Savior of the Meat Market
Florent Morellet, in a scene from the movie. Courtesy The Villager.
When talking to Florent Morellet, don’t call it the Meatpacking District. For the eponymous owner of now-closed diner/bistro Florent on Little West 12th Street, it’s the Meat Market. Well before SoHo House and long before Pastis, there was Florent, the subject of a new documentary by David Segal, Florent: Queen of the Meat Market. I found out about the New York opening of the film while showroom hopping on Green Street last week. At Kartell, the perfectly bouffant-ed Darinka Chase encouraged me to try out Philippe Starck‘s Magic Hole. Before slinging chic plastic, Chase spent twenty years as hostess at the downtown den of dining debauchery. She vividly recalls how preservationists met at the restaurant in an effort to preserve the district. “At the time people did think it was kind of nuts, like landmarking the city dump,” she said.
HDC Award and Fuzzy AIA Pics
Bill Menking accepts the award from Historic District Council President Leo Blackman
While many of you –our loyal readers–were partying it up in New Orleans at our AIA New York State party, we were being honored in New York! The Historic Districts Council presented the paper with its Friend in the Media Award at their 12th annual Grassroots Awards in the spectacular in the garden of the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights. I was honored to accept the award for our very hardworking staff on Murray Street.
Meanwhile, Ibex, AIANY, YKK, and the Ceramic Tiles of Italy hosted their shindig in New Orleans…
DUMBO Gets “Treehouse”
If you’re in DUMBO this week and catch a glimpse of a shirtless man hanging off a tree, don’t freak out. VAMOS Architects has curated an installation of photographer Robert Holden’s series The Treehouse, as part of New York Photography Week. The large-scale photographs depict semi-nude members of a rainforest commune, set against industrial buildings, rooftops, and scaffolding in DUMBO.
ICFF Walkabout> Foscarini Evolution
Foscarini Evolution in New York (The Architect's Newspaper)
Italian lighting design firm Foscarini filled their Greene Street showroom with a dynamic, winding installation called Foscarini Evolution during ICFF week in New York. Artist Marc Sadler composed the installation of individual Tress lamps–made of resin-coated fabric strips–connected end to end. The pulsing red strands created a distinctly interactive experience.
“The installation shows how light can convey emotion and form space,” said Veronica Carniello of Foscarini. The showroom will now undergo a renovation and open again at the end of the year. Carniello said the company plans to feature rotating installations featuring Foscarini lighting products so the showroom will take on the qualities of an art gallery.
ICFF Walkabout: Spirits Flying High by Ingo Maurer
The star of the show at Ingo Maurer was "Spirits Flying High". They must have been blithe spirits, because this special commission piece was not for sale. (Photo by Tom Stoelker)
The scene at Ingo Maurer was a tad more subdued than the rest of Green Street last Monday night. Could it be because Maurer’s work has a such tactile quality that the space feels more like an art gallery? Showroom hoppers didn’t make an immediate bee line to the bar. How could you when the first thing you see on entering is the arresting vision of “Spirits Flying High”. The undulating sheet of light looks a flying carpet about to blow out the door. On closer inspection the 87 inch by 50 inch hanging light fixture is composed of more than 100 LED strips wrapped in a warm milky colored silicon. Don’t ask, the special commission piece is not for sale.
ICFF Walkabout: Wearable Maps
Talia Wiener's wearable maps. (Courtesy TaliaSari)
One item that caught our eye at ICFF wasn’t furniture at all.
Every city has certain geographic quirks that people come to identify with a place–Manhattan’s rigid grid, the radial boulevards of Paris–even when viewing a two-dimensional version of it. You Are Here, a collection from Israeli jewelry designer Talia Wiener, was inspired by just such a concept.
Each pendant or brooch incorporates part of the urban fabric of Rome, Paris, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York City, San Francisco, Barcelona, or London. According to Wiener, her designs play with the notion that there is a certain location-oriented secret shared by a city’s residents while also proclaiming their membership in “a broader, ever-growing urban tribe.”
ICFF Walkabout> Zaha Hadid′s Genesy Lamp
Zaha Hadid's Genesy lamp (Photo by Tom Stoelker)
Genesy held court in its own VIP area at Artemide’s Monday evening cocktail party. Posed behind red velvet ropes, the floor lamp’s sensuous lines appeared anthropomorphic, with a waist as svelte as that of any Hollywood starlet. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the injection molded polyurethane lamp–featuring direct LED light and indirect (halogen or fluorescent) light–is newly available in the US in polished black or polished white.
Zaha Hadid's Genesy lamp (Photo by Tom Stoelker)
Guggenheim′s Newest Exhibit to Offer Therapy
Pedro Reyes's rendering of the Sanatorium
The stereotypes of New Yorkers are that they’re rude, they only wear black, and they all have therapists. Sanitorium, the first installation of Guggenheim’s new program, stillspotting nyc, explores the smorgasborg of therapies that help the city’s neurotic residents keep their lives together.
ICFF Studio: Bernhardt Mentors The Design Stars of Tomorrow
Clamp Chairs by Andreas Kowalewski (all images courtesy ICFF Studio)
ICFF wraps up today and, as usual, reviews of the fair seem mixed. Professional but boring! Too safe! Appropriately sober! Practical and market-friendly! Reheated Eames! Now in its sixth year, the ICFF Studio, sponsored by Bernhardt, offers a snap shot of where young designers are looking. Most skewed toward the market-ready, while one designer went in a conceptual direction. The young Dutch designer Andreas Kowalewski’s Clamp Chairs certainly look showroom bound (above).
AN Walkabout: Festival of Ideas, UN Studio, and Armani
Rem Koolhaas at the Cronocaos exhibit (photo courtesy Dutch Art Events).
It’s time for ICFF and the fair’s associated festivities, but our heads are still spinning from all the architecture and design goings-on in New York City over the last ten days. Among our stops were the Festival of Ideas, sponsored by the New Museum, including a lecture by Rem Koolhaas, a stop by UN Studio’s new pavilion at downtown’s Peter Minuit Plaza, and drink at Armani Casa’s new location in the D&D Building. It all started with Rem…
Folks Weigh In On the Future of the Folk Art Museum
American Folk Art Museum (Photo by Michael Moran)
Apparently the art world hates the American Folk Art Museum building! (Who knew?!) In the wake of the news that MoMA is buying the Todd Williams Billie Tsien-designed building, two of the art world’s more prominent voices both bashed the building and argued it hastened the Folk Art Museum’s decline. The esteemed Times critic Roberta Smith called it “unwelcoming” and argued that the museum’s fate was sealed by “lackluster, visionless leadership; the weak economy; and inappropriate architecture.” Smith’s husband happens to be Jerry Saltz, the pugnacious art critic for New York, who went much further in a piece titled, “Architecture Killed the American Folk Art Museum.” He called the building, “ugly and confining, it was also all but useless for showing art.”
Not everyone agrees!
Missoni′s New Mission
Photo by Cindy Yewon Chun
MissoniHome @ DDC Design Post
181 Madison Avenue
212 685 0800
Missoni, an Italian fashion house famous for its use of colorful fabrics and patterns, has finally launched its first American “lifestyle” showroom inside New York’s DDC Design Post. MissoniHome’s product line had previously been available separately at various locations, but now design-minded consumers can browse towels, rugs, and bedding at one destination. The entire collection is housed inside a 200-square-foot showroom dressed seasonally by the Missoni Studio team.
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