Sepp Magazine is an exercise by FIFA in combining fashion and lifestyle with football. It Takes its name from outgoing FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The Magazine explores the issues surrounding football, fashion, life and the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This is done in a surprisingly insightful  way by some of the best photographers and art directors. Sepp Magazine is edited by Markus Ebner and fashion journalist Godfrey Deeny. It is art directed by the talented Mirko Borsche.

For the current installment of Sepp, which hit newsstands this week, Ebner marshaled several fashion luminaries. Ellen von Unwerth contributes photographs of Germany’s rising soccer stars. Karl Lagerfeld dreams—and draws—himself into the game in a series of idiosyncratic watercolors where he drew some of his favorite stars, like Ribery, Kaka and Wayne Rooney, Argentine icon Maradona is rendered by Anna Sui and Clinique collaborator Hiroshi Tanabe. Henrique Gendre portraits models from Brazil posing in the country’s playing colors, as well as architectural photographs of host nation South Africa’s new stadiums and some of the world’s greatest fashion designers created their very own football uniforms. It seems that among them there is also a mini dress football outfit for the national football team of The Netherlands (Oranje). These designer football outfits where shot by Rene Habermacher for this issue.

On paper, high fashion and football are unlikely companions but the team behind Sepp Magazine have turned this project into a fascinating and engaging ultra-glossy biennial.

Photos: Sepp Magazine and Nowness  | Verlag Neunundsechzig | FIFA World Cup in South Africa

The turbo wave of the 80’s left its mark on the industry and on the whole cultural situation in Western Europe. The sound effect gives sensation of real physical power. This music genre, which originated in the Balkans, and its impact are the inspiration for the work of Serbian artist Baptiste Debombourg. The music becomes a conceptual model of behaviour and is translated into wall deformed by the power of a musical wave. This installation is melted with the architecture of the surrounding space and so becomes part of it.

Photos: Baptiste Debombourg | Patricia Dorfmann Gallery Paris | Galerie HO Marseilles | Galerija10m2 Sarajevo

Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima Photo by Takashi Okamoto, Courtesy of Sanaa.

The Rolex Learning Center, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Switzerland. Photos by Hisao Suzuki, Courtesy of Sanaa

Floor Plan Rolex Learning Center, Courtesy of Sanaa

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architectural firm, Sanaa, have been chosen as the 2010 Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor will be held on May 17 on historic Ellis Island in New York.

The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

New Museum of Contemporary Art New York City, New York Photos by Hisao Suzuki, Courtesy of Sanaa

“They explore like few others the phenomenal properties of continuous space, lightness, transparency and materiality to create a subtle synthesis,” the jury citation said. “Sejima and Nishizawa’s architecture stands in direct contrast with the bombastic and rhetorical. Instead, they seek the essential qualities of architecture that result in a much appreciated straightforwardness, economy of means and restraint in their work.”

“All in all a building is the equivalent of a diagram in space used to describe in abstract form the daily activities that take place within it” is one of the avantgarde concept from Studio Sanaa.

Some of their most notable works are the The Rolex Learning Center Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne in Switzerland, the New Museum of Contemporary Art New York City in New York, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa in Ishikawa Japan and the Dior Building in Tokyo’s Omotesando district.

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan Photo by Sanaa

Christian Dior Building Omotesando Tokyo, Japan Photos by Hisao Suzuki

Photos: Sanaa,Takashi Okamoto,Hisao Suzuki, | Pritzker Architecture Prize

The work of the Belgian artist Frederic Geurts consists of monumental, but very fragile architectural structures, in which the artist goes to the extreme in exploring the boundaries of the force of gravity and the materiality of the structures.

Frederic Geurts: “I cannot act in a vacuum. I need context. I would like to play and interact with the environment. Both the spatial architectural aspects as well as the meaning of a place are important. In that sense, I am more  a designer. Like for example an architect who starts creating after he has received a package of demands given by his client. I create such a demands program for myself.”

In the below, Dutch spoken, video Frederic Geurts gives a few days before the opening of his most recent exhibition called (un)balanced a tour to Jan Boelen the artistic director of the Z33 art centre.

Photos: Frederic Geurts (un)balanced | Video: Kunsten centrum Z33 | Vimeo

Maxim Zhestkov, a motion-, graphics designer and video artist, is inspired by many different fields like for example: science, fashion, architecture and/or space. He creates architectural worlds where sounds blend with space and shape.

Zhestkov: “I have tried to reflect the concept of the universe between the infinite and border as a pulsating place of energy and magnetism.”

Modul By Maxim Zhestkov

Zhestkov: “Any composition needs to begin with one or two main elements. The smaller the elements, the greater number of them there should be. You need to start with one or two main ideas and gradually build up the smaller elements until the space becomes rich with life.”

Nokia By Maxim Zhestkov

Photos and video : Maxim Zhestkov | Vimeo