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Holding on to their 80+% market share in the energy drink market is just one thing Red Bull prides themselves on. The company is all about promoting creativity and athleticism. In addition to sponsoring teams like MLS’s NY Red Bulls and their annual Flutag contest (where contestants try fly off a cliff, in home made vehicles), Red Bull also holds an annual Art of Can contest. The contest is simple; everyone can enter and you can mutate Red Bull cans in any way to form anything. Yep, it’s that general. If you are tired of paper origami, move onto a new medium and start hacking up some Red Bull cans. Enter here.

From Wired:

Renegade artist and head-hunter The Decapitator has been bombarding the streets of London with a signature style of graffiti tag – eerily removing the heads from major adverts around town, replacing them with ghastly, gory stumps.

Based on the images uploaded to his/her Flickr stream, “The East London Decapitator” as he/she has been dubbed, is largely striking mainstream advertisements, like this (my personal fav) High School Musical 2 poster.

The Decapitator’s culture jamming pieces are reminiscent of the style of popaganda artist Ron English, whose seminal work in billboard subvertising involved covering mainstream advertisements with his own art.

The mutation of art into other forms of art is always fascinating — even if the recipients aren’t always willing, as was in the case with New York-based graffiti defacer, known as the Splasher. Splasher became infamous this summer for tossing paint onto the work of well-known street artists like Shepard Fairy and Momo, citing controversial claims that their work was gentrified, banal and irreparably appropriated and commodified.

Here is another article from World Architecture News:

Imagine being able to completely throw open your apartment unit to convene with the elements. This kind of experience is a rarity especially in the urban trenches of Manhattan. But now for a price, and I‘m sure it’s a steep one, New Yorkers can have that out-of-doors living experience in a new condo building on Manhattan’s West side designed by Shigeru Ban. The Metal Shutter Houses is a striking and flexible 11-storey condo building under construction in the fashionable West Chelsea arts district next to the recently completed Frank Gehry designed ICA building and across the street from Jean Nouvel’s glass condo building. The building, which is Ban’s first residential project in the US and the architect’s take on the area’s industrial warehouse building and his continued exploration of the confluence of interior and exterior space, features nine duplex residences, each with a façade of motorized perforated metal shutters that allow the building to be completely opened or closed. Inside each unit, Ban has created an open “universal floor”- one vast and uninterrupted expanse of space- that can be partitioned into smaller, private areas with sliding glass doors. All units will have solid white oak flooring throughout, a double height great room, a flexible library/bedroom, a study, and outdoor space. Select units will have floor to ceiling white lacquer cabinetry designed by Ban. On the ground floor will be located a lobby and art gallery.

Fore more on Shigeru Ban Architects click here.

Sourced from World Architecture News is this brief article on the new Morphosis designed Cooper Union academic building:

A new academic building for Cooper Union designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis is under construction in the East Village neighbourhood of New York City. Designed largely to house Cooper Union’ s School of Engineering, the nine-storey building will also provide space for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of Architecture and the School of Art. The building is Morphosis’s first in New York. Mayne’s ethereal glass and steel building stands in contradistinction to the School’s stone Foundation building located across the street. Mayne’s concept for the building is a “stacked vertical piazza contained within a semi-transparent envelope that articulates the main spaces. The “vertical campus” is organized around an open and connected central atrium that rises the full height of the building and is spanned by sky bridges. On the fourth and eight floors is located the social hub of the building equipped with meeting rooms, seminar rooms, wireless hubs and computer drop in centers. The building’s primary public spaces will be located on the ground level. The 180,000 square foot building is expected to open in 2008. New York-based Gruzen Samton is Associate Architect for the project.

To read more on this new building and to view Cooper Unions build camera, click here.

There is a lot of art work to be found within the confines of the NYC Subway System…and apparently some of it is legal! You can take a gander at these pieces of art in “Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit.”

Here is the official book review:

Along the Way is a tour through New York’s underground museum of contemporary art, works commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the subway system. Vivid murals by Roy Lichtenstein and Romare Bearden convey the energy of Times Square while Robert Wilson’s Coney Island Baby captures the festive spirit of the city’s playland. Currently underway are a photographic installation by Mike and Doug Starn at the new Fulton Street Transit Center and an intricate skylight by James Carpenter at the South Ferry complex.

Initiated in 1985, this collection of site-specific public art now encompasses more than 150 pieces in mosaic, terra-cotta, bronze, faceted glass, and mixed media. The program takes its cue from the original mandate that the subways be “designed, constructed, and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance, as well as to their efficiency.” Arts for Transit is committed to the preservation and restoration of the original ornament of the system and to commissioning new works that will exemplify the principles of public art, relating directly to the places in which they are installed and the community around them.

Pick up your copy here.

There’s a romantic side to even the nerdiest of dorks out there. For those of you who want to have a special night with the one you love (even if it is a blow up doll), there is the Atari 2600 Candle Holder. The controller holds the candle where the joystick would have been. For around $100., this design is simple and elegant for the Louis Skolnick in all of us.