The Bleigiessen

Today we had the chance to get up close and personal with one of Thomas Heatherwick's works--the Bleigiessen, a structure that spans all 8 stories of the atrium in the Wellcome Trust building (which is a biomedical research charity). Bleigiessen is actually a German custom on New Year's Eve where you melt small pieces of lead in a spoon and then pour it into a bucket of cold water. The hardened lead then creates a shape, whose figure is used to determine one's fortune for the next year. So, for example, if it looks like a bird, then you will have good luck coming. Apparently Heatherwick performed experiments with various materials in this same process, and after 400 tries he finally found the perfect shape that was created from pouring casting metal into spinning water to create this long spiral that this sculpture is shaped after. Heatherwick has a tendency to take everyday objects and blow them up into huge sculptures, and this is no different. The original bit of metal was actually only 20mm long, and he created a sculpture to span all 8 stories of this building. I think it's quite impressive. He used MRI scanning to examine the shape of the tiny metal cast and broke it down into layers so that he could compose this piece out of the 27,000 steel wires and 142,000 glass beads that now make up the sculpture. Our tour guide told us that each wire has from 1 to 39 beads (if I remember correctly) on it, and the inside of the sculpture is hollow, but it already weighs 15 tonnes as it is. I just think it's so amazing how Heatherwick even conceived the idea of such a sculpture and how he uses just wires and glass spheres to create this immense work of art. It's beautiful.

view from the ground floor up

one of the 142,000 glass beads

a dimple in the structure

look at all those wires and beads... awesome

A Quick Update

Last Saturday, we went on a trip organized by NYUL to go visit Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is one of the Queen's many castles and is actually the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. The castle is beautiful inside and out, and even though we technically weren't allowed to take pictures inside, we all snuck some with our sneaky snapping skills. Some photos:

St. George's Hall, a large hall with shields painted all over the ceiling

outside the castle in the garden

group photo

Queen Mary's Dolls' House.. apparently even the toilets in this huge dollhouse work

This past Tuesday, Charine and I had to head to London's City Hall near the Tower Bridge to meet with our class to visit the Fashion Textile Museum and the Design Museum. Unfortunately, we left our dorm a tad bit late and ended up not meeting with our class for the first half of the visit. We finally met them at the Design Museum and there were some pretty cool pieces in their, though apparently one of the interactive works was not on exhibition that day, which is quite unfortunate.

Designs of the Year 2011

an interesting array of LED panels

that fold up in reaction to motion

charine rolling around on an interesting-looking chair

And finally, yesterday's weather was pretty nice as well, around high 50's, so Charine, Lynn and I decided to pay a visit to J+A Cafe, a quaint little restaurant that one of our suitemates raves about. I have to say, I was not crazy about the Irish soda bread they had (personally, I like the ones that my mom used to buy from the supermarket better), but the soup I ordered was pretty good and the cafe was cute, so no complaints.

cute, huh?

my latte

chicken soup with vegetables

buttered Irish soda bread

After our little lunch, Charine headed over to Oxford Circus for some shopping and Lynn and I decided to walk around a bit and enjoy the nice weather. We went to Bunhill Fields and there was a burial grounds, in which we saw William Blake's grave, among some other peoples' graves whose names sounded a bit familiar... kind of cool.

William Blake, the poet/painter

the cupcakes Lynn and I got from J+A

On the way back to the dorm, Lynn and I decided to get out at King's Cross Station to find the 9 3/4 platform from Harry Potter. Unfortunately, they had a lot of construction going on and all of the walls were lined with construction panels, so they must have created a temporary fake brick wall and attached the cart to this makeshift "platform." Oh well, I'm not that big of a Harry Potter fan anyway...

Overall, it was a great day and I'll have to create another post for my adventure today!