Category: In The News

Installation view of Ron Arad: No Discipline.

Jason Mandella

Despite its title, “Ron Arad: No Discipline,” the first retrospective of artist Ron Arad’s work in the U.S., at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), demonstrates that he has plenty of discipline to assemble a dizzying body of work over the last 25 years. An Israeli-born industrial designer who trained and worked as an architect before going solo, Arad has forged his own path. He gained notoriety in the early 1980s when fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier purchased Arad’s first foray into furniture design, the Rover Chair, built from discarded Rover V8 2L car seats attached to tubular frames.

Though it was designed by Arad to house the exhibition, “Cage sans Frontières (Cage without Frontiers)” steals the show. The 16-foot-tall structure, made of a Cor-Ten steel square grid lined with mirror-like stainless steel, swoops around the gallery in a figure eight that doesn’t quite touch in the middle. Furniture and architectural models are displayed in the squares — a virtual candy store for designers. However, the candy is just out of reach. Since the “Cage” takes up most of the gallery, one is not able to back up enough to take in the pieces exhibited in the higher squares. As a consolation, small video screens showcase the fabrication of certain pieces, animate architectural models, and document the assembly of the exhibition itself.

All said, “No Discipline” is worth the trek to MoMA despite the tourist dodging it entails. Highlights include the “Concrete Stereo,” a simple hi-fi system — turntable, amplifier, and speakers — cast in concrete but partially eroded to expose its innards. Slipping under the middle of “Cage,” viewers discover variations of the cartoonish “Big Easy Chair” made from different materials in a variety of colors. “Even the Odd Balls?” is the latest reincarnation of the series. The armchair duo is made from stainless steel, one sporting bubbly barnacles and the other a Swiss cheese inverse.

Above this pair hangs the literal centerpiece of the exhibit, the dramatic “Lolita” chandelier, commissioned by Swarovski Crystal. Composed of 2,100 crystals and 1,050 white LEDs, the fixture displays SMS text messages sent to the phone number 917-774-6264. The messages wind down its ribbon-like form, making it appear to rotate.

“Ron Arad: No Discipline” is on view at MoMA through 10.19.09.

Murrye Bernard, LEED AP, is freelance architectural writer and is a contributing editor to eOculus.

Partial installation of Franz Ackermann’s Coming Home (Meet me) At the waterfall (2009), which is being installed along several walls in the monumental staircase in the southwestern portion of the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium.

Image ©Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys football team recently announced the commission of 14 monumental, site-specific installations and four large-scale artworks by contemporary artists. Slated for the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX, designed by HKS Sports and Entertainment Group, the artworks will be installed in prominent locations throughout the stadium. According to the press release, some will be as large as four stories high and more than 100 feet long. A wide range of talents — from Olafur Eliasson to Doug Aitken — were asked to play off both the architecture and the patterns of foot traffic. The goal is to create a dialogue between art and sports, which will be accomplished with accompanying art education programs and tours.

Dallas isn’t the only sports arena with this concept. The Miami-Dade Art in Public Places just closed a call to artists for six large-scale installations at Miami Ballpark, designed by Populous (formerly HOK Sport), where the Florida Marlins will soon play. Highlighting the building, the criteria emphasized the architectural concept of “water merging with land,” that aims to create a seamless relationship with the city, turning the skyline into an “inimitable design feature.” Artworks will be incorporated into the entry, a children’s recreation area, and a street level curtain wall, among other places in and around the stadium. Selected artists will be announced this coming December, and the installations will be complete in March 2012.

Since NYC has been called a cultural nexus of the U.S., my question is: Why hasn’t the city done something similar with its sports arenas? With the new Yankees and Mets stadiums, both offering wider circulation paths and claiming to be instituting numerous public outreach programs, it seems to me that this type of cultural program would be a no-brainer. By commissioning artworks in atypical cultural venues — such as sports arenas — new audiences would gain access to and an appreciation for art.

“Football is full of the unexpected and the spontaneous — it can make two strangers into friends,” said Jerry Jones, owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys. “Art has the power to do that too, to get people talking, and looking, and interacting. It’s not just about what you see on the field or on the wall, it’s about creating exciting experiences.” Even though NYC may not be the first, I hope the city takes Jones’s comments to heart.

In this issue:
· Queens Plaza Becomes a Garden Gateway
· New School Breaks Ground in One of the Bronx’s Neediest Neighborhoods
· Bushwick Builds Low-Impact Architecture
· From Clustered to Spinal: The Parrish is Re-Conceptualized
· Classic Ames Building Becomes Modern Ames Hotel

Queens Plaza Becomes a Garden Gateway

Queens Plaza.

Wallace Roberts & Todd

Construction has begun on infrastructure improvements, designed by Wallace Roberts & Todd, transforming Queens Plaza in Long Island City from a tangle of urban infrastructure into an immersive green landscape. Spanning one mile from 1.5 acres of landscaped open space to the water’s edge below the Queensboro Bridge, the project aims to restore the connection among communities and with the East River. Phase I of the Queens Plaza Streetscape Improvement Project extends from Queens Plaza North to Queens Plaza South, and from Northern Boulevard/Queens Plaza East to 21st Street. It will realign and rationalize the traffic network, enhance the environment for pedestrians and bicyclists, and improve the streetscape with new sidewalks, native and non-invasive plantings, widened and landscaped medians, and improved lighting. Artist-designed benches and pavers, and a continuous protected bikeway and pedestrian walkway will line the open space. Phase II will continue improvements from 21st Street to the East River at Vernon Boulevard.

The Queens Plaza and the adjacent Jackson Avenue projects, with landscapes designed by Stantec Consulting Service, started construction last fall. They are being funded with $23.7 million in City capital, $19.7 million in Federal money, and $33 million in Federal stimulus-related funds. The improvements are part of the city’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan and are overseen by the NYC Economic Development Corporation. The Queens Plaza project received an AIANY Project Merit Award in 2008.

New School Breaks Ground in One of the Bronx’s Neediest Neighborhoods

New Settlement Community Campus.

Dattner Architects/ESKW Architects

The NYC School Construction Authority and Department of Education has begun construction on the New Settlement Community Campus, a 172,000-square-foot, pre-K-12th grade public school and community center in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx. Designed by Dattner Architects and Edelman Sultan Knox Wood Architects (ESKW Architects), the four-story building will be composed of two volumes — a primary school and an intermediate/high school. The project’s key architectural element is the interplay of the volumes and expression of the two wings set at a roughly 90-degree angle. Although predominantly brick, zinc panels, and a curtain wall are used to express special functions and provide visual interest and scale. The library, auditorium, and gymnasium (with an indoor pool) will serve the entire school as well as the community. The project is the culmination of two decades of commitment to the rehabilitation of Mount Eden by the Settlement Housing Fund and its subsidiary, New Settlement Apartments.

Bushwick Builds Low-Impact Architecture

Façade on Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick.

Andre Kikoski Architect

Andre Kikoski Architect has designed a new 10,000-square-foot space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Designed for Cayuga Capital Management, which has some 40 other properties in this industrial area in transition, the project includes two buildings with a courtyard — one planned for a gourmet grocery and wine shop, and the other for a performance space and/or restaurant. When folded up, the industrial security gates become awnings for the shops. The main design feature is the approximately 100-foot-long wall made of raw concrete columns with steel panels that are laser-cut with a dotted gradient pattern. The wall has an outer layer of Cor-Ten steel and an inner layer of stainless steel with a strip of white LEDs sandwiched between. The metal metal layers are punctured with holes that vary in diameter; when they align, the building becomes translucent. The architect sees this project as a prototype for adaptively re-using buildings through low-impact architecture.

From Clustered to Spinal: The Parrish is Re-Conceptualized

Museum façade and gallery view.

Herzog & de Meuron

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, Long Island, recently unveiled a re-conceptualized design for a new museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron on a 14-acre site. The new design will be a horizontal structure nestled in the landscape. Two parallel wings are joined by a central circulation spine that runs the length of the building. The museum is sited in a north-south orientation to take advantage of natural northern light. The poured-in-place concrete walls will be deeply recessed under a white corrugated metal roof, and will incorporate large sections of glass that permit views through the museum and into the surrounding landscape — a meadow of native grasses and wildflowers. A shaded porch surrounding the building will provide public gathering areas. With more than 37,300 square feet of space, and 12,000 square feet of unencumbered flexible galleries, the design more than doubles the museum’s current exhibition space.

The new museum will include educational and multi-purpose spaces, a café and kitchen, administrative offices, and onsite storage. The design team includes Reed Hilderbrand Associates as landscape architect, ARUP London as lighting designer, and Nelson, Pope & Voorhis for civil and environmental engineering, with East Hampton-based architect Douglas Moyer serving as executive architect.

Classic Ames Building Becomes Modern Ames Hotel

The Ames Hotel.

The Morgan Hotel Group

When the Ames Building, designed by Shelpley, Rutan and Coolidge, was completed in 1889, it was the tallest building in Boston and considered to be the city’s first skyscraper — it remains one of the tallest masonry buildings on the East Coast. Located on the edge of the Financial District, the Romanesque-Byzantine-inspired, 14-story structure will re-open this fall as the Ames Hotel operated by The Morgan Hotel Group. The historic restoration is by Cambridge Seven Associates, and NY-based The Rockwell Group is designing the interiors (this is the firm’s first project in Boston). The boutique hotel has 113 guest rooms, including one apartment and six deluxe one-bedroom suites, with a bar and dining area on each floor. The design provides a modern framework for the lobby, with its mosaic, barrel-vaulted ceiling, and marble-and-brass staircase, and the renovated guest rooms. Woodward, a two-story restaurant and bar, is Victorian-inspired, and features a curated “cabinet of curiosities” that mixes with the room’s modern accents.

CultureNOW offers maps and podcasts for touring downtown Manhattan, Manhattan’s art scene, and the most recent addition, Harlem. HarlemNOW highlights public art installations and historical buildings, including: all NYC designated landmarks, National Register Listings, and National Historic Landmarks; performance spaces; new residential projects; recent civic architecture; jazz clubs; art galleries; houses of worship; museums; sustainable design; and landscape architecture. The project was researched and developed by AIANY with the American Planning Association, NY Metro Chapter, in collaboration with Pratt Institute School of Architecture. See “Why Harlem Now?” by Linda G. Miller, e-Oculus, 08.18.09, for more on HarlemNOW.

Safari 7 is a self-guided tour of urban animal life along NYC’s No. 7 subway line. The website circulates an ongoing series of podcasts and maps that explore the complexity, biodiversity, conflicts, and potentials of the city’s ecosystems. The podcasts were created by a collaborative that includes graphic design studio MTWTF; students in the Urban Landscape Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and students in a seminar on urban ecology at the Barnard and Columbia Colleges’ Architecture Program.

Seven finalists for Intersections: Grand Concourse Beyond 100 include Christina Belton, Taewook Cha, Brenda Curtis, Lia Kelerchian, Gentry Lock, Erika Matthias and Shachi Pandey of EDAW/AECOM (Agricultural Urbanism); Matthieu Laverge, Vincent Lavergne, Remi Mendes and Jeremy Nadau of Nadau Lavergne Architects (FROM SPEEDWAY TO MAIN STREET); Angus McCullough (Live Wired); Dongsei Kim and Jamieson Fajardo of Columbia University (p.U.M.p. [Purifying Urban Modular Parasite]); Christopher Ryan of Harvard University (Point by Point Development for the Grand Concourse); Alejandra Diaz, Megan Gibbons, Laura Keller, Emily Osgood, and Lisa Woodley of MISI Company with Itir Sonuparlak of Columbia University (Re-vision-ing the Bronx Grand Concourse: A Community-Centered Approach); and Jason Austin and Aleksandr Mergold, AIA (Austin+Mergold The Grand Resource). View all proposals online…

The Canadian Copper & Brass Development Association (CCBDA) announced the recipients of the 2009 North American Copper in Architecture Awards program, which includes the Hoboken Terminal by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners… The 2009/10 Fellows and Residents of the American Academy in Rome include Friends of the High Line co-founder Robert Hammond (Garden Club of America Rome Prize), and Calvin Tsao, FAIA, (William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence)…

Sarah Whiting, a principal of WW Architecture, will be leaving the Princeton University School of Architecture faculty to serve as dean of Rice University School of Architecture… Chrisine Cerqueira Gaspar, Assoc. AIA, has been appointed the new Executive Director of Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)…

2010 Oculus Editorial Calendar
Coming soon!

08.17.09 Call for Entries: Canstruction

11.15.09 Call for Papers: 48th International Making Cities Livable Conference on True Urbanism: Planning Healthy, and Child-Friendly Communities

Event: Welcome to the USA: Architecture and Human Rights at the Border
Location: Van Alen Institute, 07.30.09
Speakers: Teddy Cruz — Principal, Estudio Teddy Cruz, & Associate Professor of Public Culture and Urbanism, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego; Thomas Keenan, Ph.D. — Director, Human Rights Project, & Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Bard College
Organizers: Van Alen Institute; Bard College Human Rights Project

“Aesthetics of Crossing: Land Ports of Entry / Citizenship by Design” at Van Alen Institute.

Courtesy Van Alen Institute

For a nation that theoretically welcomes travelers with a lifted torch, the U.S. hasn’t exactly made its border stations a beacon of friendliness lately. With security concerns trumping other values since 9/11, even the efforts by the General Services Administration’s Design Excellence Program to bring progressive architecture to federal facilities have taken a back seat to a caution that borders (pardon the pun) on paranoia. As readers of the New York Times learned this week, the Department of Homeland Security recently ordered the removal of the large yellow lettering reading “United States” on the main building at a new station in Massena, NY, on the grounds that it might invite attack (See “At a Border Crossing, Security Trumps Openness, ” by Nicolai Ouroussoff, 07.26.09). NYC-based firm Smith-Miller + Hawkinson was successful at imbuing the station and grounds with an open, Post-Modern aesthetic, but whatever combination of transparency, functionality, and patriotism the architects strove for, in some eyes a border crossing is just a military checkpoint, its structures inevitably resounding with a carceral clank.

In this context, Estudio Teddy Cruz’s explorations of the complex spaces around the San Diego-Tijuana border, the world’s most heavily trafficked national juncture, offer particular insight into the nature and possibilities of our borders. Teddy Cruz is living proof that architectural thinking extends beyond the formal disciplines of design and construction. Perceiving essential continuities between spatial analyses and social interventions, he has treated the U.S.-Mexico border as a site of contrasting communities, and as a broadly conjoined region, rather than a simple barrier.

While governments on both sides, he says, display the “arbitrariness and stupidity of the nation-state” in imposing political force on the area’s complex economic flows and human energies, Cruz has designed spaces conducive to Tijuana’s informal economy, adapted features of shantytown construction to new uses, worked with community groups to help the underprivileged obtain equity, and advocated re-zonings that would legalize the unfairly deprecated spatial forms associated with Mexican culture, and reduce parcels (notoriously supersized on the San Diego side) to an affordable scale. As a designer, he favors functionality, humility, and exuberance; he laments that in recent years “I saw the whole avant-garde of architecture rushing to Dubai and China,” and he is impatient with debates “hijacked by the politics of style and form.”

The conversation took place in association with the Van Alen’s two-part exhibition “Aesthetics of Crossing,” combining Smith-Miller + Hawkinson’s “Land Ports of Entry,” a series of designs for two stations on the border with Canada (including the Massena site), with Kadambari Baxi and Irene Cheng’s “Citizenship by Design,” a close reading of the intricate details of different nations’ passports, rules, migration patterns, and identification technologies (including some rather invasive biometrics). Cruz debated with human-rights scholar Thomas Keenan, Ph.D., who offered constructive devil’s advocacy about the beneficial potential of aesthetic concerns and the civil protections that state power can sometimes provide. Shared Mexican and Californian interests in protecting threatened resources like the Tijuana Estuary, Keenan suggested, could give old rhetorics of power imbalance “a chance to get re-inscribed or rethought in environmental terms.” “I see you’re a romantic,” Cruz quipped, “as well as I am.”

For both Keenan and Cruz, as well as audience members (including Henry Smith-Miller, who supplied details on his firm’s tricky balancing act at Massena with Homeland Security, the Canadian government, and the independent Mohawk nation), the obstinacy of officials has not extinguished the optimism that border zones might evolve a few steps closer to what Smith-Miller considers their ideal condition: not being needed at all. Border containment is spectacularly futile. Some 45 tunnels have appeared beneath the southern border in the post-9/11 years alone, and an older site, La Casa del Túnel, is no longer a drug conduit: it’s been repurposed as an international arts center. “All I’m saying” of the border, Cruz summarized, “is, could it be something else? Could it be smarter?”

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: 18th Annual MAS Summer Boat Tour: Along the Historic Hudson
Location: Circle Line Boat, 07.29.09
Speakers: Francis Morrone — Historian, Journalist, Author, Lecturer, Teacher; Firth Haring Fabend — Author
Organizer: Municipal Art Society

Thunder, lightning, torrential rain didn’t stop a Circle Line boatload of architectural enthusiasts from enjoying the Municipal Art Society’s (MAS) 18th annual boat tour and celebration of the Hudson River’s 400th anniversary. “The river and the waterfront are never finished, they are a work in progress,” said Vin Cipolla, MAS president. The boat tour also gave a platform for Roland Lewis, president of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance (spawned by the MAS), to talk about continuing efforts to make the waterfront more user-friendly for all New Yorkers.

Architectural historian Francis Morrone took the mic once the tour was underway, noting some of the buildings and infrastructure the city has gained and lost. “I have a thing for power plants,” Morrone said as we passed the Hudson River Powerhouse, designed by McKim, Mead & White to provide current for the IRT, NYC’s first subway line. The Beaux-Arts structure is a symbol of the City Beautiful era. The fledgling MAS was a proponent of that movement then, and is ardently part of the campaign to preserve the powerhouse. Morrone expressed shock that the building wasn’t already a designated landmark, and considers it to be one of the 10 greatest buildings in the city. (See “Con Ed Puts Wrench in Powerhouse Landmark Efforts,” by Matt Frassica, in this issue for more on the efforts to landmark this building).

It was news to most in the audience that John D. Rockefeller bought significant portions of the New Jersey Palisades to preserve the unspoiled views seen from the Cloisters, which he also owned. Passing under the George Washington Bridge with lightning flashing was quite magnificent and perfect time to give homage to bridge engineer Othmar Ammann, who also built the Bayonne, Triborough/RFK, Bronx Whitestone, Throgs Neck, and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges — the latter four built under Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. Speaking of Moses, Morrone told a story about Moses, who while on the water in 1914, declared that the shoreline of Manhattan could be one of the most beautiful places in the world. He had his chance to do just that in the 1930 with his “Westside Improvement Project” that included the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway.

(L-R): Chalk drawings on the “Temple of Truth,” by Jennifer Upchurch, Chris Niederer, and Douglas Hart; “Agony of Man,” by Steel Neal made from scrap metal found at construction sites around the city; father and daughter wait for their golf ball at “(Hole) Zero,” by Betsy Alwin and Marget Long.

Jessica Sheridan

This year, Governors Island is thriving with creativity. In addition to an artist- and architect-designed 18-hole mini golf course, 16 large-scale interactive sculptures grace the field south of the McKim, Mead & White-designed Liggett Hall. Called City of Dreams, this small art park is the result of a call for designs and sculptures by the arts organization FIGMENT. While it may not be the Storm King Art Center, FIGMENT has tapped into this rare swath of open space in NYC, providing visitors with the chance to play with the product of some of the city’s emerging young talents.

The most successful aspect of the City of Dreams is its accessibility to the public, young and old. The mini golf course is everything but traditional, from a CNC-milled hole that resembles a guitar, to a replica of a rooftop, to a pigeon coop. Figuring out what the hole does is half the battle. Large-scale sculptures provide lounge space, a platform for a DJ, and large mirrors that one can manipulate to reflect the sun off of the adjacent building. One of the most poetic pieces called the “Temple of Truth,” by Jennifer Upchurch, Chris Niederer, and Douglas Hart, is a three-dimensional wooden eye. Made from prefabricated wood columns and chalkboard, the spiraling enclosure offers visitors a place to sit and scribble what’s on their minds. The structure becomes the backdrop for a communal art piece that washes away and is renewed with each rainfall.

The city is the stage for many events, but there are few outdoor arenas for emerging visual artists, and fewer still that provide space for artwork to remain installed for almost half the year. I hope FIGMENT continues to grow, expanding the program to take over more of the island’s open space. Governors Island could be a leading host to the latest in cutting-edge art, giving exposure to unknown artists and breathing new and refreshing life into public spaces.