GOOD’s 30-Day Challenge for March: Art Every Day.

via GOOD (March 1, 2012):

“…we’re using March’s GOOD 30-Day Challenge to dare ourselves to make time for art in our lives. Below are 31 ideas for incorporating art into your month. If you’d like, you can try to do all 31 tasks in a week, or take your time and space them out. Either way, every time you’ve completed a task, come back to this page and check off the one you’ve done. At the end of the month, we’ll tally up all the actions to quantify how much more artistic everyone got in March.”

photo via Flickr user ignatius decky

The list of challenges is great, ranging from important basics (“Visit a museum or gallery” and “Send a friend a link to your favorite artist’s work”) to more disruptive actions (“Create something handmade and give it to someone” and “Create an artist’s workspace in your home”).

Share your progress on Twitter and learn about the progress of others with the #30DaysofGOOD hashtag.

March 1′s daily design idea is make time for art in your life.

Floating green space?

If the idea of a a park underneath the New York City streets is a bit too intangible for you, not to worry, there’s always the fully realized floating green spaces of Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno. While the project’s images are similarly mind-blowing, the experience of Saraceno’s ‘Cloud Cities’ installation is a bit easier to grasp as it’s currently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany.

photograph via bold magazine

While I haven’t been (and, sadly, won’t be) able to wander in and around the pieces myself, I do have a couple friends who were lucky enough to do so – and they say it really was as amazing as it looks.

conceptual drawing via designboom

The designboom article has great photos and sketches of the ‘Cloud Cities’ installation, as well as an interview with Saraceno while climbing in the piece itself. Some great mid-installation shots are also available on inhabitat (as is an article on an unrelated installation of nature-themed bubbles in Paris in 2010, in case you’re digging this kind of art).

February 27′s daily design idea is when your concept alone dazzles, make sure your execution lives up to the hype. Saraceno seems to have succeeded, on both counts.

Circle K’s: then and now.

I recently discovered (via Design Observer) a project called “Re-inhabited Circle K’s” by Arizona-born Paho Mann. The project is a collection of photographs that document the businesses that took over the space of southwestern Circle K’s, which were built from the 1950′s through the 1980′s but then abandoned for higher traffic locations.

When I searched “Circle K store” on Google Images just now, none of the buildings showed a resemblance to the form of the mid-20th century structures that Mann set out to document. And while I’m not sure I’ve ever even stepped foot in a Circle K store, I’m currently feeling something like nostalgia. The fact that my go-to technology doesn’t provide me with any images of these original stores – plus the fact that someone else has taken the time to seek out and photograph their sites – seems to make me value them. I mean, I am here writing about this project after all.

March 19′s daily design idea is can art provide a significant outlet for connecting with an unfamiliar place?

photographs by Paho Mann

More physical pixels.

Two more fun physical pixel projects I recently stumbled across, thanks to Quipsologies and SwissMiss:

Pixel Trash Can by Instructables member BrittLiv

Pixel Oven Mitts from perpetual kid

March 7′s daily design idea is mashing up your 2D and 3D worlds can be super fun.

P.S. You may have realized that both of these projects were discovered after March 7th – I hope that you can forgive the pre-dating! We’re playing a bit of catch up here at Daily Design Idea because of how extra packed the month has been.

Poor little trees.

In the spirit of avoiding climate change and protecting nature, here’s a graphic design by Steven Burke (discovered on Graphic Safari):

March 5′s daily design idea is the activist’s intention and the action’s context are key factors in determining whether or not an action is activist or not (in my opinion). But the presence of an audience might be just as important. In other words, if an activist action happens and no one is around to witness it, does it make an impact?

Two meters tall.

via Core77 (March 22, 2010):

“The visitor can according to his size choose the suitable shoe-hight [sic] in order to get 2 meter body height” – inges idee

level, 1997
by Hans Hemmert of inges idee (according to Core77)
Styrodur/Rubber/Velcro
variable dimensions
part of the “Personal Absurdities” show at Galerie Gebauer, Berlin

In her post, Lisa Smith of Core77 asks “what does it mean when we all share one height?” For those who are significantly shorter than two meters (approx 6’6″), I can imagine the new view causing a fairly strong shift in the perceived sizes of objects. I expect this sensation would be much more vivid for anyone who was already familiar with the gallery space. I’ll never forget when I first re-entered my childhood bathroom after growing about eight inches, because everything below counter height felt incredibly small to me. I don’t have a great guess for how this would effect those who are already close to 2m tall – what do you think?

February 22′s daily design idea is how does physical viewpoint affect the perception of relative objects?

“Demolition material, photograph, frame.”

via Design Squish (February 5, 2011):

“A picture of a house is taken before its demolition. A sofa is built from the building rubble of the house. The sofa is a portrait of the house in design and colours. The framed photo is hanging above the sofa” – Michael Sailstorfer

Herterchstrasse 119, 2001
by the spatial conceptualist Michael Sailstorfer
Demolition material, photograph, frame
68 inches x 6.6 feet x 37 inches

February 20′s daily design idea is demolition doesn’t only happen at the end of the life cycle.