Be Open think tank

Attenion! Please be aware that fictitious offers of employment and partnership may be circulated via email or social media by scammers impersonating the founder or other members of BE OPEN's team. Please, note that our founder does not make direct offers on behalf of the foundation, and only emails coming from the @beopenfuture.com domain may be considered as sent by BEOPEN. In case of any doubt or concern, please verify the contents of such emails by forwarding them to press@beopenfuture.com Image credits: Satender Kumar

#BeOpenNEWS BE OPEN Art is happy to announce that this year’s last Artist of the Month who has gained the majority of votes by the visitors of art.beopenfuture.com is Abdias Ngateu, multidisciplinary artist based in Cameroon. Aiming to showcase emerging talents, every month we invite people passionate with art to choose the best artist among those exhibited in our online gallery. Congratulations to Abdias Ngateu who has been voted the Artist of the Month this December! We also take the opportunity to applaud all the featured artists and thank everyone who voted.

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones! We wish you a joyful year full of beauty, creativity and positivity, personal and professional accomplishments! See you next year! Sincerely yours, BE OPEN Team Photo credits: Thomas Jackson

#BeOpenARCH British designer Es Devlin has created Five Echoes, a labyrinth-like installation made up of five concentric circuits to mark the 100th anniversary of the luxury brand Chanel's No.5 perfume. Located in a concrete park in Miami Design District, the structure is formed of a series of symmetrical winding ramps and maze-like passages with a raised circular platform at its centre. The installation is surrounded by 2,000 plants and trees of various shapes and sizes. Credits: esdevlin.com

#BeOpenART Eating your way through the festive season? Take a break and join our new open call #BEOPENFoodIdentity dedicated to promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular focuses on SDG2: Zero Hunger. Under the umbrella of zero hunger, SDG2 is not only about ending hunger, but also achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture all over the globe. What we eat is an expression of who we are and where we come from. Share your vision of how food reflects your identity with the global community by joining our #BEOPENFoodIdentity Instagram open call and be the one to receive a €300 prize. Details beopensocial.com Photo credits: Sebastien and Julien Michel

#BeOpenART Brooklyn-based artist Stephanie Shih makes dumplings out of porcelain as a way to reconnect with her Taiwanese-American roots. Shih confesses she remembers making pork-filled dumplings with her family as a child, which conjured a powerful mental image to her, as she sensed how important the food was for them. According to the artist, her painted ceramic sculptures examine the relationship between consumerism, cultural interchange, and identity in immigrant communities. Share your vision of how food reflects your identity with the global community by joining our #BEOPENFoodIdentity Instagram open call dedicated to promoting the SDG2: Zero Hunger for a chance to receive a €300 prize. More details at beopensocial.com

#BeOpenNEWS The end of the year is usually a moment dedicated to taking stock of the past months. It’s the time for introspection, reminiscing and evaluating our past year’s lessons and achievements. What will you remember 2021 by? How would you sum up your year in one image or video? We invite you to sit back and reflect on the year about to finish, and share the most heart-warming or outstanding, remarkable moment with the world by joining our new #BeOpenMy2021 Instagram open call. The entries will close January 30, 2021. BE OPEN Community members will then select the winning post from a shortlist of submissions with the highest number of likes by Instagram users. The winner will receive a €300 prize.

#BeOpenARCH Spanning 88,000 sqm, Kaohsiung Pop Music Center in Southern Taiwan by architect Manuel Monteserín is made up of four architectural ecosystems, each representing a thematic area: the great wave, whales, dolphins, corals, all of which are connected by a series of parks and walking paths. The architects aimed to create new public spaces that work regardless of whether or not there are concerts and that are part of the daily life of the inhabitants of the city. The project consists of an outdoor auditorium for 12,000 people, a concert hall for 3,500 people, six live houses, five restaurants connected by a walkway, two towers with an office program, a museum and rehearsal rooms, a center of exhibitions and a series of parks and walks that connect the entire intervention.

#BeOpenARCH When asked to renovate a rural 1970s home, Japanese architecture firm Yoshichika Takagi + Associates has chosen to add an offset secondary skin to the existing two-family house. The building had undergone multiple renovations over the decades, resulting in an unusual geometry – this type of vernacular buildings common for Hokkaido, which features a roof structure irregular in profile, is commonly known as the ‘deformed roof’ type. During the renovation process, the architects stripped the house to its original timber structure and added a full-height translucent extension that serves as the primary circulation channel and a shared space that connects the two stacked homes placed between the two facades. More residential extensions in our blog

#BeOpenDESIGN Aiming to provide all ships with the means to harness free and unlimited wind energy, France-based practice Airseas has installed an automated SeaWing kite to a cargo ship used to move large aircraft structures between Airbus manufacturing plants around Europe and its final assembly plant in Toulouse. While the kite is half-sized, the full-size kite is expected to save up to 20 percent of fuel burn and emissions. The 500sqm parafoil kite automatically emerges from storage on a trolley and raises up from the deck on a mast. Once it is released on a long cable, it can catch the steady, strong winds over about 200 meters above sea level for the vessel to develop speed over 100 km/h. The kite is expected to replace up to two mw of power from the main engines under favorable wind conditions. According to the team, they will commence six months of trials in January.