Who Knew: A Showhouse on the Lower East Side
The BOFFO show house in the Madison Jackson brings a host of designers downtown. (Susan Morris)
BOFFO is an arts and culture non-profit fostering collaborations between artists, designers, communities, and theorists to inform and engage the public in participatory arts programs. In late May, it launched a show house at a Lower East Side public school building turned apartment house, called The Madison Jackson. It turned out to be a clever draw getting people to a neighborhood that is lower and farther east than more popular sections of the LES. I speak from familiarity as I live in a perch overlooking the venue. The glam show house is unusual for a neighborhood comprised largely of public housing blocks next to tall towers that formerly were union cooperatives and as close to socialist housing as we’ve had in NYC.
Foamly Footed
Leong Leong's amorphous Siki Im pop-up under the High Line (Photo: Pete Deevakul)
More cave-itecture under the High Line. Architecture firm Leong Leong and fashion designer Siki Im have teamed up for the fifth and final installation in the Building Fashion series of pop-up collaborations beneath Chelsea’s High Line Park. Picking up where Snarkitecture and Richard Chai left off, Leong Leong has turned the former Sales Tin for Neil Denari’s HL23 condos into another amorphous cave-like interior—only now you’ll have to take off your shoes before entering. “We wanted to radically transform the interior,” explained principal Chris Leong. “We wanted to breakdown the traditional pop-up experience.” To do this, the firm oriented the store around a parabolic, foam-covered ramp and hung clothes seemingly at random from the walls and ceiling, which were sculpted with the same soy-based spray-foam. Read More
Under the High Line, Pop-Up Cave-itecture
Richard Chai + Snarkitecture's ice-cave under the High Line. (Photo: David Smith)
Lurking under the High Line has been a bit more fun since Building Fashion began its series of architecture-and-fashion installations in September, erecting a new collaboration every two weeks as a means of reusing the former onsite Sales Tin of Neil Denari’s HL23 condos. On Thursday, Brooklyn firm Snarkitecture and fashion designer Richard Chai will unveil the fourth project in the series, a cave carved by hand from architectural foam. Designed to give shoppers the feel of a glacial cavern, the pop-up shop will feature men’s and women’s fashions displayed on shelves, niches, and hang bars embedded in the foam. Read More
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