Vertical Expectations - The Shard of Glass

[Video - Vertical Expectations by Simolab-Creative AV on Vimeo]

Expected to reach completion in 2012 the architect Renzo Piano's glass Shard at London Bridge will stand unrivalled on London's skyline at an imposing height 1,017 ft or 310 m. By that time it will be the tallest building not only in the UK, but also in the whole of the European Union.

In this brilliant new film Simona Piantieri of Simolab combines a visual document of its construction with a balanced cross section of expectation and critical opinion concerning the aspirations, architectural or otherwise, that seek expression through the construction of this improbable edifice.

So ask yourself again...do Crystal Palaces Cast No Shadows?

Great work!

Urban Exploration - Going Native?

[Video - Trespass by Bradley L. Garrett on Vimeo]

Last summer Bradley from Place Hacking kindly agreed to join Urban Orienteer and others in the group exhibition Transparency and the City: Public Spaces or Forgotten Places? where he displayed his film Urban Explorers: Quests for Myth, Mystery and Meaning as part of his own Urbex crews installation. Having completed his ethnographic research he's escaped the pack for a while and gone Gonzo out West while he works out the story of their adventures. In his absence he's left us a brilliant new film on the innocent joy of trespass. No longer speaking to the intellect, it seems we are to be lured by other means...

It seems I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...

[Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness]

...slowly going native?