Architects’ Journal: Radical rooms exhibition at the RIBA: power relations in architectural plans
Charles Holland Architects and artist Di Mainstone have created an immersive audio-visual exhibition at the RIBA. Marianna Janowicz pays a visit Radical Rooms: Power of the Plan is the latest public exhibition at 66 Portland Place, created by Charles Holland Architects and artist Di Mainstone. The show focuses on three British domestic buildings as a jumping-off point from which to consider the power relations in architectural plans.
Designboom: Rradical Rooms: Power of the Plan opens at RIBA gallery in london
‘Radical Rooms: Power of the Plan’ is RIBA’s latest exhibition, created through a special partnership between architect Charles Holland and visual artist Di Mainstone. The show is anchored in three domestic buildings from the 16th, 18th, and 20th centuries — Hardwick Hall, A la Ronde, and the Hopkins House — each one highlighting the profound role of women in their development and design, an influence that has persistently been left out of the history of architecture.
Stir World: Radical Rooms at RIBA London explores the power structures of the domestic plan
Developed in close collaboration between theUK-based practice Charles Holland Architects and visual artist and filmmaker Di Mainstone, one gets a closer peek into the lives of Elizabeth Shrewsbury (Hardwick Hall, 1590-1597), Jane and Mary Parminter (A La Ronde, 1798) and Patty Hopkins (Hopkins House, 1976), the chief custodians of the three projects.
Wallpaper Magazine: Last chance to see power, women and architectural drawings at RIBA’s ‘Radical Rooms’
‘Radical Rooms: Power of the plan’ opened at the RIBA in London in May, discussing the role of power and women in architecture through history, in particular in the development of residential floorplans; and now the show has been extended, reopening for a limited period between 5 – 24 September
The Observer: Radical Rooms: Power of the Plan review – the house that Bess built.
Rowan Moore reviews Radical Rooms for The Observer on 1 May 2022. “Radical Rooms is an ambitious project in a small space, dense in creation and invention…It offers a new and much-needed way of looking at buildings of the past.“
Financial Times: The secret history of the women designers behind cherished buildings
Architect Charles Holland and artist Di Mainstone have created an eccentric but terrific little exhibition at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba). Through an exploration of architectural drawings in the Riba’s superb collection, Holland guides an alternative route through a more marginalised architecture, pointing to the directions the industry might have taken if it had allowed, or at least appreciated, a more prominent role for women in design.
RIBA Journal: Radical Rooms gives an alternative view of the history of domestic architecture
An immersive installation in the RIBA Architecture Gallery at Portland Place in London evokes the extraordinary homes of four women, exploring the power games at play in plans. Radical Rooms is an exhibition about architecture and power. This relationship is explored through the seemingly ordinary world of houses and domestic plans that structure family life. Historically, this involved strict hierarchies and separation by class, gender, age and occupation.
Evening Standard: Suspend disbelief and listen to Tower Bridge sing
Have you ever heard Tower Bridge sing? I have, when over a year ago I was commissioned to make Tower Bridge sing in celebration of its 125th anniversary by creating a film to interpret the sounds of the historic crossing. Making music with suspension bridges has been an obsession of mine ever since I lived in New York City. Inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, I wondered if I could develop a giant musical instrument that would enable pedestrians to play the vibrations travelling through the structure.
Design Exchange: Time Bascule a Film by Di Mainstone
2020 has given us all reason to stop and take stock, and beneath the obvious crises the year has brought to the fore conversations around the Climate Emergency, and how memories are recorded, stored, and recalled. Both of these subjects are tackled in a new work from artist and filmmaker Di Mainstone. The commission was originally created to mark the 125th Anniversary of Tower Bridge, and nods to Mainstone’s “Human Harp” project, in which she played New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge and others like industrial-strength harps.
Design Curial: ARTIST DI MAINSTONE MAKES TOWER BRIDGE ‘SING’
We speak to artist, designer and filmmaker Di Mainstone about her newest, exciting art commission, which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the iconic Tower Bridge. Celebrating its 125th anniversary, this year Tower Bridge is launching its latest art commission, working with internationally renowned artist and filmmaker, Di Mainstone. To mark the landmark anniversary, Mainstone has written and directed a film that reimagines the iconic bridge as a giant musical instrument.
Design Week: Soundpit, by Di Mainstone at Southbank Centre
Artist Di Mainstone has designed an interactive and multi-sensory installation at London’s Southbank Centre, which looks to delight adult and children alike and encourage them to explore sound, vision and touch. Soundpit is made of a giant sandpit, complemented by light displays, animated graphics and music, which change as visitors run their hands through the sand.
Woman’s Hour: Artist Di Mainstone speaks to Jenni Murray about Wonderloopers
Have you ever heard a bridge sing? The artist Di Mainstone has a thing about listening to bridges, she’s done projects on Brooklyn Bridge and Clifton Suspension Bridge before. Now she’s created fourteen ‘Wonderloopers’ which are unique musical instruments made from leftover building materials from the new Northern Spire bridge in Sunderland. They’ll be sprouting on the bridge on 16th September and Di joins Jenni to explain her musical portals and the inspiration for them.
WIRED: Di Mainstone WIRED Innovation Fellow
Di was picked to be one of twelve WIRED Innovation Fellows from around the globe. The fellows came from a range of backgrounds such as bionic arm builder Samantha Payne Singer and multi-instrumentalist Gingger Shankar Sun storm scientist Miho Janvier AR and VR pioneer Ed Barton Afghan educator Roya Mahboob and pashmina goat farmer Babar Afzal. The fellows all spoke at the WIRED conference in London
Sennheiser: Di Mainstone a Global Ambassador for Sennheiser’s Momentum Campaign
Sennheiser together with Spotify is telling the stories of a hugely diverse yet 100% inspirational group of 100 people following their journeys and learning more about their passion their lives and their own personal MOMENTUM. They’re people with a passion and connection to sound that has taken form in many different ways. People who go further than others. People who know what others don‘t know. People who do things that haven‘t been done before. People who push the world ahead. People with MOMENTUM. This spirit this commitment to the core to create something that is special unique and that has uncompromised authenticity and substance is what Sennheiser seeks to celebrate and discover over the course of the MOMENTUM project.
New York Times: The Far Side
In 2009, the London artist Di Mainstone had a residency at Eyebeam, a New York-based organization focused on technology and the arts. One afternoon on the Brooklyn Bridge, Mainstone became fascinated by the sounds: the footsteps on the wooden planks of the walkway, the whizzing cars, the laughter and cacophony of languages.
New Yorker: Turning Bridges into Music
Several months ago, Di Mainstone, a British artist, filmed a woman walking onto the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which stretches more than seven hundred feet across the Avon Gorge in Bristol, England. The woman wore a cream faux-leather cape, sewn late the night before, and she carried a blue bag on the end of a long pole.
Dezeen: Di Mainstone’s Human Harp creates music from suspension bridges
London artist Di Mainstone is developing an electronic instrument that enables performers to make music from the subtle vibrations of suspension bridge cables. “I would regularly go to Brooklyn Bridge [in New York] and it struck me that there’s a comparison between a suspension bridge and a harp,” said Mainstone, who presented the project at this week’s Wearable Futures conference in London.
CBC Radio: Human Harp will change the way you look at bridges
What do you see when you look at suspension bridges? Di Mainstone sees massive musical instruments — and opportunities for connection. The sound installation artist joins Shad to discuss The Human Harp project, which invites “movitians” to create haunting music by plucking the “chords” of bridges around the world.
The Observer: Water music: how bridges can become instruments
Think of a stringed instrument and you may conjure up a cello, or perhaps a ukulele, but it’s unlikely that a steel suspension bridge would spring to mind. Yet for Di Mainstone, artist in residence at Queen Mary University of London, the Brooklyn Bridge offered a tantalising challenge.
BBC News: Plan to play Scottish bridge ‘songs’ using Human Harp
An instrument that allows its user to hear and play a road bridge’s “song” could be brought to Scotland. Called the Human Harp, it was clipped to New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge in 2013 as part of celebrations marking the crossing’s 130th anniversary. Artist Di Mainstone, whose team includes Edinburgh industrial designer David Ross, has plans for a tour of the UK, Europe and the USA.
New Scientist: Human harp makes music by playing the Brooklyn Bridge
Daredevils are not the only ones using bridges for fun: musicians are getting in on the act too. Di Mainstone and her team at Queen Mary University of London are attaching people clad in a special body suit to architectural structures with strings that tap into a building’s vibrations and can be played like an electronic harp.
Designboom: human harp uses suspension bridge cables to make music
London-based artist di mainstone observed an uncanny relationship between the architecture of a suspension bridge and the framework of a harp. synthesizing the musical and structural components, she has realized the ‘human harp‘, a clip-on prosthetic interfaced with sound mechanics, that magnetically attaches to urban structures, enabling dancers and pedestrians to ‘play the bridge’.
Vice: Di Mainstone’s Human Harp
Most of us are familiar with the concept of wearable technology, but how about the concept of a wearable harp? This is the idea behind sound artist Di Mainstone’s Human Harp—Mainstone’s work involves creating sculptural instruments that attach to the human body and use movement to produce sound.
Design Week: Human Harp by Di Mainstone
A team led by Queen Mary University artist in residence Di Mainstone has turned the Clifton Suspension Bridge into a harp by harnessing the low frequency vibrations of its suspension rods. ‘Bridge bows’ developed at Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio with engineers from Arup and students from the University of the West of England have made the stunt possible.
Gothamist: Drink Hudson River Water At Interactive Science Gallery Art Show
Di Mainstone’s “Hydrocordion” invites visitors to become squeezicians and compose soundscapes through the manipulation of air and water. The instrument operates much like a church organ, releasing sound through a series of air and water tubes pumped in succession.
