Design Idol | Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor is an English sculptor who creates objects that develop into artificial coral reefs making his pieces part art, part marine conservation, and part tool for environment awareness and social change.

With an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor grew up in Europe and in Asia where he spent formative years exploring the coral reefs of Malaysia. Taylor earned his Honours BA degree in Sculpture in 1998 from the London Institute of Arts. As a credentialed scuba diving instructor, underwater photographer, underwater naturalist, and conservation enthusiast, Taylor has the unique ability to create works of art that provide habitat for sensitive ocean corals and marine life.

In 2006, Taylor created the world’s first underwater sculpture park off the coast of Grenada in the West Indies which is now one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World according to National Geographic. In addition, the park was instrumental in the creation of a National Marine Protected Area. In 2009 he completed the worlds largest underwater sculpture museum, MUSA, situated off the coast of Cancun and the western coast of Isla Mujeres near Cancun, Mexico.

Taylor's most recent completed work, “Ocean Atlas” was installed in 2014 in the Bahamas. At five meters in height and weighing over 60 tons, "Ocean Atlas" is the largest underwater sculpture in the world. He is currently working in the Canary Islands on a new underwater museum for the Atlantic Ocean.

Taylor was added to our PISA List in 2014.

Tree Chic

São Paulo based artist and furniture designer Hugo França turns ancient trees into modern marvels. Working with naturally-felled reclaimed wood from the Trancoso, Bahia, area of Brazil, França partners with Pataxo Indians and other local experts to find the best pieces of pequi and imbuia to create his artistic and functional objects. In the US, França's work can be found at R 20th Century in Manhattan.

E-waste Sculpted Seating

Chilean graphic designer and artist Rodrigo Alonso molds epoxy around electronic waste to create chic functional sculpture. This particular installation is titled N+ew (No More Electronic Waste) and it is a striking way to sequester some of that e-waste.

The artist produces the stools in limited editions and special orders can be personalized, if you have some old electronics you would like to memorialize in sculpture.  BP

Kinetic Sculpture of Ocean Waves

An installation of the tele-present water series by David Bowen was exhibited recently in Poland's Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu as part of the 2011 WRO Biennale. The installation translates real-time wave data from a NOAA buoy in the Pacific Ocean into the undulations of this mechanical grid sculpture in the video below. It is amazing.

This sculpture gives us a glimpse into the dynamics of ocean waves in a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean that we would never otherwise see.

Bowen is an American artist who works in kinetic sculpture, creating mechanical devices that interact with natural processes and systems. His fascination with machines is evident in the intricate design of his sculptures and the integration of real-time field data makes those in Bowen's tele-present water series even more compelling as they are mechanical representations of physical phenomena.  BP