate peaks into the nesting habits of the resident birds who enter smaller openings from the other side.

Aptly, the human entry side is shaped much like a traditional birdhouse but scaled up for people who can climb in via a ladder and circular opening.

“A treehouse designed for the Ando Momofuku Center, a facility devoted to promoting and increasing access to nature activities. The facility is located in a forest in Komoro City in Japan’s mountainous Nagano Prefecture. Our treehouse is collective housing for many birds and one person. On one side, the treehouse has entrances to 78 nest spaces for birds. The other side has an entrance for one person, who can look into the birds’ nests from inside the treehouse.”

Here’s how Nendo describes their approach:

“Giving people a small ! moment. There are so many small ! moments hidden in our everyday. But we don’t recognize them. And even when we do recognize them, we tend to unconsciously reset our minds and forget what we’ve seen. But we believe these small  !  moments are what make our days so interesting, so rich.”

“That’s why we want to reconstitute the everyday by collecting and
reshaping them into something that’s easy to understand. We’d like the people who’ve encountered nendo’s designs to feel these
small  ! moments intuitively. That’s nendo’s job.”

As you can see, Nendo has a pretty unique design vision, and they consistently produce cool and amazing stuff ranging from small design objects to entire buildings. Some previous standouts we’ve featured include living moss wallpaper, double-duty dog accessories and an “invisible chair.” 

The post Tree House + 78-Room Bird Nest first appeared on Dornob.

Picture dress patterns … applied to furniture. What is remarkable is not so much the design as the fact that no one previously made this simple logical leap.

Pål Rodenius created 2440×1220 Saw, Assemble to enable anyone to quickly and easily cut out a variety of shapes that in turn can be turned into various simple and useful furniture items. Tables, chairs, benches, beds, nightstands and coat racks … you name it and it is there on the sheet somewhere.

For now, the creator sells plywood boards with the markings already on them, but the long-term plan is to simply print out large-scale stickers so anyone can simply slap them on a board and be ready to build.

The post Furniture Sticker Turns Any Plywood Board into DIY Project first appeared on Dornob.

With a fifteen foot diameter and pillows galore, you can pack up to sixteen people into this fun and imaginative piece of hybrid furniture. The Giant Bird’s Nest is a playful piece that encourages creative thinking, and you just won’t be able to resist climbing in.

O*GE sums it up well: “Its powerful, yet simple concept and intriguing character needs no explanation or user manual: Ready to to be used, to be played in, and be worked in.”

Sleeping, sitting, working or meeting, it is certainly more than your ordinary sleeping space – made on demand and available in three sizes for those adventurous enough to want to buy one.

More from the designers

“The Giant bird nest aka ‘Giant Birdsnest for creating new ideas’ was conceived and created as a prototype for new and inspiring socializing space: a fusion of furniture and playground: A comfortable informal and sensual soft space. The wooden nest is filled with highly comfortable egg-shaped sitting poofs which allow ergonomic sitting positions and various configurations for informal meetings and social exchange.”

“The nest comes in various sizes, from a small and intimate nest for 2-3 people up to a 4.50 m diameter big version which can host up to 16 people at once – the soft space is perfect, comfortable and inspiring place for resting, browsing the web, reading, relaxing, loving, talking, briefing, discussing (…) Its powerful, yet simple concept and intriguing character needs no explanation or user manual: Ready to be used, ready for playing or working in.”

About OGE Group

“All our projects are about emotions. A design or a project that doesn’t trigger emotions or challenges perception is hardly noteworthy nor successful. The relation customers and/or visitors to our projects are essential for their success: they should be lovable, surprising, challenging, intriguing, social, inspiring, amazing, colorful, remarkable, distinguishable … and outstanding from the rest. This way they become popular, successful and sometimes brands.”

The post Amazing Giant Bird’s Nest Encourages Creative Thinking first appeared on Dornob.

Sometimes building transformers have it tough – a limited set of options, and a built-in set of constrictions, that force tough decisions. This is not one of those times. With such a beautiful (not to mention gigantic) old church structure to work with, it is no wonder the resulting residence is downright drool-worthy. This Neoclassical church converted to a luxury home has gained a lot of interest lately. Here’s why.

A century-old Gothic Revival piece in San Francisco, this property is for sale by commercial-developer-and-owner Siamak Akhavan at a high cost but one to be expected: 7.5 million dollars.

Some of that hefty expense is tied to the historic structure itself, some the site and location (a corner lot overlooking a park helps), and some the extensive retrofits and renovations required to turn it into a lovely, livable and safe contemporary home.

Since buying it five years back, its owner has overhauled everything from the exterior facades (patching leaks, cleaning and rebuilding as needed) to the interior rooms (outfitting it with modern appliances, revamped floors, new stained glass windows and seismic reinforcements). There was a bit of space leftover (not something most would see as a problem per se) so a six car garage was added as well.

At the steep asking price and given its unique nature it might not be even to sell, even since being discounted by 25% from 10 million. Still, its owner is in no rush to get rid of the residence – and really, unless you needed the money, would you be either?

Marble bathrooms, gorgeous hardwood floors, trim and decor throughout, ceiling heights most of us can merely dream of … and 17,000 square feet to spread out in. Hard to ask for much more – and maybe a bit too much for some people.

Update: Sold for $6M and Transformed Into a School

 “The space will be used for the Children’s Day School’s middle school, plus a large gathering/performance space which it plans to make available to community groups, Quinones said. The school currently has a location at 330 Dolores. 601 Dolores will be the school’s second location. Quinones also told us that the building will undergo interior renovations to build classrooms, complete additional seismic strengthening and make the building a legit school. Children’s Day School will preserve the exterior and the historic integrity of the property. The school has ‘very happily worked’ with Jensen Architects in the past for renovations to 333 Dolores, and hopes to continue that relationship with the renovations at 601 Dolores.” [via Curbed]

The post Neoclassical Church Converted to Luxury Home Listed for $7.5M first appeared on Dornob.

Ever step outside, see how hot (or cold) it is, and wish you were still indoors? Well, the front entry to the inner of these housing structures does just that – it opens up to a larger warehouse-like, glass-and-metal structure structure, rather than right into into the wider world. Across the way? No neighbors, per se. Instead: a series of nine shipping containers form a stark contrast to the traditional white siding, brown shingles and standard-sized windows of the core house.

The result is reminiscent of a life sized dollhouse, complete with rooms that open to the viewer, whether said viewer is standing outside looking in through the glass facade or within the atrium-style living room beyond these nine volumes. This particular project appears to be a single-family home, given the lack of privacy.

But architect Adam Kalkin did not stop there – he also sliced a home-shaped hole in the metal siding of the surrounding prefab, creating an abstract symbol of what one can expect to find inside (complete with a exterior chimney tower for function and effect).

Another in the same series of strange rental properties is this multi-unit set of vacation homes – a retreat within a retreat, if you will. A long metal barn lets natural light in on both ends via a fully-glazed front and back, but inside is another story. A series of individual container compartments provide privacy for residents, raised up to the second story, while main-level spaces and carved-out shipping containers serve as communal gathering, cooking and working areas.

Kalkin’s shipping container creations are more than a little unusual, playful and fun — especially when they transform and fold up, like this wacky project. Another house-within-a-house, the shipping container volume contains a bedroom, living room and dining room that pack tightly together when closed or can be opened up for access within a larger space.

The post Creative Shipping Container Houses first appeared on Dornob.

What’s wrong with this picture? For that matter, there is something just a bit off about … all of these photographs. Captured digitally and transferred to canvas, these landscapes range from speculative to entirely real reproductions.

Nils Nova may be a sculptor in theory, photographer in practice and an artist in reality, but at heart he is clearly part architect – his work plays over and over again on themes of space, depth, light and distance. Look at them the wrong way you and might even bump into a wall, presuming it to be a continuation of the area you are actually in.

Not every photo is made to be a complete trick – some are obviously bordered or framed, but nonetheless force the mind to go back and forth between perception and physical reality thanks to the illusions involved.

Other pieces by Nova toy with familiar household objects and notions of up, down and side to side, using real sculptural elements in addition to printed canvas surfaces. Of course, these pictures are just copies of copies shot at specific angles. To gain the full effect, one really has to walk between these mural-covered walls and experience the cognitive dissonance for oneself.

“Nils Nova is an artist based in Luzern, Switzerland, but born in El Salvador. He can be considered a master of ‘trompe-l’oeil’. In his performances and installations, he always triggers the viewer into a play where nothing seems what it really is. He can appear as a look-a-like of Luis Buñuel or Elvis Presley. Or change the museum space into a real remake of a Dr Caligari set. With the performance D.E.A.D. and the installation Kaleidoscope – Cross, Nils Nova will be opening the series Someone Walking Around. The numerous competitions and exhibitions in which he has participated include the Venice Biennale 2009 and the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2014.”

The post Huge Photo Prints Sculpt Impossible Spaces first appeared on Dornob.

A shift in perspective can shed new light on old designs – somehow this super-sized metal folding table or an otherwise-simple wood dining table for four seem unique, inviting interaction and contemplation despite their recognizable forms.

Los Angeles seems a suitable place for artist Robert Therrien to install his larger-than-life creations. This sculptural furniture has sat inside minimalist modern gallery spaces but also been set up in public squares and green spaces, changing the experience with each context.?The choice of boring beiges, browns, greens and other conventional commercial colors is very intentional – the more familiar they would otherwise feel, the more strange they seem when blown so far out of scale.

“Therrien is known as an object maker who transforms elements from everyday life into works of art that evoke mythic archetypes,” writes Gagosian Gallery. “Working both two- and three-dimensionally, he has created a deceptively simple oeuvre that lends itself to psychological interpretation with its evident fascination with childhood, its anxieties and fantasies. While his mentors would seem to include a generation of Pop artists, his work also attests to the impact of Conceptualism as well as folk culture, cartoons, and everyday objects.”

“In 1993, Therrien made a significant breakthrough that influenced all his ensuing work. No Title (Yellow Table Leg) presented a dramatic shift from the less representational objects that preceded it. This work and the next — Under the Table (1994), a colossal wooden kitchen table and chair set measuring ten feet by twenty-six feet — marked a new direction for Therrien. He found that by recreating everyday objects true to their original material and color, but on a greatly enlarged scale, the viewer’s relationship to them changed dramatically. In the current exhibition there are four gigantic sculptures, each of which relates to the acts of stacking and folding.”

Spent enough time walking around (or underneath) such creations, and you might just find your own living or dining room furniture feels smaller than ever – yet also more comfortably sized that you remember it being. If nothing else, you will sigh with relief at the much smaller stack of dishes waiting in the sink to be cleaned when you get home!

“Sometimes people ask whether I am a romantic or a realist artist. I would hope that I fall between the two. . . The ideal artist looks at the future and the past at the same time. The romantic artist spends more time looking backwards. The realist attempts to work in the present but emphasizes the future. However, if you try to predict the future, you seldom succeed. 
—Robert Therrien”

The post Tables, Chairs & Dishes for Giants first appeared on Dornob.

It is a bit like the perfect self-contained hemispherical world of Truman Show, but in real life … and times four. Once constituting the largest gasworks in all of Europe, a series of stunning cylindrical brick structures from the 1800s have found an uncanny new use in modern times as a completely domed-interior town-within-a-city on a spectacular scale.

In their second life, these gasometer buildings have been converted into a giant community of shops, residences, hotels, entertainment, civic, public and garden spaces interconnected by a series of soaring skyways and uncanny underground passages.

Located in Vienna, Austria, these century-old buildings were abandoned shortly after construction as they were no longer needed to hold coal gas – leaving each of the four industrial structures with nearly 1,000,000 square feet of unused interior space under gigantic roof-spanning skylights above – but it would be nearly a hundred years until someone would think to turn them into a town.

Though used and abused over the years by subversive partiers and other illegal purposes, the buildings managed to avoid being torn down due to their impressive appearance, stunning scale and historical value.

The interiors vary from one 230-foot-tall structure to the next, giving them each a distinctive appearance and functional personality. With over 1500 residents and 70 shops, restaurants, bars and cafes, it is no wonder that urban designers and planners from around the world have studied the unique architectural and cultural phenomena and the virtual online community that has arisen out of this giant connected gasometer city.

The post Giant Industrial Gasworks Turned into Domed Indoor Town first appeared on Dornob.

It looks downright dangerous … yet its creator claims it is divinely inspired by a vision he received in which he was told to begin building a tree house for which he would never run out of materials. 15 years, 10,000 square feet and 250,000 nails and a lot of scrap wood later, this amazing structure towers up over the very trees that support it.

Known as the Minister’s Treehouse (out of deference to creator Horace Burgess, de facto pastor of the forest) this phenomenal structure includes such strange features as a third-floor basketball-court-and-sanctuary combination, a half-ton chime at the very top of the building on top of a penthouse suite Burgess built for his wife as an anniversary present.

The structure itself seems to fluctuate between highly organized, regular and planned to completely haphazard, chaotic and unstable. Perhaps as weird and wonderful as anything else this unique building has to offer: essentially the entire tree house is open to the public, provided they obey simple no-smoking rules and respect the structure of course.

Sadly, the treehouse has since burned down, so those rules may not have been followed. From WebUrbanist:

“One of the coolest roadside wonders of the United States is no more. Built nail by reclaimed nail over several decades by Minister Horace Burgess in Crossville, Tennesseee, “The Minister’s Treehouse” caught fire this week and burned to the ground within just 15 minutes. Anyone who was ever able to tour this 80-room wonder before its demise (like this writer) probably won’t be surprised by this news, since the whole thing felt like a tinder box all along.”

“Over the years, the treehouse hosted church services and was sometimes reportedly care-taken by homeless people who lived on the property. For decades, it was a word-of-mouth tourist attraction, drawing in 400-500 visitors a week, who would climb as high as they dared. The inside was full of pews, stained glass, rope swings art installations and a basketball court.”

“In 2012, the treehouse was closed to the public after the fire department deemed it unsafe. It’s easy to understand why, especially given its ultimate fate, but it feels like a loss nonetheless.”

The post Tallest Tree House in the World first appeared on Dornob.

Digital photo editing makes all kinds of images possible – but Julia Fullerton-Batten did not need edit her photos in creating these incredibly strange suburban and city scenes featuring models spectacularly out of scale with miniature environments, looking like giants in the streets.

Inspired in part by the encounters of the photographer with miniature model built environments, these photographs capture everything from surreal moments to daily-life scenes. The subjects only seem out of place due to the sheer differences in size between the people and the tiny houses, roads and other ordinary natural and man-made objects around them.

While some of the subjects and scenes are intentionally extremely ordinary – such as a girl picking up a daily milk bottle or a woman fixing the heal of her shoe – others are extraordinary, depicting dangerous situations and disasters from bicycle and train accidents to trips and falls that, once again, seem strangely out of scale with their causes.

Julia Fullerton-Batten Bio

“Julia Fullerton-Batten is a worldwide acclaimed and exhibited fine-art photographer. Her body of work now encompasses twelve major projects spanning a decade of engagement in the field. The foundation of her success was ‘Teenage Stories’ (2005), an evocative narrative of the transition of a teenage girl to womanhood.”

“This and sequel projects portray the difficult stages and life situations of an adolescent girl’s transition to womanhood as she grapples with the vulnerability of her teenage predicament – adjustments to a new body, her emotional development and changes in her social standing. Julia’s book ‘Teenage Stories’ was published in 2007*.”

“Julia admits to a pronounced semi-autobiographical influence in much of her earlier work, often falling back on recollections of her own early and teenage years, living in Germany, the USA and the UK, her parent’s divorce, and her own early relationships.”

“Her more recent projects consider social issues, frequently covering controversial subject matter. For example, in ‘Feral Children, 2015’, Julia re-enacts fifteen reported historical cases of feral children. Using child actors, her re-enactments illustrate the tragic circumstances in which children were rejected or abused by their parents, got lost or were left in the wild, and yet others were captured by wild animals.”

The post Giants in the Streets: Teen Models in Miniature Environments first appeared on Dornob.