The city of Stuttgart, Germany has officially opened a marvelous new media center, the Stuttgart City Library. This cavernous white wonder is unobtrusive in design, where the books and visitors provide the color to an otherwise neutral environment. The visual center of the Stuttgart City Library is its grand atrium, a five-story open chamber that feels like the work of a modernist MC Esher. The interior is bright without direct lighting, it is warm without paint color and intimate yet open. This work by Yi Architects is a success in design, instantly one of the world’s most beautiful libraries
“So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes”, says interdisciplinary artist Guy Laramee who, in the course of his 30 years of practice, found his way through such varied and numerous disciplines as : stage writing, stage directing, contemporary music writing, musical instrument design and building, singing, video, scenography, sculpture, installation, painting and literature. Laramee uses books that are slowly falling apart, such as old encyclopedias and dictionaries to create dramatic landscapes.
The agency Van Wanter Etcetera collaborated with Souverein to create the “Written Portraits” series of 3D author to promote literature and autobiographies in Holland. The series of artworks was produced to promote Dutch Book Week this year.
American photographer Thomas Allen constructs witty and clever dioramas using figures cut from the covers of old pulp paperbacks. Using salacious pulp art drawing’s of the ’40s and ’50s that covered books such as ” I Married a Dead Man” and ” Marihuana Girl’, Allen constructs one set of pictures up close while obscuring another, and in the process creates a different context. Each piece is given a brand new storyline, though never quite strays from their cheeky origins.
