Many countries in the Middle East are prone to powerful earthquakes – including Iran and Turkey, and unsophisticated school furniture puts students at particular risk when they occur during the day.

The Earthquake Proof Table mitigates this risk. Tested in a variety of situations, it can withstand the crash of a 1,000kg steel and concrete block, and also creates a passageway for students to escape when the rest of the building has collapsed around them.

After making its debut in Milan, the table was met with widespread acclaim. So much so that New York’s MoMA have added it to their permanent design collection – an enormous honor for the Bezalel Academy duo responsible for the design.

The table was part of the academy’s recently completed tour called Bezalel on Tour, during  which 100 objects and 2D animation and video installations were exhibited at important venues throughout the United States.

Beginning in 2012 at the Maryland Institute College of Arts, the exhibition traveled to Sotheby’s in Chicago, the Maltz Museum for Jewish Heritage in Cleveland, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts and Brown RISD Hillel in Providence, RI.

Curated by the head of Bezalel’s department of Ceramics and Glass Design, Muli Ben Sasson the exhibition  covered the best designs from Bezalel’s eight undergraduate departments: fine art, photography, fashion & jewelry, industrial design, visual communications, architecture, screen based arts, ceramics & glass, and from Bezalel’s graduate departments in fine art, design and urban design.

“This traveling exhibition offers viewers a unique sense of Bezalel’s flourishing artistic and professional practices, as well as an exceptionally creative, colorful, and talented side of Israel,” said Professor Eva Illouz, President of Bezalel.

“The opportunity to present Bezalel on Tour in the U.S., making New York its final stop during NYCxDesign, places the works in a global context while also emphasizing Bezalel’s commitment to quality and innovation.”

Other notable Bezalel Academy alumni featured on the tour included Ron Gilad and Ron Arad, whose bicycle wheels will never go flat.

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Called “Tearing the Earth,” their design for a temporary installation at Istanbul Modern for the first Young Architects Program involves ripping up the courtyard adjacent to the museum, removing the earth, and creating a suspended “flying carpet” made of plastic pollution swept up by the sea. One of five finalists, ONZ Architects made a curious video of their design process and you can watch it after the jump.

Like the air-scrubbing curiosity called Wendy that we saw while in Abu Dhabi recently, the YAP Istanbul Modern project is a temporary installation that will become a summer events venue for urbanites.

Carried out by Istanbul Modern in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) / MoMA PS1, the program is co-sponsored by Polimeks and VitrA.

The winning design proposal, Sky Spotting Stop, will be built in June, while each of the finalist designs will be exhibited throughout the summer at  Istanbul Modern, MoMA PS1, MAXXI, and CONSTRUCTO. Including one of our personal favorites “Tearing Ground.”

Evidenced by such seminal works as Cradle to Cradle and a host of subsequent books and projects, the design community is acutely aware of the problem of waste and pollution. And design plays a critical role in getting regular people to see their world differently.

Certainly ONZ Architects have taken up the baton with their recycled plastic carpet, which would have provided not only a sun screen for visitors to Istanbul Modern, but also a portal to our consumption behavior.

In their design brief, they noted that people usually avoid what they don’t want to see. Indeed, the issue of plastic pollution in all of our oceans is so widespread and distressing, it seems the entire globe is pretending that is not the case.

“We believe we can only change this situation by stopping people to forget the problem, by constantly reminding them, what’s going on under their feet,” the team wrote.

“What is rubbish becomes value. In a way, the project will be a reflection of what is discarded into the sea, what the city produces as waste and all that waste that is beyond the recycling system,” they continued.

While this project did not take first prize, we think it is important to consider the valuable message this bright young team of Turkish architects is attempting to convey.

:: Arch Daily

The post Flying Carpet of Sea Plastic Among YAP Istanbul Modern Finalists appeared first on Green Prophet.