loud paper

processors

Last fall, I was working on a project that taught me all the intricate wordage of algorithmic and parametric design. My head was packed full of patterning processes, finite element analysis, and CNC routers. So, when I stumbled across Airspace, a multi-use building in Tokyo with a vine-like façade designed by Thom Faulders, Hajime Masubuchi of Studio M, and Sean Ahlquist of Proces2, I was primed and ready to parse jargon with the architects.

Thom, who is one of the sharpest tacks in the wall, knows his way around that dialogue, but thankfully, wanted to talk about the project in terms of design and process, not technique. The result is Drawn Together, a feature in the March/April issue of Azure magazine. My piece focuses on the nature of collaborative practice and what happens when three minds with three very different design sensibilities come together. Does that sentence sound like that an architectural version of the Real World? No cat fights with Airspace, just a cool intersection of clean modernism and digital tools.

Also, Thom's posted on his site a great collection of images of the process and all the iterations that went into the facade.

wig in a box

Meret Oppenheim. (Swiss, 1913-1985). Object. Paris 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, cup 4 3/8" (10.9 cm) in diameter; saucer 9 3/8" (23.7 cm) in diameter; spoon 8" (20.2 cm) long, overall height 2 7/8" (7.3 cm). Purchase. © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich

Object (1936), Meret Oppenheim’s fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, is a beacon. Before I moved to New York City, I used to visit the Dada artwork like an old friend. The piece puzzled me when I was a kid, taken to MoMA because of my precocious interest in art, but I liked it. Deep into an undergraduate Dada phase, I felt empowered by its perverse feminine wiles. Later, with the opening of the new building, it was heartening to find the seventy-year old object still winking in the design section. So it was really no surprise that when furry and hairy pieces showed up in Design and the Elastic Mind, MoMA’s very strong, science fair roundup of geek designs, the artwork quickly sprung to mind.

Curators Paula Antonelli and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini are clearly interested in the body, or at the very least, the human scale. The show, which opens on the 24th, is broken into sections by scale: nano, human, and global. While the nano section features Rules of Six, a nice installation by it-boys Aranda Lasch, and various data mapping projects are represented in the global section, it is the human scale that dominates with a cheeky, fleshy attitude.

I snapped a few pics at yesterday's press preview:

Epidermits Interactive Pet from the Cautionary Visions project, model, 2006, Stuart Karten Design

Necklace, 1995 and Chocolate Nipples, 1995-2003, Ana Mir, Emiliana Design Studio

Chest Hair Curler from the Accessories for Lonely Men Project, 2001, Noam Toran

Hair Alarm Clock from the Accessories for Lonely Men Project, 2001, Noam Toran

…And a couple more hirsute things which I need to go back and identify.

I heart agriculture culture

Via Pedal Tractors

When Work AC’s project Public Farm 1 was named the winner of the Young Architects Program at P.S.1, it made me think that agriculture would be the next big architectural meme. (A theme that’s been working through the art world for a some time now. In 2006, I wrote on artist/farmer Matthew Moore.)

Clearly, farming is in the air. This week the wise folk at CUP staged a discussion between Futurefarmer Amy Franceschini (archived loud paper interview here) and Michael Hurwitz, director of New York’s Greenmarket program. Today Pruned has a great round up of aggie-inspired art and architecture. Included is Edible Estates, the project by architect and artist Fritz Haeg that replaces the domestic front lawn with victory gardens.  I look out at the vacant lot outside my window and dream of summer tomatoes.

blue wednesday

Wow by Studio Luz

I’ve been slogging through back-to-back deadlines (a whole range of fun stuff: spray on clothing, productive buildings, sci-fi cabins), so I’ve been a little late in discovering the last round of projects online. I am happy to report that Azure magazine relaunched their website and it is just as pretty as the hard copy. Now, all sorts of content is perusable, including a couple short pieces I wrote for their Forms and Function section. I took a look at Steven Holl’s renovation of New York University's department of philosophy and I chatted with Bernard Tschumi about his design for Blue, the newish, blueish tower gracing the LSE skyline. (It seems perverse to use that word in relation to such a historically unassuming nabe.)

Elsewhere, Form magazine posted a PDF of the first two pages of my profile of Boston-based Studio Luz. While the actual piece is longer, you can see a few pics of their latest project, Doma, a 1,200-square foot package store (or liquor boutique.) Incidentally, the On the Cheap issue was the last one edited by the amazingly kick ass Jennifer Caterino. I'll certainly miss working with her.

monkey see

When ripening, bananas don’t really smell like bananas. Instead they have an elusive, heady, ozone smell. (Maybe it’s the smell of ethylene—bananas have a higher concentration of that gas than other, rounder, fruits.) I mention this, not as a gratuitous phallic food reference, but because it explains why I didn’t realize that the new Stefan Sagmeister exhibition, Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, contained a wall of the elongated, green, yellowing, soon-to-be-brown-and-attracting-fruit-flies, produce.

After walking past the reception desk at Deitch Projects, and checking out the title work, Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, an installation of blank note pads waiting to be filled, I headed into the larger gallery. My nose picked up the sweet, chemical odor before my gaze traveled over to the 10,000 bananas. The piece, Self-confidence Produces Fine Results, spells out those words in green and yellow fruit: The sampler slogan, already obscured, as the unripe font turned golden in the warm room.

The things the graphic designer has learned in his life so far are simple truisms done up in quirky drag, but I’ve always liked this growing collection. Sagmeister transforms near-clichés into aphorisms that tap into how a creative mind works. 43 folders has the entire list here. Picking a favorite is tough. Today it is “Having guts always works out for me.” I am not sure it always holds true, but it is something to live up to. I’ll abide by the banana billboard as well.

steal this couch

Ikea has long tried to make a shopper feel at home. The showroom tableaux feature books and supposedly comfy sofas. Don’t you just want to crawl under the crumpled duvet on one of the unmade beds and eat meatballs? When I was teaching a class entitled Total Design, which explored the integration of interior design and identity, I used to send my students to the blue and gold fortress and ask them to document the areas of slippage. The places contrived to let a buyer project herself into the space.

Guy Ben-Ner took it further. He moved in.

Stealing Beauty, now on view at Postmasters Gallery, is a eighteen-minute video that depicts Ben-Ner, his wife, and kids living in Ikea. It was shot without permission at numerous stores around New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv. Everyday life is preserved and exposed: sleeping, eating, TV watching, email checking. Family values are both banal and consumable.

I have yet to make it to the gallery, but New York magazine has some fine coverage:

Ben-Ner’s film, while a bit inert and drawn-out, takes cues from Buster Keaton, Rube Goldberg, John Cage, vaudeville, Frederic Engels, and Edward Said. Shots are well-planned but simple, chance dictates results, sight gags reign, identity politics are ever present. In the opening scene, we watch the straight-faced beanpole Ben-Ner duck behind a shower curtain and begin to bathe. Ben-Ner’s wife peers into the shower and catches him masturbating. He throws on a robe and dashes out, protesting that he was only washing. His son and daughter enter as Ben-Ner pours a drink (we hear liquid, but nothing comes out of the pitcher). Ben-Ner’s wife tells him that his children have been misbehaving. He lectures the kids, spouting pseudo-Marxist bromides like “the family stops the property from leaking out,” holding forth on the value of objects, commodities, and the means of production. The son asks, “Is Mom private property?” and the kids write a manifesto of statements like “Children of the world, unite.” If Air America ran after-school specials, they’d sound like this.

Film clips via Structural Patterns.