A 20,000-Square-Foot Tribute to Healthcare Workers Emerges at Queens Museum

“Somos La Luz” (2020). All images © Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada, by Eduardo Amorim/Greenpoint Innovations

In the Queens Museum parking lot, Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada (previously) has painted a 20,000-square-foot mural as both an act of gratitude to Latinx healthcare workers, who have risked their own safety to care for others, and a nationwide call to action.

These are the people that make our city move, the people that care for us. These are the people that contribute socially, culturally, and economically to the nation… In the year 2020, where hindsight should not be clearer, it is amazing to me that we must continue to ask ourselves…how it is that minorities today still have to suffer the same injustices of the minorities of the past(?)

“Somos La Luz,” or “We Are The Light,” is a large-scale rendering of Dr. Ydelfonso Decoo, a pediatrician who died when fighting the virus in New York City. Rodríguez-Gerada hopes to draw attention to the disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases among Latinx and Black populations across the United States, in addition to the alarming rates of infection in Queens, one of the city’s epicenters for the virus.

In an Instagram post about the project, Rodríguez-Gerada said presenting the masked figure on such a massive scale reflects the enormity of the issue. “This artwork ‘Somos La Luz’ strives to give deeper meaning to the loss of each life,” the artist writes. “It strives to make evident the importance of every life as well as to value the amazing contribution of migrant people.”

Best viewed aerially, the mural was commissioned by the immigrant healthcare organization SOMOS and Make the Road New York, an advocacy group. (via Hyperallergic)

 

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Live interview with Theodora Alfredsdottir as part of Virtual Design Festival

Theodora Alfredsdottir speaks to Dezeen in a live Screentime conversation sponsored by Philips TV & Sound as part of Virtual Design Festival. Watch the broadcast from 2:15pm UK time.

Alfredsdottir, an Icelandic product designer based in London, will speak to Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about her work.

The designer studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in her home country before coming to London, where she completed a masters in Design Products at the Royal College of Art.

Alfredsdottir often aims to create products that communicate something about how they are made and what they are made of.

Last year, she collaborated with German designer Tino Seubert, with whom she shares a studio in London, to create a collection of modular lights made of plywood and off-the-shelf aluminium tubes. The design of the lighting fixtures is based on the techniques that went into manufacturing many of the best-known examples of mid-century furniture.

Theodora Alfredsdottir is a product designer from Iceland

Alfredsdottir's stackable Mould side tables, which are made from ceramics using a single mould, were exhibited at last year's edition of London Design Festival.

At the 2016 instalment of the DesignMarch event held in Iceland, Alfredsdottir exhibited a dining set intended to draw attention to the properties of feldspar – the world's most abundant mineral.

Alfredsdottir's stackable Mould side tables are made from ceramics using a single mould

This conversation is sponsored by Philips TV & Sound and is part of our Screentime series for Virtual Design Festival, which will feature interviews with European designers including Teresa van Dongen and Ini Archibong.

Previous sessions have included Marjan van Aubel from the Netherlands, Shahar Livne from Israel and Adam Nathaniel Furman from the UK.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. It brings the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

To find out what's coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Astro Lighting unveils Capsule Collection Volume 01 at VDF products fair

British lighting brand Astro has launched its three-piece Capsule Collection Volume 01, which includes a bathroom lamp with a grooming mirror attached called Orb, as part of the VDF products fair.

As well as the Orb sconce, the collection also includes the Halftone wall lamp and io Pendant light.

Created by Astro Lighting's co-founder and design director James Bassant and senior designer Riley Sanders, the pieces marry a bold visual style with what they describe as a "delicacy that quietly complements" different design schemes.

All are currently on show as part of the Virtual Design Festival products fair, which gives designers and brands an affordable platform for launching new products.

Halftone's large, acrylic rim diffuses its light into a suble glow

The Orb light doubles up as a wall decoration in its own right, thanks to its sleek aluminium frame and sculptural shape, and can feature a mirror for shaving or applying make-up.

One half of the design's U-shaped arm can be rotated, in order to move the mirror on its end into different positions for a close-up view.

Meanwhile, the Halftone light features a see-through acrylic halo with a radiating, laser-etched surface pattern reminiscent of the sun.

The io Pendant features a cylindrical glass shade

Despite being a large fixture, this allows the backdrop behind the light to subtly peek through.

The io Pendant, the only hanging fixture in the collection, fracts light through the many facets of its ridged glass shade.

This has been extruded to resemble the parallel flutes that run along the shaft of an ionic column.

A more pared-back version of the Orb light does not feature a mirror

Elsewhere at the VDF products fair, Tom Dixon has released a massive, gold-hued brass table and a lighting collection with exposed LEDs and circuit boards with German brand Prolicht.

Richard Hutten shared a revamped version of a popular Lensvelt chair design while CC-Tapis showcased a monochrome rug collection by Philippe Malouin.

About VDF products fair: the VDF products fair offers an affordable launchpad for new products during Virtual Design Festival. For more details email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Study reveals the Pantone references of banknotes around the world

A new study into the design of money currently in circulation reveals a range of global trends, from the use of colour to which famous figures countries choose to represent them.

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Artist Linda Tegg transforms car park in Stockholm into biodiverse meadow for ArkDes

The next part of today's VDF collaboration with ArkDes features a video interview with Australian artist Linda Tegg, who has temporarily rewilded the car park outside Sweden's national centre for architecture and design.

Tegg has added thousands of plants to the asphalt of the Exercisplan car park for the installation, which is called Infield.

The name Infield comes from Sweden's infields – enclosed meadows that were often adjacent to farms – and is intended to attract myriad birds and insects to the site throughout its three-month duration.

The Infield installation will slowly transform the car park into a meadow

"To me, it had this sort of possibility of a relationship where, through the care of the environment, we can create more space for more species to live well," Tegg said.

"The installation will change over its three-month exhibition. Most of the plants are about two years old and day to day, the plant's growth is increasing. We are bringing them to exhibition within quite a narrow band of time, which is the Swedish spring."

Tegg's work has also been shown at Jil Sander as part of Milan Design Week

The artist's previous work has included filling the Jil Sander headquarters in Milan with "spontaneous plants" gathered from the city. In 2018, she was the co-creative director of Repair, the exhibition of the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, alongside Baracco + Wright Architects.

"Working with animals and plants, I've grown an awareness of the multitude of perspectives that can converge on any given place," Tegg explained.

"What might be a location where we park our car for an hour, that same space could be inhabited by hundreds of species of plants and animals."

ArkDes is intended as a place of meeting and debate about the future of Swedish architecture and design, especially with regard to Sweden’s national architecture and design policy.

Infield is named after the enclosed meadows found next to farms

"That policy, passed in the parliament nearly two years ago, aims to make Swedish cities more sustainable and equitable, through better architecture, art and design," ArkDes director Kieran Long said.

"Infield adds to this debate by asking questions of what the public spaces of the future might look like, if we work with nature instead of against it, making space for non-human species and sharing the city with them."

The installation will be on display at Exercisplan from 2 June to 27 September 2020.

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About ArkDes

ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, is a museum, a study centre and an arena for debate and discussion about the future of architecture, design and citizenship.

Its aim is to increase knowledge and cultivate debate around how architecture and design affect our lives as citizens, and to influence this change through debate, exhibitions, campaigns and research relating to Swedish and international architecture and design.

Partnership content with ArkDes.

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