May 23, 2013, 11:30 am
With its snowballing price tag (jumping from $2 billion to $3.8 billion, from four years of construction to six) and prominent position in the background of the new New York state driver’s license, Santiago Calatrava’s forthcoming World Trade Center PATH Terminal, also known as the Oculus, is becoming the stuff of legend. To help recoup the cost of this legend, however, the Port Authority of New York in New Jersey plans to rent out the massive space for, undoubtedly, the city’s poshest parties.
The New York Post reports that the interior of the Oculus (“so large it can fit two-and-a-half Grand Central Terminals inside”) is getting outfitted with its own leasing agent, real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, as well as a top-notch lighting and soundsystem so that top-earners can host their weddings, fundraisers, and exhibitions inside. That means in the future, you can point to your children’s driver’s licenses and tell them that that’s the place where you transferred during your commute, partied with Kanye, and married their father.
—Janelle Zara
photo courtesy the architects, via the New York Post
May 22, 2013, 1:43 pm
Newcomers to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair could best describe the gargantuan annual trade show as the design world’s fashion week. It’s got booths instead of runways and lasts four days instead of 10, but in many respects, it’s the same party, different crowd. The ICFF swept through New York for the 25th time this weekend with its satellite fairs, furniture fanatics, and cocktail hours in tow, providing the stage for thousands of new designs to make their global debut. And while it’s the innovators that help keep the ICFF relevant, on a purely human level (just as in fashion), it’s the shiny, pretty, comfortable things you want to take home with you. Here are just three of the pieces we fell in love with this weekend.
Neal Feay: Orange Void by Johanna Grawunder
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May 17, 2013, 12:15 pm
As behemoth design tradeshow International Contemporary Furniture Fair takes over the Javits Center this weekend, there’s going to be a flurry of satellite shows, talks, parties, and various other good times taking place throughout the city. They make up what is now known as New York Design Week, a bit of a misnomer since truly, it’s just one very long weekend. But the action packed into the next couple of days is so dense, you’re going to need help navigating. This is ARTINFO’s two cents about how you should spend Friday through Monday, whether you’re a seasoned design connoisseur or a curious newcomer.
A scene from Wanted Design 2012
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May 16, 2013, 2:44 pm
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design bestowed its first-ever Wheelwright Prize to Brooklyn-based architect, designer, and Pratt assistant professor Gia Wolf yesterday.
The award, an expanded offshoot of the 1935 Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship previously won by Harvard alums Paul Rudolph and I.M. Pei, has granted Wolf $100,000 to travel the globe in order to realize her two-year research proposal, entitled “Floating City: The Community-Based Architecture of Parade Floats.”
“Gia, whose work is all about imagination, has identified the parade float—in such cities as Rio de Janeiro, Nice, and Goa— as an ephemeral form of architecture both laden with cultural exuberance and remarkable for the communitarian organization it requires,” according to a statement by Rice School of Architecture professor and jury member Farès el-Dahdah. Wolff’s proposal to study floats as an architectural and cultural phenomenal was chosen from a pool of 231 submissions from 45 countries. After working at Acconci Studio, LOT-EK, Adjaye Associates, and Architecture Research Office (ARO), the young architect (only 35 years old) now leads her own practice. Its focus, according to Wolff, is “performance and its use of space and objects to convey narrative, form, and emotion,” a description dually applicable to the interplay between a float and a city.
— Janelle Zara
May 15, 2013, 12:40 pm
While the Miami Beach Convention Center is the place to be in South Beach when major cultural events — Art Basel Miami Beach, for example — are in town, for the most part it sits as a “dead zone,” according to Rem Koolhaas, who says its “architecture is so harsh that instead of a positive effect it has a negative effect.” Having taken strides to correct the problem, the city is now in the wildly fortunate position of having Koolhaas’s Office of Metropolitan Architecture and Bjarke Ingels’ eponymous firm duke it out to redevelop the convention center’s 52-acre lot.
A rendering of BIG’s new Miami Beach Convention Center
Opening the site to year-round public use, designs for its planned reincarnation feature an expanded convention center, a new 800-room hotel, and an overhaul of the much-loved Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater.
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May 11, 2013, 8:00 am
Snarkitecture, “Slice,” 2013, at Grey Area Collective.1 booth
Brooklyn-based design studio Snarkitecture, founded by art and architecture hybrids Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham, has an apparent fascination with the Ping-Pong ball. After featuring the familiar white sphere in its set designs and performance pieces, the firm is finally putting their balls to their intended use today during the Collective Design fair. From 1 to 3 p.m., various art world athletes — most notably Italian design legend Gaetano Pesce — are gathering at Pier 57 for a Ping-Pong tournament emceed by Phillips de Pury auctioneer CK Swett (whose auctioneering skills are sure to get the adrenaline flowing). The centerpiece Snarkitecture’s newly designed “Slice,” an all-black Ping-Pong table commission by Grey Area. The gallery will be selling the table at the fair in an edition of 10. Interested players should email info@shopgreyarea.com.
— Janelle Zara
May 10, 2013, 3:16 pm
“DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls,” reads a red banner at the top of Defcad, the filesharing website run by Defense Distributed, the Texas-based non-profit best known for actively disseminating designs for 3-D printed guns. “Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”
While Defense Distributed posted a similar announcement on April Fools’ Day, this instance appears entirely real. The news comes only days after Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson released footage of himself successfully shooting the world’s first entirely 3-D printed gun (save its single metal pin), The Liberator. Although the State Department was quick to react, the gun’s blueprints had reportedly already been downloaded 100,000 times.
The government’s letter to Wilson is available in its entirety on BetaBeat.
— Janelle Zara
May 10, 2013, 2:49 pm
Do you ever wonder what the brilliantly avant-garde put on when they’re in front of the DVD player? Last night at the Morgan Library during Le Conversazioni, a film discussion series moderated by Italian critic Antonio Monda, Marina Abramović and Daniel Libeskind met to discuss and share the films they’ve found to be the most impressionable in their lives. Enlightening as it was, it was an unquestionably dark romp through the freaky recesses of the Criterion Collection, much to the chagrin of the genteel Murray Hill audience (although we weren’t that surprised, given the generally provocative nature of their respective work).
© Mario Bucolo, PhotoSpotLand.
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May 10, 2013, 12:19 pm
What happens at Studio 54 stays at Studio 54, although club co-founder Steve Rubell learned that the hard way. At the height of the nightclub’s popularity, one offhand comment on how only the Mafia could possibly be more making more money landed Rubell in prison for tax evasion in 1980.
An average night out: Warhol with Calvin Klein, a teenage Brooke Shields, and Steve Rubell by Adam Scull, 1981
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