May 2, 2012
Living Room: Housing Works Builds Housing. Photo: Alan Chin.
Last weekend (April 26-28), Gavin Browning and Karen Kubey curated Living Room: Housing Works Builds Housing, at the Metropolitan Pavilion. The installation was a powerful addition to Housing Works’ 2012 Design on a Dime Benefit and two-day public sale, with all proceeds going towards the soon-to-open 874 Jefferson Avenue Residence Project.
March 22, 2012
Images (c) Constance Mensh.
There are big questions surrounding the role of the art museum in the digital age. Maintaining relevance in today’s unending stream of information and entertainment is a challenge for cultural institutions whose programs operate on a larger scale. One strategy museums have found success with is the digitization of the museum-going experience itself: podcast tours and interactive websites globalize an otherwise local show. Another strategy is the construction of a new building or addition built by a big-name architect, attracting civic and international attention. Examples of this abound. The most striking is perhaps the MAXXI in Rome, designed by Zaha Hadid, which had its grand opening without a single piece of art on view.
Still, a key part of the museum experience seems to be missing: a focus on the experience of the museum-goer as a social, engaged participant.
Philadelphia-based duo Megawords is broaching the topic of the post-digital museum with an installation currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. At the PMA, the duo turned a dark alcove that once housed an ATM and a payphone into a carefully-curated book and ‘zine store. In an adjoining space, previously used as a green room, Megawords installed a reading lounge with pillows and chairs for comfortable perusing – complete with a soundtrack played through a speaker on the floor. According Anthony Smyrski, who makes up one half of the Megawords team, their work at the PMA is concerned primarily with “the activation of unused space” within cultural institutions. Click through.
Images (c) Constance Mensh.
March 20, 2012
The Architectural Digest Home Show begins at the end of this week, bringing together interior designers, manufacturers, and architects for the weekend at Pier 94 on the Hudson River. Under the auspices of co-sponsors The New York Times, the AD Show will be hosting discussions amongst industry leaders in their Designer Seminar series.
Architizer CEO and HWKN principal Marc Kushner, who will speak with Joel Sanders and Galia Solomonoff, will bridge the divide between architects and interior designers by asking “where do we draw the line?” between the two professions. All three speakers own their own firms and have worked extensively on both sides of the interior/architect divide, which should make for an interesting debate.
Click through for images of their work and details on our AD Show opening party, as well as the talk.
March 12, 2012
The Architectural Digest Home Design Show is a mere 10 days away, and as Pier 94 ramps up for the March 22 opening, we’re ramping up too – for our opening cocktail party. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating architecture and interior design with a special cocktail event whose menu will be decided by none other than… you.
That’s right: we’ve got the liquor (thanks to sponsors Effen Vodka and La Crema), now all we need are some architect-built (or perhaps, architecture-pun-inspired) drink recipes. Are you well-known amongst friends for making a mean Herzog and de Bourbon or an excellent Delirious Manhattan? What about a Gin and Tectonics or a Juergen Bomb? We’re just spitballing here, but our recipe for a Bahama Zaha is as follows:
Blend together all the ingredients until they’ve turned a nice grapefruit color. Garnish with a piece of pineapple that looks like it was modeled in Maya.
Email your entries to editorial@architizer.com for consideration. We’ll pick two, and serve them at the AD Show opening party. Which reminds us: you need to RSVP to attend. Entrance is free through March 15th, after which a small fee will be charged. Registration is essential, so please click here to register.
Also! The next day, Architizer founder Marc Kushner will be leading a panel of architects including Galia Solomonoff (Solomonoff Architecture Studio) and Joel Sanders (Joel Sanders Architect) in discussion on the division between interior design and architecture. The discussion will take place at 4pm on March 23rd, so come by to check it out after you’ve had sufficient time to recover from the night before.
Once again, all these festivities are contigent on registration, so go!
February 22, 2012
The quest for CES credits may sometimes seem like a never-ending cycle of programming – of which little seems to address broader challenges facing the architects today. Here are a few, just off the top of our heads: Can I use social media to raise money for our project? Should I be concerned about image reproduction and copyright practices in the age of the Internet? Can I really find clients online? How should my office be using social media to promote our work in a meaningful (non-time wasting) way? In short, is the online world really as much as an asset to my business as everyone claims?
The answer to that last one is undoubtedly “yes,” with a caveat: the internet can transform your office’s public profile, when used correctly. That’s why we’re excited to invite you to a day of CES learning that will include a dialogue speaking directly to all these questions, between two architects who have leveraged the internet as a design tool with great success: HWKN principle and Architizer co-founder Marc Kushner and Playlab, Inc. co-founder and +Pool creator, Archie Lee Coates IV. More information after the jump.
February 10, 2012
Architectural light shows seem to be having their halcyon days, as more artists, architects and designers are turning to nighttime neon projections to breathe life into already incredible spaces. Last year, Lyon’s Festival of Lights saw a building reprogrammed into a massive playable pinball machine, and the Bring to Light Festival featured a total of fifty-nine site-specific artworks that illuminated Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s urban context. Starting today, Chicago’s famed Millennium Park will be another site for luminous architecture, as Anish Kapoor’s beloved Bean, more properly known as ‘Cloud Gate,’ will give off warped reflections of Chicago-based collective Luftwerk’s choreographed light show. When the sun sets, a total of ten projectors will be used to generate ‘Luminous Field’ and turn Chicago’s AT&T plaza into an even more vibrant, interactive public space.
This is not Luftwerk’s first collaboration with an iconic architectural setting; creative duo Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero were also the team behind the light installations at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in 2011 and at Wright’s Robie House in 2010. Their fascination with the interaction between space, structure, and material landed them this most recent commission from the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, which Bachmaier calls “a great gift to the city.”
‘Luminous Field’ will be on show at Chicago’s Millennium Park from Feb 10th – Feb 20th.
[Images and video via Colossal]
February 8, 2012
Feel like you haven’t been to a good party in a while? Like your main entertainment comes from watching Downton Abbey reruns every night? Like the only socializing you do is with your local bodega owner?
Fret not, for that’s about to change! On February 29th, Planar and Architizer invite you to break out of your midwinter hermit routine and join us for an evening of art and cocktails at the Cristin Tierney Gallery in Chelsea. That’s right: we’re having a party on the leap year. Click through for details.
January 30, 2012
Two months ago, we proudly announced the launch of the AIDS Memorial Park Design Competition, calling for architects and designers from around the world to re-imagine a 17,000 square-foot plot of land sitting across from the epicenter of New York City’s AIDS epidemic, St. Vincent’s Hospital. After the closure of St. Vincent’s in 2010, plans were announced for the conversion of the triangular plot into an open public space. The AIDS Memorial Park Coalition gathered its founding members shortly thereafter, with the dream of seeing Greenwich Village receive a new neighborhood park and a memorial to commemorate the thousands of New Yorkers who faced the epidemic with unprecedented courage. What began as grassroots campaigning quickly gained momentum, and within a few months, an impressive roster of jurors and coalition members joined the initiative, from architects like Richard Meier and Michael Arad to entertainment leaders and West Village locals Julianne Moore and Susan Sarandon.
After receiving 475 entries from over 26 U.S. states and 32 countries, the jury deliberated long and hard, and the results are finally in. As proud media co-sponsors alongside Architectural Record, Architizer is happy to announce the winning design for the AIDS Memorial Park Design Competition. The winner and the runners up after the jump!
January 17, 2012
Storefront for Art and Architecture is a work of architecture that arguably has one agenda: to be a work of architecture (try saying that sentence ten times fast). It is the conscious experience of space it offers that makes up the bulk of its appeal, and because of this, seemingly every “normal” activity within its permeable concrete walls becomes somewhat difficult; crowded openings are hardly enjoyed without free wine, and lectures held there are usually muddled by the amplified sounds of downtown New York.
But what if Storefront’s exceptional space could double as something else, something non-spatial? Artist Allard van Hoorn provides one answer to the question in his first solo exhibition, Urban Songline. Van Hoorn has outfitted the iconic gallery designed by Steven Holl and Vito Acconci with crisscrossing strings tuned to different notes, forming a site-specific web that transforms Storefront’s unusual space into a large-scale musical instrument. The experience of the space—which has been doused in a coat of bright reddish orange undisclosed in these images—therefore translates into a separate, interactive acoustic experience. You can check out the opening reception for Urban Songline tonight at 7:00 pm!
Images courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture.
Storefront’s iconic facade. Image courtesy Steven Holl Architect.
January 16, 2012
Melissa Shoes, 2008. Zaha Hadid (Iraqi, b. 1950). Mold injected plastic. Black: Women’s Size 6: 9 in, Purple: Women’s Size 9: 10 in. Black and purple. Made by Grendene S.A., Farroupilha, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Photography courtesy of David Grandorge.
It’s not breaking news, but Zaha Hadid has an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, called Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion. The exhibition, which is Hadid’s first in the U.S. dedicated solely to her design work, opened September 20th and will run through March 25th. The exhibition has been completely designed and fabricated to Hadid’s specifications; from custom vinyl flooring that swerve and “woosh” in undulating patterns to walls that look as if they have been subjected to the sculpting affects of wind and rain. Read on.
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