The exhibit Landscapes of Quarantine opens Tuesday, March 9th with an opening reception at 7pm at the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

It is a group exhibition exploring the spaces of quarantine, from Level 4 biocontainment labs to underground nuclear waste repositories.

Landscapes of Quarantine is curated by Future Plural – Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG) and Nicola Twilley (Edible Geography).  It is designed by Glenn Cummings (MTWTF).

The exhibition press release in full:

Landscapes of Quarantine features new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine.

At its most basic, quarantine is a strategy of separation and containment—the creation of a hygienic boundary between two or more things, for the purpose of protecting one from exposure to the other. It is a spatial response to suspicion, threat, and uncertainty. From Chernobyl’s Zone of Exclusion and the artificial quarantine islands of the New York archipelago to camp beds set up to house HIV-positive Haitian refugees detained at Guantánamo and the modified Airstream trailer from within which Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins once waved at President Nixon, the landscapes of quarantine are various, mutable, and often unexpected.

Typically, quarantine is thought of in the context of disease control. It is used to isolate people who have been exposed to a contagious virus or bacteria and, as a result, may (or may not) be carrying the infection themselves. But quarantine does not apply only to people and animals. Its boundaries can be set up for as long as needed, creating spatial separation between clean and dirty, safe and dangerous, healthy and sick, foreign and native—however those labels are defined.

As a result, the practice of quarantine extends far beyond questions of epidemic control and pest-containment strategies to touch on issues of urban planning, geopolitics, international trade, ethics, immigration, and more. And although the practice dates back at least to the arrival of the Black Death in medieval Venice, if not to Christ’s 40 days in the desert, quarantine has re-emerged as an issue of urgency and importance in today’s era of globalization, antibiotic resistance, emerging diseases, pandemic flu, and bio-terrorism.

Landscapes of Quarantine began with an eight-week independent design studio directed by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley of Future Plural. Each Tuesday evening, from October to December 2009, a multi-disciplinary group of studio participants met to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine and develop their own creative response: the resulting work forms the core of the Landscapes of Quarantine exhibition.

Landscapes of Quarantine runs from March 10th to April 17th.

Storefront for Art and Architecture
97 Kenmare Street
New York NY

Open Tuesday-Saturday
11AM – 6PM

The topic for this month was emergency shelters, which in the wake of the earthquakes in both Haiti and Chile seems particularly apt.   While there were dozens upon dozens of submission, the editors of Core77 selected the  entry ‘Lifetent’ by Dan Ostrowski as the winner.

Dan described the project:

Based on the reports coming out of Haiti, I decided that a natural disaster refugee was a transient person that would migrate to new locations in search of safety, food, and/or medical help. I developed an inflatable tent because of its lightweight, easy transport, and minimal storage space when not in use. A GPS tracker was added so that rescue teams could know, before entering a ND zone, where they are most needed. The Lifestraws were added in an attempt to stave off water born pathogens and the use of mosquito repellent fabric was indented to stave off malaria.

Click through to the winning announcement to see more about the winner and the nine notable mentions that the Core77 crew selected.  Also check out the discussion forum where you can see all of the entries in their entirety.

Architizer Los Angeles Launch Party
March 18, 2010
A+D Museum
6032 Wilshire Blvd

If you are in the Southern California area we heartily encourage you to attend.  RSVP to rsvp@architizer.com.

Leading up the the big event, we will be celebrating Los Angeles architects and projects on the site, so if you fit into that category be sure to get your work up to be featured.

The exhibit opens on March 4th and runs through May 15th.

It is curated by Barbara Bloemink, with assistant curators Julie Lasky, Aric Chen and Garth Walker.  The categories of the exhibition are: New Essentialism, Mutant Remix, Of the Body, Social Anxiety, Super Beauty, Craft Economy and Design Lab.

We have a sneak peak inside the exhibit, as well as a tour around the structure, which opened in January of this year.

Find out more about the new exhibit here.
Find out more about Ron Arad here.

Thank you, JMH, for the great shots!!
Want to become a reporter for Architizer? Email a letter of interest to info@architizer.com.

Architizer was recently allowed to take a tour of the four-floor, four-clock’ed penthouse at One Main Street in New York City’s most populous borough.

(image courtesy of DUMBO NOW)

The building was built in 1914 – one of many buildings designed for Robert Gair, a wealthy industrialist of the post-Civil War era who made his fortune in a specialized technique for creating cardboard.

The penthouse used to house mechanical equipment for the clocks and a water tower. It can be yours for $25 million.

The view from the tub (not bad!!)

The kitchen, designed by Minimal, is equally impressive.

There is, of course, your own elevator to ride.

Going up!!

Eventually, you reach the top where there is an indoor-outdoor terrace that has sweeping views of the entire New York city region.

A few more shots.

The Manhattan Bridge

MORE:

The entire gallery on Facebook.
Minimal (on Architizer – and website)
The history of the building (via NY Times)
The real estate listing.

I guess I was expecting a Frank Gehry building to be number one.

Or maybe the Louvre?

The Acropolis?

The Pantheon?

Nope.

The number one Google image result when I searched ‘architecture’ was a paper cut out of a cathedral and the Yokohama Grand Inter-Continental Hotel title Origamic Architecture. Although they are fetching as far as paper cut-out representations of buildings go I was surprised that they came up first.

There were other surprises on the list like,  Henry Latrobe’s design for a window in Virginia. Again, very nice window, but maybe not so much for the top rated images of architecture on the web… stay tuned for more posts from my descent into dorkdom!

The theme this month was responding to the crisis in Haiti. Participants were asked to address the question of not only creating emergency shelter, but in the wake of the literal collapse of Parliament, creating emergency institutions.

This earthquake was no typical disaster, and Haiti is no typical disaster-struck region. In many ways, Port-au-Prince and its institutions required rebuilding before the buildings collapsed. The relief effort of this particular disaster goes beyond air-dropping supplies and building emergency housing. Haiti also requires an emergency economic system (the banks and tax office have collapsed), an emergency medical system (hospitals have collapsed), an emergency justice system (courthouses and the federal prison have collapsed), emergency education (schools have collapsed), and an emergency government (the parliament and many ministry buildings have collapsed).

The winning entry this month created a temporary organizational infrastructure through the use of color-coded weather balloons, medical vans and tents hosting temporary housing.

**
High visibility weather balloons deploy easily and immediately after the disaster.  Different balloon colors provide new waypoints that are easy to identify and locate in the midst of the chaos below.  These waypoints also help to serve as organizational landmarks for the varied support teams.  The balloons continue to remain aloft until the service provided below is no longer required.

This month’s round of Spontaneous Architecture saw entrants from all six inhabited continents. The monthly contests seeks immediate and participatory work within the architecture and design community.

Read up on this and last month’s entries at the Spontaneous Architecture website.  There is a full gallery with all of the submissions.

Visit the Spontaneous Architecture project page on Architizer – participants in the monthly competitions can upload their submissions to the Photostream.

**Please note that the creators of the image maintain the copyright and distribution rights (except relative to Spontaneous Architecture) of their image.

There will be drink specials from 6-7pm.

Tickets are 10 Dollars online and 15 at the door.

You can buy them here.

There will also be performances by Skidmore Fountain, Naked Heroes, and In Cadeo.

Brooklyn Bowl
61 Whythe Ave
Brooklyn, New York 11211

Find out more about Architecture for Humanity New York here.

A peek inside the pages will please even the most lax architecture enthusiast – and might be especially pleasing to Architizer readers – no fewer than five firms and projects you can find on Architizer are featured.

You can click over to their website above to view all of these features in more detail – Surface has a great online magazine portal that makes for very easy browsing.

The main draw is the nice pictorial of Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI Museum, shot gorgeously by Roland Halbe.

Whenever looking at the the MAXXI, it is hard to tell if the photographs are shot in black and white or color – that is, until a stray tree pops into the frame.

A few pages later, what appears but Leong Leong’s 3.1 Phililip Lim flagship in Seoul.  You may recognize this project, as it has lived on Archititzer for many months.

Architects have been designing furniture for some time, and in this issue (Architizer member) Lerival is profiled.  For those who don’t know, Lerival produces furniture designed by architects and distributed internationally.  Among those architectural firms desiging the furniture are Architizer member firms nARCHITECTS, Incorporated (pictured below), and Della Valle Bernheimer.

OH! And look for it is – two of Architizer’s founders staring back at you on page 61. Hi Marc, Hi Matthias!

Be sure to pick up Issue 81 of Surface.  On newstands now.

In the words of our jury:

- [The winner is] Heavy on thought, light in matter -  Juergen Mayer H, Jury Chair (Principal, J. Mayer H. Architects)

- In this time of economic crisis this project comments on what happened in Dubai by pushing it even further to an ironic extreme – Andres Lepik (Curator of Contemporary Architecture, MoMA)

- We wanted to go with something that has guts – Ada Tolla (Principal, LOT-EK, New York)

- The winner understands the problems associated with Dubai?s development and created a satirical play off of it – Jared Della Valle (Partner, Della Valle Bernheimer) – Jared Della Valle (Principal, Della Valle Bernheimer)

The Dubai-ing team will receive $1,500USD and will be exhibited, along with the four honorable mentions, in a New York City gallery show in the Spring. The honorable mentions include the following projects:

Honorable Mention – Competition For The German Freedom And Unity Memorial – Freiheits- Und Einheitsdenkmal Wettbewerb

Honorable Mention -Buenos Aires 2009 Vertical Zoo In Puerto Madero ? Vertical Safari

Honorable Mention – Beirut House Of Arts And Culture Competition – Open Ring

Honorable Mention – Ljubljana City Administration Center Competition – Butcher’s Bridge

In addition to the Jury prizes, there is one prize for the project voted most popular by the Architizer community:

• Re_Growth Pod Competition – F3rh [Free Fire Floating Resistant House]