News
Sci-Arc Gallery Installation to open in June
Ball-Nogues Studio has been invited to create a site-specific installation for the gallery space at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
The opening is scheduled for June 2012.
Watch the Sci-Arc gallery page for upcoming info.
Butler University lecture
BENJAMIN BALL
“Fast, Cheap & In Control”
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 25
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Best known in Indianapolis for the last season’s brightly colored string installation “Gravity’s Loom” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Benjamin Ball, is an artist, designer and founder of Ball-Nogues Studio in Los Angeles. Ball grew up in Colorado and Iowa, where his mother’s involvement in theatre proved influential. While studying for his degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Ball logged stints at Gehry Partners and Shirdel Zago Kipnis.
Upon graduation, he sought work as a set and production designer for films (including the Matrix series) as well as music videos and commercials with such influential directors as Mark Romanek and Tony Scott. His experience ranges from work on the Disney Concert Hall and small residential commissions for boutique firms to complex medical structures and event design.
In Conversation: Lynn Aldrich, Benjamin Ball and Merry Norris with art critic Scarlet Cheng at A+D Museum
In Conversation: Lynn Aldrich, Benjamin Ball and Merry Norris with art critic Scarlet Cheng
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 / 6:30pm
Join art critic Scarlet Cheng in a conversation with artist Lynn Aldrich, architect Benjamin Ball and art consultant Merry Norris about their recent public art projects and how they address the role of art in the built environment.
Seating is limited. To reserve please call (323) 525-0053
Lecture at San Jose State University
Ball-Nogues to speak at San Jose State University School of Art & Design
BENJAMIN BALL:FAST, CHEAP, AND IN CONTROL
Art 133
February 28 at 5 pm
Info here
Ben Ball speaking at Woodbury
Benjamin Ball will be giving a lecture at Woodbury University.
Department of Interior Architecture
February 22, 2012 6:30pm
Upcoming panel at L.A.C.M.A.
Ball-Nogues invited to University of Michigan's "Whither Installation" conference
Benjamin Ball will be attending the "Whither Installation" conference. Information on the University of Michigan website.
January 20th - 21st
University of Michigan
Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
A + A Auditorium (Rm 2104)
Upcoming Lecture at the Architectural Association in London
Benjamim Ball will be giving at lecture at the Architectural Association in London on Nobevember 22, 2011. Entitled Fast Cheap & In Control
Time: 18:00:00
Venue: AA Lecture Hall
For more information, please click here
Yucca Crater unveiled this weekend near Joshua Tree
Yucca Crater
Located on Iron Age Road west of the town of Joshua Tree, Yucca Crater is a synthetic earthwork that doubles as a recreational amenity. This monumental basin stands 30 feet from rim to low point. Rock climbing holds mounted on the interior allow visitors to descend into a deep pool of water.
Yucca Crater expands on concepts borrowed from land art, incorporating the prospect of the abandoned suburban swimming pools scattered across the Mojave. Ball Nogues have re-imagined these interventions in the landscape through a method of production where the tools of fabrication transform to be become objects for display in their own right. The structure of Yucca Crater was originally the formwork used to construct another Ball-Nogues work, Talus Dome, in which more than 900 boulder-sized polished metal spheres were assembled to appear as a monumental pile of gravel. The two projects were “cross-designed” such that the method of production used in the first (Talus Dome) has become the central aesthetic for the second (Yucca Crater).
This approach integrates concept, aesthetics, and production, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to art by-products while repositioning them within an alternative economic and geographic domain.
Please visit the High Desert Test Sites website for more information. http://www.highdeserttestsites.com/hdts
Funding Drive for our new project - Yucca Crater
Rendering of Yucca Crater
Hello friends of Ball Nogues Studio,
Two Ball Nogues projects top list by American's for the Arts Public Art Year in Review
Since 2000, the Public Art Network’s Year in Review has annually recognized outstanding public art projects through an open call submission and curation/selection process. Each year, two or more public art professionals are selected as curators to review more than 400 project applications of work installed or completed in the previous calendar year and select up to 50 public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country. The Public Art Network’s Year in Review program is the only national program that specifically recognizes public art projects. The field is advanced by the commitment of artists to produce exceptional work, public art programs and administrators who facilitate public processes, and the curators all of whom dedicate time and thoughtful detail. The Year in Review 2004-2010 projects are available on CD in our online bookstore for use in educational contexts and for public art advocacy.
Lecture at Texas A & M
Ben will give a lecture on the work of Ball Nogues Studio at Texas A & M University on April 4, 2011.
Architectural League of New York Selects Ball Nogues for Emerging Voices Lecture Series at the New Museum
The lectures will be at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30 and will be held at the
New Museum, 235 Bowery, in New York City.
The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices lecture series and award spotlights individuals and firms with a distinct design ‘voice’ that has the potential to influence the discipline of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Since 1982, the juried series has featured architects and designers from throughout North America who have a significant body of realized work that not only represents the best of its kind, but also creatively addresses larger issues of architecture, landscape, and the built environment. For a complete list of past emerging voices, click here
This year's list of emerging voices can be found by clicking here
Gaston Nogues lecture at Carnegie Mellon University
For more information, click here
Lecture at the University of Texas, Austin
Ben will give a lecture on the work of Ball Nogtues Studio at the University of Texas, Austin on February 28, 2011.
Ball Nogues Moving to a Larger Space in 2011
We are now located at 1300 East First Street, Los Angeles CA 90031
Upcoming Lectures at University of Toronto and the Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles
Ball Nogues creating new work for a show at the University of Virginia
Project Description
5X10 is a traveling exhibition, curated by William Daryl Williams, that features five University of Virginia faculty members from architecture, landscape architecture,and studio art that have been paired with experts in the field of digital design and fabrication from across the globe. The title of the show represents a profound shift from 4’ X 8’ construction, as well as the unique pairing of local and distant collaborators, and the maximum sheet material that can be used with our 5 axis CNC router.
The purpose of the exhibition is to challenge the hegemony of existing construction techniques, and to promote new possibilities related to digital design and fabrication.
5X10 will open in late October, 2010.
Teams
Anselmo Canfora, UVA +Jeana Ripple Studio Gang, Chicago (pending)
Dean Dass, UVA + Ball-Nogues Studio, Los Angeles (confirmed)
Earl Mark, UVA+ Rosana Rubio-Hernandez. Madrid (confirmed)
Jeff Ponitz, UVA + Iwamoto Scott, San Francisco (confirmed)
Jorg Sieweke, UVA + Chris Reed Stoss ( pending)
Table Cloth Wins 2010 American Institute of Architects Design Award
Our project - Table Cloth - won a 2010 Design Award from the American Institute of Architects at the annual awards gala held at LACMA.
Installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art space opens October 15, 2010
BNS is working on an installation for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Unified School District at their Charles White Elementary School gallery space near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Opening October 15, 2010
Table Cloth tables available for the public to take home from September 14th to September 18th
During the week of September 14th, we will dismantle our Table Cloth project, currently on view at Schoenberg Hall on the UCLA campus. The coffee tables and stools that comprise the installation will be available for the public to take home! If you are interested in having some tables, please let us know by adding a comment to our Facebook page. You will need to pick up the table(s) in the central courtyard at Schoenberg Hall between September 14th through September 18th, 11 am to 5 pm. Stay tuned for more details.
Indianapolis Museum of Art installation opens to the public on September 3, 2010
Indianapolis Museum of Art Commissions Ball-Nogues Studio for Efroymson Pavilion Installation Series
Los Angeles-based Ball-Nogues Studio to transform IMA
entrance pavilion with immersive, site-specific installation
INDIANAPOLIS, IN, The Indianapolis Museum of Art today announced that Los Angeles-based Ball-Nogues Studio will create a site-specific, architectural installation as part of the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion series. Ball-Nogues Studio’s installation will be on view in the IMA’s main entrance from September 3, 2010 to March 6, 2011.
Bridging the disciplines of art, architecture and design, Ball-Nogues Studio is an integrated design and fabrication practice lead by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues. The studio will create an immersive installation titled Gravity’s Loom that explores the space and structure of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion. Gravity’s Loom, part of the artists’ Suspensions series, will be composed of an array of vibrantly colored hanging strings that span the entire pavilion and generate the appearance of a softly spiraling gossamer surface. This surfacewill twist, contort, and spiral downward through the atrium, transforming the architectural space and re-choreographing the flow of visitors to encourage new interactions with the museum. Each string in the installation will hang from two points on the oval perimeter of the Pavilion, forming curves that respond to the distinctive features of the IMA building.
In developing Gravity’s Loom, Ball-Nogues has allowed the properties and limitations of a given material—in this case, string—guide their work. When the array of strings is hung in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, it will take the shape of an inverted dome through which a patterned color composition will be revealed that represents the artists’ take on Baroque embellishment, Ball and Nogues understand the oval shape of the IMA’s Pavilion to be analogous to the dome of classical Baroque architecture, which historically incorporated surface decoration to blur the distinction between what is architectural, sculptural, and pictorial. The strings of Gravity’s Loom will be painted to represent the imagined plan for a traditional Baroque ceiling pattern—a three dimensional volume that will blur into billows of color and then snap into a focused geometry, depending on the viewer’s vantage point.
“Ball-Nogues’ installation will dramatically re-imagine the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion,” said Sarah Urist Green, associate curator of contemporary art. “Their singular approach—integrating concept, design, and fabrication—will yield an unforgettable and all-encompassing environment that intricately relates to the space as a thoroughfare and site for assembly and interaction.”
Ball-Nogues likens their method of fabrication to a 21st century application ofIkat, an Indonesian term for the ancient textile process of resist dye.A labor intensive method, Ikat involves the application of vibrant colors to precise locations on individual yarns that, when woven, form a blurry edged pattern. Similarly, Ball-Nogues will color the strings individually in precise locations by using four computer-controlled airbrushes that are part of a programmable machine of their own design. Called the Instal-lator 1 with the Variable Information Atomizing Module, the machine will paint over 30 miles of string and cut it to prescribed lengths determined by an integrated software system. The shape of the thousands of hanging strings will be computed with a mathematical formula, however the piece will be installed at the museum by human hands. Ball-Nogues’ installation will be a remarkable convergence of digital computation, machine fabrication, and hand craft.
“The series title Suspensions refers to the act of disengaging from preconceived notions and intellectual interpretations, if only for a few moments, to apprehend the work with untethered expectation,” said Ball-Nogues. “In the installation at the IMA, there is an intentional duality at play—at one moment the implied surface frames views of the building and then at another obscures it, creating a clouded perspective of the building beyond.”
Ball-Nogues Studio’s sculpture is part of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion installation series launched in February 2007 and made possible by a $2.5 million grant from the Indianapolis-based Efroymson Fund. The works are installed on a rotating basis with a new commission from a different artist approximately every six months. Artists who have previously exhibited in the space include Tony Feher, Orly Genger and Julianne Swartz, among others.
About BallNogues Studio
Ball-Nogues Studio is comprised of Benjamin Ball (b. 1968, Waterloo, Iowa) and Gaston Nogues (b. 1968, Buenos Aires, Argentina) both of whom live and work in Los Angeles, California. They met as students at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, and are former employees of architect Frank Gehry at Gehry Partners. Ball earned his Bachelor of Architecture at SCI-Arc in 1994 and worked at Gehry Partners while completing his degree. After graduating, Ball went on to work as a set and production designer and art director for films, music videos, and commercials. Nogues earned his Bachelor of Architecture from SCI-Arc in 1993, and moved directly from school into a position in product design and production at Gehry Partners. Ball and Nogues joined forces in 2005 and since that time have worked collaboratively with wide variety designers, engineers, and consultants.
In 2006, Ball-Nogues Studio was awarded the Best of Category distinction for Environments for their installation Maximilian's Schell by ID Magazine. Ball-Nogues is the recipient of two Los Angeles AIA Design Awards and Interior Design Magazine’s Best of Year Award for their installation Rip Curl Canyon. In 2007, their installation Liquid Sky was the winner of the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1's Young Architect's Program competition. They are recipients of grants from the Durfee Foundation, the Graham Foundation, UCLA Arts Initiative, Otis College of Design and United States Artists. In 2008, their site-specific installation Echoes Converge appeared at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture and they have exhibited at Bejing Biennale, CAPC /arc en rêve centre d'architecture Bordeaux, and the Hong Kong / Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Their installation Feathered Edge debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2009. The partners have taught in the graduate architecture programs at SCI Arc, UCLA and USC. Their work has appeared in publications worldwide including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Icon, Log 10, Sculpture, and Surface.
About the Efroymson Fund
The Efroymson Family established the Efroymson Fund through the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) to continue its tradition of philanthropic giving to causes in the central Indiana area. The fund, which contributed the $5 million gift to the IMA that supported the construction of the Pavilion in 2002, was established to benefit several areas of interest including the arts, historic preservation, the environment and projects for the welfare of the Jewish people. It also has provided fellowships to support the work of emerging and established contemporary artists in Indiana.
Contemporary Art at the IMA
The IMA’s robust contemporary art program is evolving as a model for encyclopedic museums as they engage the art of our time. With a renewed focus on its contemporary collection, the IMA has been actively seeking the works of new and emerging artists through both gift and acquisition, and in addition organizing major traveling exhibitions and commissioning site-specific installations.
Ball-Nogues Studio’s new commissionwill be one of several contemporary art exhibitions and installations premiering at the IMA in 2010. Other exhibitions of contemporary art at the IMA this fall include:
- Body Unbound: Contemporary Couture from the IMA’s Collection(April 17, 2010–January 30, 2011) will examine the many ways designers have manipulated, transformed and liberated the female form since 1960. The exhibition will feature iconic pieces of contemporary fashion, many recently added to the IMA’s growing collection of Fashion & Textile Arts.
- Jeppe Hein (May 7–September 5, 2010), will be a multi-part exhibition of Copenhagen-based artist Jeppe Hein, consisting of a 4,000-square-foot installation in the IMA’s Forefront Galleries that will feature Hein’s site-specific work Distance, and anew outdoor experiential artwork on the museum grounds, titled Bench Around the Lake, for the inaugural installations in 100 Acres, opening on June 20, 2010.
About the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Encompassing 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is among the 10 largest encyclopedic art museums in the United States, and features significant collections of African, American, Asian, European and contemporary art, as well as a newly established collection of design arts. The IMA offers visitors an expansive view of arts and culture through its collection of more than 54,000 works of art that span 5,000 years of history from across the world’s continents. The collections include paintings, sculpture, furniture and design objects, prints, drawings and photographs, as well as textiles and costumes.
Recognizing the inherent connections among art, design and nature, the IMA offers visitors experiences at the Museum, in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which will be one of the largest contemporary art parks in the United States when it opens in June 2010, and at Oldfields–Lilly House & Gardens, an historic Country Place Era estate on the IMA’s grounds.
The IMA completed a $74 million expansion project in May 2005. The construction added 164,000 square feet to the Museum and includes renovation of 90,000 square feet of existing space. In order to present major exhibitions of its own and to accommodate major traveling exhibitions, the expanded Museum was outfitted with new 10,000-plus-square-foot Clowes Special Exhibition Gallery on the Museum’s first level. In November 2008, the IMA opened the renovated 600-seat Tobias Theater. Nicknamed, “The Toby,” the theater is a venue for talks, performances and films.
Located at 4000 Michigan Road, the IMA and Lilly House are open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The IMA is closed Mondays and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days. For more information, call 317-923-1331 or visit www.imamuseum.org.
Media Contacts:
Katie Zarich / Emily LytleIlana B. Simon / Molly Kurzius
IMAResnicow Schroeder Associates
317-920-2650/317-923-1331 x 252720-746-9552 / 212-671-5163
kzarich/ elytle@imamuseum.org isimon / mkurzius@resnicowschroeder.com
Cradle for Santa Monica under construction, end of July anticipated completion
Formwork for Cradle under construction
Model of formwork in the foreground, the actual formwork for Cradle is in the background
Recent printed press about Ball Nogues Studio
Selected articles in print:
- March April issue of Azure, Space Invaders by Mimi Zeiger
- February Issue of Abitare, Shenzhen & Hong Kong by City Biennale of Architecture / Urbanism by Fabrizo Gallanti
- Frame #73, Feathered Edge by Michael Webb
- December 15, 2010, The Guardian, China's urban art shows off skyscraping ambition by James Wecott
- January 2010 issue of Artforum, "Insiders" by Rahma Khazam
- February 2010 issue of Dwell, Feathered Edge
- December 210 issue of Interior Design, Maximilian's Schell
- Span N.01, Feathered Edge
- Volume 31. 2009, Oz Journal, Kansas State University Press, Ball-Nogues Studio, Benjamin Ball
- 2010 / 01, Landscape Architecture, China, Art Installations
- Public Landscape, Hong Kong: Rhhan. 2010
- Public Space, Hong Kong: Rhhan. 2010
- Vol. 171, Hinge, Hong Kong, Floating Design
- Volume 17, number 2, 2010. IDN International Designers Network, Hong Kong, Built to Wear
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April 20, 2010. The Architects Newspaper, Table Setting, Sam Lubell
Elastic Plastic Sponge will be shown in an Exhibition during the London Festival of Architecture
Spontaneous Schooling Exhibition 18 June 2010 - 4 July 2010. Opening Event 18 June, 6 - 11pm Roundtable discussion on workshops 6 - 7pm 3.01 Tea Building, 5 - 13 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6JJ Sponsored by Nous 4m and Derwent London With the participation of hundreds of tutors and thousands of students, this exhibition will showcase the outcomes of architectural workshops around the world. The innovative exhibition design will display images of international workshops on faceted orbs that will hang as a field of information, interwoven with installations from workshops re-created in the space. At the opening of the exhibition a round table discussion will be held about the future of workshops and their role in the discipline. While workshops are rapidly becoming an important platform for experimentation and the production of ideas, they have never been critiqued outside of specific reviews, or as a broader methodology in architectural teaching. Nor have workshops ever been exhibited together and discussed as a key element of architectural education. Out of our own curiosity to expose and review workshops came ‘Spontaneous Schooling’. It is an exhibition and publication that aims to explore why workshops exist and provides some insight into their role in architectural education. Spontaneous Schooling will exhibit work that is different from that displayed at end of year shows or typical polished architectural exhibitions. The work is truly presented as an experiment or study. But it is precisely this unrefined quality that makes workshops popular. The Spontaneous Schooling exhibition will show some of the actual installations, drawings, and media created in the workshops featured. The parallel publication is to be used as a resource for tutors, and will explain in detail how the workshops were run. This is the first exhibition for Nous 4M (www.nous4m.com), a collaboration between Nous Gallery (www.nousgallery.com) and 4M Group (www.4mgroup.co.uk), a London based architecture, construction, development and research company. Nous 4M was created as a resource for architects, designers and creatives to provide fabrication and production facilities for professionals and tutors, and affordable professional office space. In September, its 540m2 fabrication space will open, featuring 5 axis and 3 axis CNC milling machines and space for setting up workshops, furniture viewings, installations, small film sets,and mock-ups for buildings. Nous 4M will also be hosting workshops from London and abroad at its facilities. Also, Nous 4M will be letting affordable office space to up and coming firms, providing all the resources of a larger office. Please check www.nousgallery.com for opening times and directions.
Gaston Nogues to lecture at the Los Angeles Design Technology Forum
DIGITAL PRACTICE SERIES 2010 series info
The Los Angeles Design Technology Forum, in association with the AIA|LA Technology in Architectural Practice Committee, is pleased to announce the third event in a monthly series focusing on the intersection of Design and Information Technology. This lecture event will explore the intersection of digital methods with physical reality through the work of Ball-Nogues and BplusU.
LECTURE:
Digital :: Physical Ball-Nogues and BplusU
DATE: Thursday 17 June 2010, FREE
TIME: Lecture 7pm, 6pm Wine, snacks, and social mixing
WHERE: This event will be at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, DeCafe in Perloff Hall. Parking is $10, please see this link for information: parking map.
Post event libations and filler @ To be announced location
Please RSVP to general@ladesigntech.org
Benjamin Ball in conversation with writer and curator Brooke Hodge at UC Irvine Graduate Art Department
Exact time yet to be determined
Text from UCI promotional materials.
The UC Irvine Studio Art Lecture Series "Perfect Lovers" attempts to complicate the traditional grad school lecture by pairing artists, curators, and culture-makers in conversation with each other. We want to offer our program and the public the vital event of seeing artists discuss their work in a more spontaneous way; and give artists the opportunity to share their work, interests and obsessions in dialogue.
As the clocks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres "Perfect Lovers" move in sync and out of sync, we believe that pairing speakers whose practices may coincide and conflict can better highlight the stakes and debates of contemporary practice.
Ball Nogues is part of a new show entitled Room Mobile, curated by Janet Levy
Ball-Nogues is participating in the LACE Benefit Art Auction
http://www.welcometolace.org/events/view/lace-benefit-art-auction-2010/
CURATORSAndrew Berardini, Barbara Bestor, Andrea Bowers, Kristin Calabrese & Joshua Aster, Carolyn Castaño, Tim Christian, David Dick, Tomory Dodge, Robert Fontenot & Glenn R. Phillips, Brooke Hodge, Julian Hoeber, Onya Hogan-Finlay, Jeff Kopp, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Kim McCarty, Jamie Rosenthal, Joy Silverman, Monique van Genderen and LACE.
ARTISTS
Irina Alimanestianu, Carmen Argote, Kristin Calabrese & Joshua Aster, Darren Bader, Ball-Nogues Studio, Louise Bonnet, Heather Brown, Andrew Bush, Josh Callaghan, Terry Chatkupt, Susan Cianciolo, Matt Connors, Carlee Fernandez, Gary Garay, Kathryn Garcia, Jill Giegerich, Marsha Ginsberg, Sayre Gomez, April Greiman, Sherin Guirguis, Emlie Halpern, Naotaka Hiro, Hadley Holliday, Margaret Honda, Charles Irvin, Alice Cisternino Jackel, Adam Janes, Charles Karubian, Matt Keegan, Soo Kim, Karen Kimmel, Olga Koumoundouros, Eli Langer, Annie Lapin, Joseph Lee, Spencer Lewis, CK Lyons, Euan MacDonald, Jay McCafferty, Ian McDonald, Sandeep Mukherjee, D'Ette Nogle, William J. O'Brien, Michele O'Marah, Eamon Ore-giron, Claudia Padrucci, Heather Rasmussen, Sarada Rauch, Erwin Redl, Laura Riboli, Rebecca Ripple, Brett Cody Rogers, Lezley Saar, Shizu Saldamando, Sergio Sergio, Jeff Sheng, Lily Skolnick Simonson, Don Suggs, Ivan Terestchenko, Erin Trefry, Jeffrey Vallance, Ingrid von Sydow, Sage Vaughn, Mary Weatherford, Ken Weathersby , Bari Ziperstein (list in formation)
The evening will debut a new Wall Work Commission by Nick Lowe, and feature a collaborative performance by Dorian Wood / Killsonic with Ryan Heffington / Fingered Dancers. Costumes by Franc Fernandez.
TICKETS
General $50 advance / $75 door
Silver Circle $500 Duo / $250 Solo (Includes a year's worth of membership benefits. Learn more here.)
LACE Bundle $500 (10 tickets)
'Now Playing in Los Angeles' - An Evening of Performances and Videos about Play curated by Micol Hebron at Ball-Nogues Studio
Micol Hebron presents “Now Playing in Los Angeles”, an evening of videos and performances that address notions of ‘Play’ and all that the word entails. Featuring live performances by Dawn Kasper and John Kilduff, of “Let’s Paint Tv”, and a program of videos by local artists who address notions of Play in it’s various iterations.
Come Play With Us!
Downtown ArtWalk
Thursday May 13, 2010 7 – 10pm
Ball Nogues Studio, 410 S. Spring, Los Angeles, 90013
Table Cloth - Ball Nogues' Performance Space Debuts with Music at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall on April 26
Table Cloth for the Courtyard at Schoenberg Hall
Ball Nogues Studio
Tablecloth will officially open on the evening April 26th with a performance hosted by the Herb Alpert School of Music. Please confirm the start times.
This project is a collaboration between the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, The Herb Alpert School of Music, and UCLA Design Media Arts
It is made possible by the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a UCLA Arts Initiative Grant from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
Structural engineering and analysis by Buro Happold Los Angeles. Matthew Melnyk
Description:
The installation in the courtyard at Schoenberg Hall will serve as an integrated set piece and backdrop for performance and everyday social interaction. We understand the work as a table cloth to adorn and activate the architecture of the campus. Tables are places of social interaction. Dining tables, specifically, facilitate organization and communication within the typical American home. We see this project like the cloth adorning a dining table; however, at Schoenberg it will embellish a courtyard, an important social hub, and will facilitate community at the scale of the University. It can be used for a variety of community oriented activities, from musical practice to performance, dance to lectures, and from everyday social interaction to academic discussions. It will embellish the courtyard during the spring and part of the summer in 2010. The processes to manufacture, assemble, and dismantle the performance space are sustainable. We have utilized a holistic approach to design, manufacturing and re-purposing of building materials; a process we term "Cross Manufacturing."
The Table Cloth will be comprised of hundreds of individual low, coffee-style tables and three legged stools. Each of these household items will be a unique product in its own right and can be taken home by members of the UCLA community after the project is over. The tables and stools link together collectively to create a “fabric” that hangs from the east wall of the courtyard. When the Table Cloth meets the ground, it unrolls to form an intimate “in the round” performance area. Visitors can sit on the tables and stools within this area.
The installation can be configured in two ways:
Stage. A small stage platform will be at the center of the crescent shaped seating area. This stage will be 18 inches high and will only be present during organized performances. When one is performing some parts of the stage will stored.No Stage. Performances may take place on the ground anywhere within the courtyard. Approximately 25 individual “free floating” stools can be distributed throughout the performance area as desired.
The configurations described above are only suggestions of how an audience and the performers' relationship can be mediated by the installation: the function of the Table Cloth is open ended. We hope that performers, choreographers, directors (to name a few examples) will invent uses and safe abuses for it. Perhaps, some performers will develop programs specifically for the space and will collaborate with other members of the UCLA community to create works showcase there.
This installation may not only serve as a backdrop and marker of a place for performance, but also can be a set or prop in the performance. It can be a neutral backdrop or provocative presence. It creates a context for interaction, perhaps inspiring a creative process from its conception to execution. To reduce liability there is to be no climbing on the Table Cloth, no standing on the seating elements and no standing on the stage unless one is a part of an organized performance.
Because of the work's size and the materials used, its presence within the space will help reduce reverberation and alter acoustical phenomena within the space.
Construction will begin at Ball-Nogues Studio in downtown Los Angeles during March followed by onsite assembly during the break between winter and spring quarters. Within the weeks before the break, campus facility personnel will be onsite to make preparatory alterations to the building. These will include drilling holes in the courtyard floor and welding tabs onto beams above two of the window openings on the east wall. We invite students from the University to help (assuming risk assessment authorities will allow this) and it is our hope that students from the School of the Arts, AUD, DMA, and the Herb Alpert School of Music will contribute. Furthermore, the construction process should help generate anticipation and enthusiasm for the project among students and faculty.
Upon dismantling, the seating and tables will be given away to the UCLA community. Our aim is for the project’s stakeholders to help promote this process by turning it into an event - perhaps accompanied by a performance.
Project Theory:
Spatial installations represent a growing phenomenon within our culture. There is a new demand for “instant” architecture. We see this in entire environments which become advertisements, like subway platforms; stage sets; window displays; and event spectacles. They have become forums for the production of architecturally scaled structures and spaces that exist for only a limited period. Our installation explores the making of structures which produce very little waste when their usefulness as architecture is complete. While there is an increasing interest among architects in recycling and repurposing architecture, our project moves beyond this approach to consider life cycle through the development of a "cross manufacturing" strategy. Cross manufacturing is a design and production approach that considers objects as part of a continuum. After the structure has served its use as a performance space, the components comprising the installation will be dismantled to become smaller scaled commodities, immediately available as coveted products - in this case tables and seating. Unlike recycling, which down-cycles material into a less valuable state, this scenario foresees small products made from the parts of a larger product (the installation itself).
“Diversified series” is a fitting description for the resulting products rather than the “standardized series” that typically results from a mass production approach. Each of the tables and seating elements will be industrially manufactured but will still be unique, contrasting the anonymity inherent in most industrially manufactured goods. At the end of the life of the installation, the approximately 500 tables and stools, no two alike, will be given away to the UCLA community.
By using a consumer good as its basic building block, the project expands and critiques notions of “green" architecture. As a visual concept, the installation serves as a symbolic gesture of sustainability and a poetic reminder that the buildings and pavilions we construct although seemingly timeless, are actually impermanent: frozen moments in an ongoing flow of products and materials. Outside of its environmental commentary, the installation dramatically re-contextualizes consumer products - symbols of mass consumption and standardization– into alternative gestures of hope and one of a kind manufacturing.
Two Events at Ball Nogues Studio on April 8th - de Lab and Cooling System & Exploding Flowers
We know things may have been a bit...um...slow for some of our de LaB friends in the last few months. But we've also heard some pretty amazing stories about you all using that extra time to take on new and exciting endeavors. In fact, so many of you have contacted us about the cool things you're making that we knew we had to find a way to help share them—and sell them.de Lab
Also come see the all-femme spacerock jam of COOLING SYSTEM featuring the brilliant guitar goddess SYLVIA JUNCOSA & the avantpop LA Weekly Music Award winner AZALiA SNAiL & guests EXPLODING FLOWERS at the Ball/Nogues Studio 410
Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues teaching at UCLA Graduate Department of Architecture and Urban Design
Course Description
Paperwork – Studies in Pulp
Paperwork will be a hands-on seminar where students apply molded paper pulp techniques to structural and architectural problems. Molded pulp has been used for years to make strong and intricate shapes in the packaging industry. It has received little consideration, until now, within the field of architecture. Paper pulp and its associated processes of fabrication hold promise for architectural applications. Some potential uses are wall and decorative panel systems, architectural fixtures, acoustics, insulation, furniture, sculptural detail, model making and others. Because of its potential, in this seminar, we will conduct thoughtful exploration of this material and its capabilities.
2D3D: FAST CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL
Ball Nogues will be part an architectural drawing show.
WUHO, Woodbury School of Architecture: Hollywood Gallery, 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
"Architectural drawings have a variety of uses: to instruct, inform, indulge, confuse, confirm, congratulate and console. The most worthwhile are those that undertake these essential architectural tasks on behalf of the producer rather than the consumer. When this is the case, which is rare, then such drawings do indeed become an integral part of thearchitecture they portray rather than a cypher for thoughts translated elsewhere, and by other means."
-Cedric Price
Drawing is a major and parallel mode of expression for many of today's progressive architects. Therefore, we propose 2D3D, a comprehensive annual exhibition of architectural drawings, to be inaugurated March 25, 2010 in
the Woodbury Hollywood Gallery (WUHO).
Built to Wear wins the Innovation Award at the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism
Our project Built to Wear won an Innovation Award at the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture!!
Nominated by the curators first, then selected by the Academic Committee, the Shenzhen Biennale Organizer Committee presented the following awards for the participant works: Organizer Committee Award, Documents Award, Innovation Award and Public Choice Award.
You can view the winning projects here: http://www.szhkbiennale.org/en/index.php/category/news
Thank you to everyone who was a part of this project! American Apparel and project volunteers - you are the best!
Ball Nogues Studio at the Guggenheim, a project with collaboration from Jessica Fleischmann
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/contemplating...
Text from the Guggenheim Press Release
Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site-specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. Organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, the exhibition will feature renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that will emphasize the rich and diverse range of the proposals received. Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from February 12 to April 28, 2010.
Aristotle famously pronounced that nature abhors a vacuum, an idea that still resonates in art today. In designing the Guggenheim Museum, Wright flaunted the notion of the void, leaving the center tantalizingly (or threateningly) empty. Over the years, when creating site-specific installations or exhibition designs for the building, artists and architects have imbued the space with their presences, inspiring unforgettable works by Matthew Barney, Cai Guo- Qiang, Frank Gehry, Jenny Holzer, and Nam June Paik, among others. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim invited scores of artists to leave practicality or even reality behind in conjuring their proposals for the space. In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment. Conceived as both a commemoration and a self-reflexive folly, Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.
Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, Contemplating the Void will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition Web site, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.
Ball Nogues cardboard projects in a show in Paris at Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine.
Paris at Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine
Check it out if you are in Paris and let us know how it looks!
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Lecture
Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk - January
From My Universe: Objects of Desire
Ball Nogues work at Seeline Gallery in West Hollywood as part of the show From My Universe: Objects of Desire. Curated by Janet Levy, the show features work by Ball Nogues, Kendell Carter, Michael Dee Todd Gray,Evan Holloway, Seth Kaufman, Liz Larner, Eamon O'Kane, Antonio Adriano Puelo, Keith Walsh, and Pae White
