Toplolly

Recycled Island

Ramon Knoester — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:43:06 +0000

A floating city of half a million people on a vast plastic island. Recycled Island is a plan to clean up plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean, and provide 10,000 square kilometres of sustainable living space in the process. Solar and wave energy would provide power for islanders while sustainable fishing and agriculture could provide their food.

The Berg

Jakob Tigges — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:56:06 +0000

German architect Jakob Tigges explores the outskirts of megalomania with his plan to construct a 1000-meter tall mountain at the site of the recently closed Tempelhof airport in Berlin. If realized, ‘The Berg’ would be the largest man-made icon. A tourist attraction unlike any other.

Paint Attack

Anonymous — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:59:36 +0000

On Sunday, 25 April 2010, there was a 'Paint Attack' on the Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin. Each of the four pedestrian crossings of the junction had been smeared with paint (bright red, yellow, blue and purple). The rest of the work was consequently done by bikes, cars and pedestrians.

Cathedral

Justo Gallego — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:42:40 +0000

For the first 40 years no one seemed to notice the man collecting bricks. Almost invisibly, the scrap material mounted on a patch of land 20 km outside Madrid — a pile of crooked bricks, a tangle of steel wire — until, eventually, something remarkable began to take form. Justo Gallego (85) was building a cathedral. And he was building it by himself.

Stalactite Pipe Organ

Leland W. Sprinkle — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:09:57 +0000

After visiting the caverns with his son and experiencing the organ-like sounds of a stalactite being tapped, Mr. Sprinkle came up with a complex plan for a stalactite-tapping instrument: a lithophone. It took 36 years of research, design and experimentation to bring his dream to its present state of perfection.

Click here to read more about the Organ.

Holland’s National Artwork

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:53:54 +0000

I just wonder what painting should be used to copy? Maybe ‘the girl with the pearl earring’ by Vermeer.

Train

Jeff Koons — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:38:24 +0000

The work, called Train, has been commissioned from Koons by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It is based on a 1943 Baldwin steam engine built at a plant in Pennsylvania. The engine will be 20m long, hanging from the much taller, red and yellow crane. It is expected to be finished in 2011.

The total cost of making the steel and aluminium work, which will produce its own steam and whose wheels will turn, will be an estimated £18m. This beats the £13.2m cost of the gems and platinum in the Damien Hirst sculpture For the Love of God.

Incredible Shrinking Museum

Filip Noterdaeme — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:12:22 +0000

I envision this museum in the shape of a massive block of glycerin soap. Visitors would be invited to carve their way into the structure, making it accessible through gradual excavation. The excavated chunks of soap would become the museum’s only artifacts and be free for the taking. Thus, the museum would be disseminated among its visitors until it is used up. I call this museum the Incredible Shrinking Museum.

Man on a Wire

Philippe Petit — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:36:16 +0000

Philippe Petit was a teenager in Paris browsing magazines in a dentist's office when he saw a rendering of the (then-unbuilt) World Trade Center in New York. He was electrified. To an aspiring tightrope walker, the idea of two 110-storey towers, side by side, suggested only one thing. In 1974 he made it happen.

Glass Airplane

Elske Revelman de Vries and Kroko Schilte — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:26:00 +0000

Sending it on a maiden voyage it will crash somewhere quite soon, because glass is too heavy and key parts are guaranteed to break off. When it crashes it becomes a scattered sculpture of glass debris at a random location.

Swan turns Crocodile

Kroko Schilte — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:33:24 +0000

Located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this bridge is popularly referred to as 'the swan' because of its shape and colour. But with a few moderations, traffic could be driving through the mouth of a crocodile instead.

The Biggest Drawing in the World

Erik Nordenankar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:37:25 +0000

The biggest drawing in the world is to be created by GPS tracking & the help of express delivery company DHL. The 'pen' is a briefcase containing a GPS device, which is to be sent around the world. The path the briefcase takes around the globe becomes the strokes of the drawing. The giant strokes pass through 6 continents & 62 countries, becoming 110,664km long.

The Biggest Puzzle of the World

Paul Swagerman — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:37:28 +0000

Roden Crater

James Turrell — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:27:09 +0000

Roden Crater is an extinct volcano crater near Flagstaff, Arizona (U.S.). Artist James Turrell purchased the 400.000 year old, 3km wide crater in 1979 and has been transforming it into into a massive naked-eye observatory, designed specifically for the viewing of celestial phenomena. Mr. Turrell has moved tons of earth to carve out different kinds of viewing chambers and tunnels — making his art of light, sky and astronomical events. Writers have compared it to Stonehenge and the Mexican pyramids. He plans to open the crater for public viewing in 2011.

Ocean Landmark

Betty Beaumont — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:26:37 +0000

There are no images of the now evolved artwork. Underwater photography is not useful in imaging because of the limited visibility of the underwater site.

Click here for more information about this work.

Balloon Tattoo

Maurits Hertzberger — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:24:56 +0000

Before a woman gets pregnant, surprise her with a Balloon Tattoo. Put a compact image on her belly, which will grow and become more and more discernable as the pregnancy progresses.

The Headington Shark

John Buckley and Bill Heine — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:18:30 +0000

In 1986, house owner Bill Heine and sculptor John Buckley put a 25ft fibreglass shark through the roof of his house in Headington, Oxford. It was erected by Mr Heine without applying for any permits. Oxford City Council tried to get rid of the shark on the grounds that the structure was unsafe – but has not succeeded.

The Czech Dream

Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:16:06 +0000

Film makers Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak invented a fake supermarket (branded “Ceský Sen”), and created a massive advertising campaign around it. The supermarket was presented as having unprecented scale and low prices. They succeeded in attracting over a thousand shoppers to an empty field for their “grand opening” on May 31, 2003. What looked like a huge building from a distance was actually only a canvas facade backed by scaffolding.

Click here for more information about the imaginary Czech Dream Supermarket.

Turning the Place Over

Richard Wilson — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:14:45 +0000

The construction programme started in February 2007 and involved the careful deconstruction of the façade across three floors of the building, which was then reconstructed and fixed to the enormous pivot installed at the heart of the building. Disturbing and disorientating from a distance, from close-up passers-by have a thrilling experience as the building rotates above them.

Click here for a YouTube film of the piece in action.

Floating Boeing

Melle Smets — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:07:34 +0000

A replica of a Boeing 747 made out of special foil, filled with helium, fixed at a set position over a residential area. Whereas this work seems easy to make, it in fact requires tens of thousands of euros per week worth of gas to keep it up in the air.

Bird Action Painting

Maurits Hertzberger — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:04:00 +0000

On the Galapagos Islands (as well as in other places where millions of sea birds live and breed) birds like the blue footed booby and the albatros shit all over the rocks. They shit so much, in fact, that the rocks are completely painted white with bird shit. By feeding these birds colorants for a period of time, they will paint the rocks which they live on in all colors of the rainbow instead of just plain white.

This Piece Need Not Be Built

Lawrence Wiener — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:52:37 +0000

In 1968 Wiener created a work for an outdoor exhibition at an American university. He made a series of stakes set in the ground at regular intervals to form a rectangle – twine strung from stake to stake to demark a grid. When students cut down the twine because it hampered their access across the campus lawn, Weiner realized that his piece could have been even less obtrusive: viewers could have experienced the same effect simply by reading a verbal description of the work.

His explication for this, first published in 1968 and still relevant today, revolutionized the very definition of what constitutes an artwork: “(1) The artist may construct the piece. (2) The piece may be fabricated. (3) The piece need not be built”.

Meaning a work can be physically realized, but can also be merely spelled out on a museum wall, be read on a website or heard if uttered aloud.

Moving House

John Körmeling — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:38:57 +0000

Click here for more information about this work (in Dutch) and here for a YouTube film.

Lightbeam on Italian Mountain Village

Village of Viganella — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:13:21 +0000

However, the sun-deprived village has come up with a way to catch some rays – by installing a giant mirror. The mirror, a 8 by 5 meter sheet of steel, was placed on a nearby peak to reflect sunlight onto the town’s main square below. The computer-operated mirror will now be constantly following the sun’s path.

Click here for a YouTube film about the mirror in Viganella.

Rabbit

Gelitin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:42:03 +0000

In the hills near the village of Artesina (Piemont, Italy) lies this vast pink rabbit. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbitÌs body. Apparently it took a women’s knitting club in Vienna almost 5 years to knit the rabbit’s body.

Hole in the Cloud

John Körmeling — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:41:12 +0000

Holland is between two planes: Holland is on the ground and under a leaking roof of clouds. Holland has a lowered ceiling. I make a hole in this roof and let the sun shine in - the most beautiful spot in Holland.

Intersection Vortex

Mamabart — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:40:13 +0000

Four trucks drive towards an intersection at top speed at exactly the same time; perfectly choreographed to miss eachother only by inches. The trucks don't crash into eachother, nor do they hit the breaks. Instead they cross eachother's paths so closely and with such speed that a vacuum briefly exists in their midst: a small vortex in between the four trucks.