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.
Live Chat: So What Is Green, Anyway?
Welcome to AN‘s live Facebook Live Stream chat on sustainability which took place on Wednesday, April 18 from 3:00 until 4:00 p.m. EST. “What is Green, Anyway” covered what exactly makes a project green, how effective green standards are, how sustainability is driving design (and whether it should), and where green design is heading. AN’s West Coast Editor Sam Lubell was joined by Angela Brooks, partner at Brooks + Scarpa, John Stein, president of Kirei, a green materials company, and Eric Corey Freed, principal at organicARCHITECTURE to discuss the issues and take your questions.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by and joined the discussion! (And don’t forget to like AN’s Facebook page to stay up-to-date with the latest architecture and design news.) Special thanks as well to our panel of experts.
What is Green, Anyway? Join Us for an Online Conversation on Sustainability
John Stein (left) and Angela Brooks (right) in front of the Raleigh Museum of Art by Brooks+Scarpa. (Montage by AN)
Join us for a live Facebook discussion, “What Is Green, Anyway?”
Wednesday, April 18
12:00 p.m. PST, 3:00 p.m. EST
You’re invited to talk about sustainability with AN‘s West Coast Editor Sam Lubell, Angela Brooks, partner at Brooks + Scarpa, and John Stein, president of Kirei, a green materials company. The open discussion will cover what exactly makes a project green, how effective green standards are, how sustainability is driving design (and whether it should), and where green design is heading.
The best part is that the questions will be all yours, answered live by our participants. To participate in “What Is Green, Anyway?,” simply visit the AN Blog tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. eastern. We’ll publish a post to the AN Blog before the event and you can join the discussion and ask questions of the experts live over Facebook Live Stream. You can even share your comments with your Facebook friends directly. See you Wednesday!
On View> Heather Hart: The Eastern Oracle
Hart's Eastern Oracle is on display in the Brooklyn Museum’s fifth-floor rotunda. (Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)
Heather Hart: The Eastern Oracle
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY
Through June 24
For the fourth exhibition in its Raw/Cooked series displaying the work of budding Brooklyn artists, the Brooklyn Museum presents an installation by Heather Hart. Occupying the museum’s fifth-floor rotunda, the installation will consist of a single rooftop that lies flat on the ground, without walls and outside its original context. As Hart describes it: “A rooftop can refer to home, stability, or shelter, but in this context, it is also an action of reclaiming power.” The roof makes specific reference to the oldest architecture in the museum’s period room collection—the Jan Martense Schenck House, built in 1676, the second-oldest Dutch-American building in Brooklyn. Visitors are encouraged to physically interact with the structure, fulfilling Hart’s intention to create a place of self-reflection and self-empowerment.
On April 14 the Regional Council of Bordeaux, France announced that BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) was selected to design the new Maison de l’économie créative et de la culture en Aquitaine, a.k.a. “la Méca.” The new building on the riverfront site will house three regional visual and performing arts agencies. The website of France’s SudOuest newspaper reports that BIG beat out SANAA and the Toulouse-based firm W-Architectures with a design for a 120-foot-tall arch-shaped building featuring a 14,000-square-foot roof terrace. The 52-million-euro scheme awaits final approval at a May 21 council meeting…stay tuned for the renderings!
Blair Kamin seems to have joined the reconsider PoMo chorus, stating in his Sunday column that the movement “deserves a more sophisticated reappraisal.” The focus of the Tribune tribute was Michael Graves’s Humana building in Louisville, Kentucky. By drawing comparisons to Johnson’s AT&T building in its unabashed commercialism and to Kohn Pedersen Fox’s 333 Waker Drive for its national significance, Kamin writes that “Graves crafted a tower that could only have been built in Louisville.” The reassessment comes on the heel of Graves receiving the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for classical and traditional architecture in Chicago last month, which in turn came after last fall’s PoMo Conference at New York’s Institute for Classical Architecture and Art. Seems that the classicists are going gaga for PoMo.
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