On View> Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out
(Courtesy MoMA PS1)
Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY
Through September 10
Lara Favaretto’s installations and sculptures at once perform and memorialize their decay. Often incorporating elements from previous installations in new works and using discarded industrial material, Favaretto makes futile and impermanent gestures, ephemeral monuments to aspiration and failure. The works describe loss: found paintings encased in yarn, obscuring and preserving the original; cubes made of confetti, decomposing throughout the span of an exhibition; car-wash brushes, whirling and wearing down against metal plates (above). These mechanisms celebrate futile motions, becoming memorials imbued with the reality of their own obsolescence.
On View> Craft Spoken Here at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Rebecca Medel's "The One, 1985." (Courtesy PMA)
Craft Spoken Here
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th St. and Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.
Philadelphia, PA
Through August 12
Since it was founded in 1876, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has collected and exhibited crafts; the collection today includes 20th- and 21st-century works from across the globe. With Craft Spoken Here, the Museum presents the medium of crafting as a common language of technique, material, and form that defies cultural boundaries and historical categorization. Drawing from the museum’s collection as well as works on loan from artists and private collections, the exhibition will include some 40 works by acclaimed and lesser-known craftsman alike, with contemporary pieces from 1960 to the present, including The One, 1985 by Rebecca Medel (above). Representing the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe with works in ceramic, glass, metal, wood, lacquer, paper, and fiber, the works on display show the breadth of the medium and highlight the qualities of craft that transcend culture and time.
On View> The Outdoor Office at the Art Institute of Chicago
The Outdoor Office. (Courtesy AIC)
The Outdoor Office
The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago
Through July 15
Jonathan Olivares takes a human-centered approach to industrial design and research. His 2011 book A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, published by Phaidon, provides an encyclopedic history of the office chair from 1840 to present day; building on this research, Olivares presents the speculative project The Outdoor Office (above). The advent of mobile communication means that work can be done outside of traditional offices and that the utility of outdoor space is no longer limited to recreation and leisure. Olivares examines how productive work environments can be created with new types of outdoor furniture and architecture, with consideration of privacy, shelter, and adaptability. The exhibition showcases the research and results of his findings, with images drawn from television, film, and existing offices, in addition to conceptual projects and models developed for new outdoor work spaces.
Cornell Chooses Thom Mayne; SOM Forges Ahead with Master Plan
Cornell has made an object-ive choice in Thom Mayne. (Brnandon Thomas / Flickr)
Cornell University has named 2005 Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne as architect for the first building at its Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island called the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute. The selection should overshadow some sour grapes that were emanating from Stanford in the past few days regarding their losing bid. Mayne bested an all-star list, including Rem Koolhaas of OMA, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, Steven Holl, and SOM. The choice of Mayne, whose iconic building 41 Cooper Square still jams traffic at Astor Place, hints that Cornell is looking for a traffic stopper of its own on the East River.
High Holiday
The world's tallest Holiday Inn under construction in Manhattan. (Rendering via ReBusiness Online)
We heard rumblings, but now it’s official—a 400-room, 50-story high Holiday Inn will be joining the ranks of downtown hotels at 99 Washington Street near the World Trade Center. It will be the world’s tallest Holiday Inn and the go-to architect for New York hotels, Gene Kaufman of Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects, will be doing the honors. Kaufman’s other high-profile hotel projects, the Chelsea Hotel renovation and the new Hyatt near Union Square, seem to be moving full steam ahead, despite legal wrangling at the Chelsea. The Holiday Inn will likely open to guests by the end of this year.
On View> Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show
(Matthias Ernstberger)
Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
118 South 36th St., Philadelphia, PA
Through August 12
While Stefan Sagmeister is known as a graphic designer, his work often subverts the boundary between design and art. For his first museum exhibition in the United States, Sagmeister will present a vision of his journey to find happiness, taking over the second-floor galleries and Ramp in addition to interstices throughout the museum. The narrative of the exhibition is structured using personal maxims as expressed through typographic investigations. Alongside these maxims appears social data from psychologists, anthropologists, and historians, contextualizing Sagmeister’s experience within the larger factors of age, gender, race, and economics. “I am usually rather bored with definitions,” Sagmeister explains. “Happiness, however, is just such a big subject that it might be worth a try to pin it down.”
Frank Gehry’s first residential project in Asia, a twisty residential tower called Opus Hong Kong, is complete. Total project cost for the 12-story, 12-apartment building? A mere $27,000 a square foot, according to Swire CEO Martin Cubbon. “I would just quit everything and come and just work for them forever,” said Gehry on a recent press blitz in Hong Kong, where he praised the “interest and respect” he was afforded.
SHFT+ALT+DEL: April 27
John Gourlay is tapped to be executive publisher of Metropolis magazine. Gourlay’s previous magazine publishing creds include Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, Utne Reader, Audubon, and American Craft.
SB Architects appoints Emilio Perez as head of its Miami office. Specializing in hospitality and mixed-use projects, Perez worked with Gensler, Portman Associates, Cap Cana Resorts, and Royal Caribbean before joining SB.
Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, has been elected to the 2012 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Read More
On View> Newly Drawn: Emerging Finnish Architects
Kuokkala Church by Lassila Hirvilammi. (Courtesy Center for Architecture)
Newly Drawn: Emerging Finnish Architects
The Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
Through April 30
A shift is occurring in Finnish architecture as a new generation of firms is emboldened by a unique competition culture that allows anonymous submissions from young and established architects alike. Helsinki is undergoing a major process of renewal with the transformation of former industrial and harbor areas to new uses; as such, large-scale commissions are available to otherwise inexperienced practices with new approaches to the city, such as Kilden Performing Arts Center by ALA Architects (above) and Kuokkala Church by Lassila Hirvilammi (below).
EVENT> Architecture & the Media: Design Reportage
The Architecture & the Media Series at the Center for Architecture.
Architecture & the Media #2: Design Reportage
Thursday, May 3
6:00-8:00pm
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
What drives the decisions to present architecture stories or programs? How do non-specialist reporters portray architecture and architects? Or explain architecture concepts, processes, and key milestones as a project unfolds from concept to reality? Can reporters help to demystify architects and architecture for the general public? Read More
On View> LACMA Presents Robert Adams: The Place We Live
New development on a former citrus-growing estate, Highland, California, 1983. (Robert Adams/LACMA)
Robert Adams: The Place We Live
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
Through June 3
In his 45 years photographing the American West, Robert Adams has documented the evolution of landscape and our relationship to it. In response to the rapid development of his surroundings in Colorado Springs and Denver, Adams began photographing a landscape marked by tract housing, highways, and gas stations. His photographs, Adams says, “document a separation from ourselves, and in turn from the natural world that we professed to love.” Nearly 300 prints showcase Adams’ career, from his early shots of Colorado’s desolate terrain to his recent works documenting migrating birds in the Pacific Northwest, with special focus on his portrayal of the Los Angeles region.
View a gallery of Robert Adams’s photography after the jump.
On View> Fred Sandback: Decades
(Adam Reich / Courtesy David Zwirner)
Fred Sandback: Decades
David Zwirner
525 West 19th Street
Through April 21
The drawings and sculptures of Fred Sandback are the subject of a new exhibition at New York’s David Zwirner gallery. The projects are arranged by decades, representing distinct periods in the artist’s career, spanning the years 1969 to 2000. Sandback created minimalist sculptures out of simple materials in response to the architecture of specific interiors. Installations made from thin lengths of material redefine spaces, creating objects and planes by simply implying their outlines. On display are early works from the 1960s made of metal wire and cord, permutational works of the ’70s, and reliefs and site-specific projects from his late career. Drawings are included, like 16 Variationen von 2 Diagonalen Linien 1972 (above), plus the Zwirner gallery has reconstructed the interiors of Galerie Heiner Friedrich, the Munich space for which many of Sandback’s works were designed. A rare copper wire sculpture, Proposal for Heiner Friedrich, Munich, Six Rectangles, Copper Wire (Sculptural Study), spans three rooms and is a highlight of the show.
Advertise on The Architect's Newspaper.
Archives
Categories
Architecture
Design
East Coast
Midwest
National
Planning
Shft+Alt+Del
Sustainability
Transportation
West Coast
