Ricardas Blazukas » printing

Portfolio Catalogues

Ricardas — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:06:41 +0000

Here’s the design for my portfolio catalogues for the midyear review submission at Westminster University Architecture School in London.

Installation / Time Lapse Video

Ricardas — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 19:03:53 +0000

I have done a number of projects on various scales during the last month. This one here is the biggest one of them – an installation.

Or watch in better quality on VIMEO

This might seem like just a graffiti / painting on a set of plinths, but there is more behind it. The idea I am fascinated about the most is – the provocation of students. This installation was done at university, on all plinths of our MArch Architecture studio a week before our interim crits.

Taking all the plinths might seem rude at first, but architecture is about behaviour change and interaction between a space and its users, which is what this installation did. The painting on the plinths gave them a sense of untouchability (or at least I hoped it will). I was curious what will happen with a crit day approaching. Will students start to take the plinths one by one? They belong to them as much as they belong to me.

I wanted to see a progressive defragmentation of this painting, but what I’ve discovered instead, not even 24hours after the installation was made – plinths composed randomly, looking somewhat similar to Picasso’s paintings. Brilliant – a number of coursemates decided to re-organize them.

I loved the idea of chance in this installation – stacking the plinths randomly and then painting a symbol on them left me wondering how will each plinth look like. The random sizes of plinths stacked together was also a way of escaping a typical grid. It also has an effective three-dimensional quality, due to lengths of plinths they can be spaced in a random way, again creating something completely different and completely by chance.

The crits went great too, as my tutor Sean Griffiths, Co-Founter of FAT said: “Ricardas, you have had the best presense during the crits today”, meaning that all students were presenting their models on plinths with a piece of my painted symbol.

I was hoping that after the crits I will collect them and stack them in a random way, but there was no need for that, as like I mentioned previously, it happened sooner than I expected thanks to my coursemates.

The painted symbol is from my own created alphabet, which you can check out here and download as a font here.

I have also made a small model of this installation, which will appear on the blog soon.

Above you will find a time-lapse video of the installation making process, and at the bottom a photo gallery of the installation, as well as a photo gallery of plinths being used in the studio by other students to display their work.

My I Ching T Shirt

Ricardas — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:39:06 +0000

I made myself an I Ching t-shirt for an interim crit that I had yesterday.

This year I’ve been working on a lot of stuff involving chance together with guys at DS15. I Ching is our core material that we base our studies on. Since the beginning of the year I loved the idea of assigning colour to hexagrams of I Ching. The hexagrams have a very strong graphic aesthetic and look brilliant on a tee. Making this for my crit was a great way to level up the presentation.

BUY?

I had some requests from people wanting to buy one like this, so I might get to it and make more soon. If you would love to invest in one, then give me a shout through a contact form below (inc. tee size) and I’ll keep you updated!

Postcards from Uni Exhibition

Ricardas — Sat, 27 Jul 2013 08:42:57 +0000

DS15 postcards from exhibition were gone quickly, but I kept a couple to myself.

At the back of each postcard is a blurb about my uni project.

My new ‘baby’

Ricardas — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:10:27 +0000

I always wanted to have a large format printer, but every time I really thought of getting one it felt like its a bollocks idea… But now as I got one, its perfect!

Epson Stylus Pro 3880 is a flawless quality printer, and is definitely a wise investment for an architecture student, which will pay off in a year or two.

The cheapest price I found for a high quality a2 print in central london is 9£ at HOBBS, which is much lower than the average, but still hits the wallet properly..
…And that time during a crit, when you are told to do more work on the drawings making you realize that you’ve wasted so much £££… ergh.
You just need your own printer!
And on top of that places like hobbs will not accept your own paper.
And to top that – owning a printer means printing for fellow coursemates for £££.

Happy times!