Award Plaques for CMU’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry

We recently created a set of sculptural award plaques for a new fund at The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. The Moore Family Fund for underwriting creativity, knowledge, experimentation, research and yumminess will fund antidisciplinary undergraduate research (learn more here). Dan Moore (a senior technical artist at NVIDIA) commissioned us to design a unique set of perpetual award plaques that will hold the names of recipients over the next 75 years.

Typical award plaques are simple rectangular slabs with a grid of metal nameplates, each engraved year after year. We wanted to break away from...

Macao’s largest mural – Drawing Architecture Studio’s casino maze

1 Drawing Architecture Studio – Learning from Macao, 2021, wall film, ink, 12.5 x 26.2 m, installation view, Handover Gifts Museum of Macao

What does it mean to learn from a city like Macao, rich in history, culture, and architectural 1 spectacle? Learning from Macao invites viewers to reflect on the dynamic relationship between art and urban life.

The mega-mural 2 is displayed on the outdoor wall of the Handover Gifts Museum of Macao. It was commissioned by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR for Art Macao: Macao International Art Biennale 2021. It’s a visual love letter to the city’s...

The Kyiv Crematorium: Censorship & the fight for recognition

1 Abraham Miletsky, Ada Ryabachuk, Volodymyr Melnychenko – Kyiv Crematorium, 1975, installation view, Kyiv, Ukraine, photo 2: Надія Кукла 3

The Kyiv Crematorium is a striking neo-modernist concrete structure nestled on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. It marks a turning point in how Ukrainian society addresses death. Built when cremation was a contentious subject due to historical trauma, the design aimed to create a therapeutic environment, free from associations with destruction.

Cremation was a thorny subject in Ukraine when the idea of building a crematorium in Kyiv was brought forward. That is partly because of the Second World War genocide...

The Mask of Sorrow by Ernst Neizvestny: Remembering the Gulag

1 Ernst Neizvestny – Mask of Sorrow, 1996, concrete, 15 meters high, installation view, Magadan, Russia, photo 2: Polina Boytsova 3

What does it mean to confront the shadows of history, especially when those shadows loom as large as the Mask of Sorrow? Looming over the remote 1 city of Magadan in northeastern Russia, the monument serves as a jarring reminder of the countless lives shattered by Soviet oppression.

The sculpture was built in Magadan, around 320 kilometers from the Dneprovsky labor camp 23, the best-preserved site in the Kolyma Gulag network where prisoners were processed and sent to forced labor camps.

The...

Fog Bridge in San Francisco by Fujiko Nakaya – A misty marvel

1 Fujiko Nakaya – Fog Bridge #72494, 2013, 800 high-pressure nozzles, 150 ft (46 m), installation view, Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA, photo 2 by zingbot 3

In the lively city of San Francisco, along the beautiful waterfront, stands a unique installation that blends science and art like nothing else seen before. This artwork is called the Fog Bridge, a creation by artist Fujiko Nakaya 1, permanently installed at the Exploratorium’s waterfront location.

Picture stepping onto a bridge 2 covered in mist, where it feels like reality and illusion are mixing. That’s what the Fog Bridge is all about. Nakaya created it in...

Kihoku Astronomical Museum in Kagoshima by Takasaki Masaharu

1 Takasaki Masaharu – Kihoku Astronomical Museum, 1995, Kihoku, Kanoya City, Kagoshima, Japan

Resembling a UFO 1 for many who see it for the first time, the Kihoku Astronomical Museum is one of Japan’s most peculiar and eccentric buildings.

Conceptualized by Takasaki Masaharu 2, the museum was constructed in a remote location to cut the observatory off from the urban chaos and better root it in the earth. The isolation also helps to better observe the stars, which allowed Takasaki Masaharu to live up to his nickname: the architect of the cosmos.

Weekend Reading 3.16.25

This is the first weekend I’ve been home in a month! I was away the past three weekends, first we visited my daughter in Santa Barbara, next we ran away on a 4 day trip to Kauai, and then we drove up north to visit our son at his university. Finally, a weekend to enjoy being at home! I can feel spring in the air, we had a few days of sunshine and the trees are beginning to bud, but there is still rain in the forecast.

I’ve been at my law firm for five months now, I’ve learned so much,...

Unique puzzle cuts inspired by nature

Nervous System’s wooden jigsaw puzzles feature unique nature-inspired piece shapes. Learn more about our cut styles below: Dendrite, Amoeba, Maze, Wave, Coral and Matrix. Each style is generated by software we created to mimic the way patterns form in nature. Instead of drawing the puzzle cuts by hand, we grow them using math and science.

The puzzle’s pieces grow into each other, interlocking with shapes similar to dendritic crystals or ice formations. We introduced the Dendrite cut in 2012 with our Radial Puzzle series.

Dendrite grows interlocking shapes through a simulation of dendritic solidification,...

Séguy’s Papillons: a series of wooden butterfly puzzles

https://player.twitch.tv/?video=2385486527

Today we are launching three new wooden puzzles bursting with butterflies! These puzzles feature the artwork of Emile-Allain Séguy, a French artist known for his intricate Art Nouveau and Art Deco illustrations of insects. I’ve long been a fan of Séguy’s artwork (we have two of his insect prints hanging in our home) and felt they would make excellent jigsaw puzzles. We’re showcasing four of our unique nature inspired puzzle cuts in this series: Coral, Maze, Matrix, and Wave. Each puzzle has a shaped border, vibrant UV printed colors printed directly on wood, and many butterfly and moth shaped puzzle...

Romanticize Your Home

Happy Valentine’s Day all! The sun just popped out after a week of storms and it’s a beautiful day. It’s still so cold, and on winter days I like to work from home sipping my coffee by morning light as I work on my laptop.

There’s a a lot of chatter online romanticizing one’s life, and I agree with that when it means cherishing the little things and making your life a reflection of what’s important to you. We can have a love affair with not just our lives but our homes too!

If scrolling through social media makes you tired of...