It's easy to find the Dutch booths at the big design shows. Just follow the smirks. At least that's what people are fond of saying about them. The American design press often describes the Dutch design community as a bunch of happy pranksters, but that description is too glib and not entirely accurate.
The Dutch tend to inhabit a niche between art and design, and like any conceptual artists their work contains layers of irony. Their work is often funny, but not ha-ha funny. It's more like a wry posture that prods us to think about materials, tradition, comfort and sustainability. Example: Tajo Remy's rag chair (above) made from 15 bags of recycled rags.
This week marked the unveling of the New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion on the southern tip of Manhattan in Battery Park City, celebrating the arrival of Dutch settlers 400 years ago. Although the structure is shaped like a windmill when viewed from above, designer Ben Van Berkel denies having any Dutch imagery in mind. Is he serious? Or is this an example of signature Dutch tongue-in-cheek wit?
Also launching this weekend to commemorate four centuries of Dutch influence in New York, Droog, the Dutch design collective, will take over Governors Island, a decommissioned Coast Guard base in New York harbor. The promotional image (above) pokes gently at the first Dutch invasion.
It turns out that Governors Island is already a bit of a Dutch outpost. Two years ago the city hired the Dutch landscape firm West 8 to turn the island's flat grassy fields into undulating hills and marshes traversed by looping paths. This summer visitors can rent wooden bikes designed by West 8 (above).
And for the next two weekends (September 11 to 13 and September 19 to 21) Droog will hold a festival called "Pioneers of Change" in and around the former officers quarters with a robotic tickling salon and a carpet knitted with six-foot-long needles (check out more details from our preview). What makes the event all the more appealing is that it takes place within view of Wall Street.
By coincidence, the PaceWildenstein Gallery will hold a dinner Friday night for architect Maya Lin in the Admiral's House, the island's most imposing structure. So there may be an unplanned after-hours meeting of American and Dutch designers, at least until the last ferry leaves at 10:30 pm.
At least something's getting built at the lower tip of Manhattan.
To mark the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival in Manhattan, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands today unveiled an unfinished pavilion at Battery Park, where the Dutch established the colony of New Amsterdam (though you're more likely to know the spot as the entrance to the Staten Island ferry terminal.)
The New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion was designed by Ben Van Berkel of UNStudio, an Amsterdam architect who was a finalist in the World Trade Center competition a mile to the north. The unveiling of today's design must be vindicating, given the quagmire at Ground Zero and the seemingly intractable politics and budget issues delaying the nearby transit hub by Santiago Calatrava.
When it opens in December, the pavilion will stand on a 5,000-square-foot stone platform--or plein, to use the Dutch term-- with seating and tables designed by Van Berkel. Walkways will be engraved with maps of New Amsterdam and quotes from "The Island at the Center of the World," a history of New Amsterdam by Russell Shorto. At the center will stand a pavilion of fiberglass-covered wood and fritted-glass where visitors can buy snacks and consult a map. The structure is shaped like a windmill or the petals of a tulip, though Van Berkel denies having any Dutch imagery in mind. "My only intention was to create a crossing point for 70,000 daily commuters," he said, "and to link this location to its past and its future. I wanted it to be uplifting--a park that would look to the future."
It's a likable little landmark, but does New York really need yet another visitor's center? A more fitting homage to the city's Dutch heritage already lies all along the Battery where the Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf has over the past five years transformed a downtrodden park with London plane trees and swaths of prairie and woodland perennials.
As surely as weighty new catalogues from Design Within Reach and Ikea land with a thump at your door, the fall design season awaits on the far side of Labor Day. This is the customary moment for design editors to preview fall events. The predictions and appraisals have added intrigue after a year freighted with uncertainty. It's hard to gauge the design field during the dog days of summer. So the weeks ahead will be a test: with the economy mustering itself, will design pick up where it left off a year ago, or will it take off in new directions. The clue may lie in these seven events:
The Paris design show is the first wet, red finger to the wind. Architecture is slow to register culture changes because the design and construction plays out over years. Smale-scale design, like tabletop items and textiles, is fare more responsive, and that's what goes on display next week at Maison et Objet, the Paris design show. Prediction: designs with hive-like interchangeable modules, like the Flux lamp by Jonas Klein (above), will be a conspicuous trend. September 5 to September 9.
Droog takes over Governor's Island. To mark the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival in New York, the Dutch design collective Droog will stage a 10-day festival of design, fashion and architecture on Governor's Island, a decommissioned Coast Guard station in New York Harbor. Droog is a pranksterish outfit with a conceptual bent, and true to form their plans include carpets knitted with six-foot long needles and a cafe with embroidered menus and hand-sewn teabags. September 11 to September 20.
Tom Dixon opens a showroom. Tom Dixon almost singlehandedly put British design back in the conversation, and he will solidify his place as that country's most influential designer by opening a showroom for his entire collection, at the Wharf building, during the London design festival.September 24.
Interior design gets seriously nostalgic. The Nineties fascination with plastic blobby forms is giving way to materials and textures that our great grandparents favored--deep colors, shiny woods, furs, leather and dark metals. That's the thesis presented by Eva Hagberg in her book Dark Nostalgia, which shows 26 idealized versions of the past created David Rockwell,Roman & Williams, and Julian Schnabel, among others. Published September 29.
Architects rethink what to do with cars. Just as the car industry faces great changes, so too does the car-centric design of our homes and cities. Cars and the built environment are the subject of "House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage" at the National Building Museum in Washington. October 17 to July 11.
Ireland becomes a design force. Ireland's unlikely transformation over the past ten years into an economic powerhouse is playing out in the field of architecture and design. Young designers like Boyd Cody and Dominic Stevens who might have once left the country to pursue careers in London and New York are now opening sudios in Dublin and other Irish cities and pursuing commissions from the country's wealthy new patrons. Is Ireland turning into a design center? Some of the country's best new work is shown in Full Irish: New Architecture in Ireland by Sarah A. Lappin. Published November 3.
Winka Dubbeldam will design a new Bungalow 8. What does cool look like now? Amy Sacco, founder of Bungalow 8, the tiny lounge with x-large doormen, is expanding to Amsterdam with a new place designed by Sacco's friend Winka Dubbeldam (above), a Dutch-born architect who cuts a glamorous figure in Manhattan's design circles. No design yet, tropical modern would be the default mode. But who knows? Whatever it is, you can be sure it will reflect interior design's coming mood. Late November.
Twelve years ago the term "Bilbao effect" was coined in response to the swarms descending on the Spanish city of Bilbao--previously known as the Pittsburgh of Spain--to see the titanium swirls built by Frank Gehry for the Guggenheim Museum. Until then most of us had never heard of Bilbao; we weren't even sure how to pronounce it. But in its first year the Guggenheim logged 100,000 visitors. Since then it has clocked close to a million a year, and its annual impact on the local economy is worth about $147 million.
Now parks may be replacing culture as the design destination of the day. The High Line, a half-mile stretch of elevated highway landscaped after years of abandonment, opened in the West Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan this summer to a delirious response. More than half a million people visited the High Line over its first two months. New York officials estimate that the park will bring the city $900 million in revenue over the next 30 years.
"The surge in development spurred by the High Line is the latest exhibit in the growing stack of evidence that having beautiful, well-maintained parks is much more than a nice amenity cities can ignore when times are hard," Anne Schwartz wrote at the Gotham Gazette.
Even before the High Line opened in June a corridor of new residential towers and offices had gathered around it, representing a total of $4 billion in private investment. The new developments includes a 21-story residential tower, known as "the Vision Machine," designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and a condo complex by Annabelle Selldorf. The new Standard Hotel by the Polshek Partnership straddles the High Line, and at the south end a branch of the Whitney Museum by Renzo Piano is planned for 2012.
The High Line isn't the only new park to draw a crowd. Two miles to the north the city closed off traffic on two sections of Broadway, creating a public pedestrian space around Times Square initially furnished with 376 beach chairs. As far as I know, nobody has studied the drawing power of the new public space, or its financial benefit, and it might be hard to analyze given the hoardes that pass through Times Square. But it's clear that the instant park, like the High Line, had the kind of gleeful public sensation that a few years ago would have been reserved for the opening of museums and other cultural institutions.
The new Times Square may not be quantifiable, but the American Planning Association is studying the economic benefits of other open spaces and parks around the country: A greenbelt in a Boulder neighborhood adds $500,000 in property tax revenue annually, for example, and the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland stimulates $254 million annually in park-related purchases, $74 million of which is spent in the local East Bay economy.
We may now be returning to the conviction that Frederick Law Olmsted started with 150 years ago: To justify the expense of Central Park, he charted the value of real-estate fronting the park Between 1856 and 1873. He found that over that period property adjacent to the park increased in value by $209 million.
Believe it or not, there is no law that forbids the use of alternative currencies. Printing money sounds like a preposterous proposition but the banking systems wobble has resulted in a flurry of new dollars going into circulation. You might think of them as the indie version of the old fashioned greenback.
So far the alternative currencies have been confined to small geographical areas like Ithaca, N.Y. (above), and the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. Each area has its own currency in circulation, and it's accepted in a critical mass of local stores. And a group of artists is launching a Brooklyndollar later this year.
Can an industry have its own currency too? We're about to find out: Lisa Tse, a London-based designer and brand consultant, designed her own $100 bills for distribution among clients and friends. They "represent the commercial value design affords, where creative thinking plays an integral part in any successful business strategy."
Could this be the architecture equivalent of Tupac versus Biggie?
Last Sunday Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for The New York Times, published an essay (“As Heroes Disappear, the City Nees More”) lamenting the 1970s heyday when Charles Gwathmey, who died earlier this month, and the rest of the so-called New York Five made New York a center of modernist discourse.
More than halfway through the piece he offers this gobsmacking assertion: since the days of the New York Five Los Angeles has produced two generations of architects “that has no real equivalent in New York.” Ourossoff, who was previously the architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times, is referring to the usual L.A. suspects--Thom Mayne, Frank Gehry, Eric Owen Moss (his Beehive office complex is shown above), Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, among others.
Not content to leave it at that, Ourossoff then writes that “the most important works of contemporary architecture to rise in New York over the past decade...were designed not by New Yorkers but by Angelenos, a Japanese woman and a Frenchman” He’s alluding to Gehry’s IAC headquarters, Mayne’s Cooper Union (above) building, Sanaa’s New Museum and Jean Nouvel’s tower going up in Chelsea.
To be sure, there’s a lot to admire in these architects, but to dismiss the hotbed of New York designers seems not just specious but lazy. This morning Brooklyn architect Andy Bernheimer delivered a vigorous brushback with an open letter posted on Design Observer in which he cites Alexander Gorlin,Leven Betts, Lewis-Tsurumaki-Lewis (their Bornhuetter Hall at the College of Wooser is above) and Leroy Street Studio as examples of young New York firms exploring design and contemporary life in all its complexity without the celebrity posturing customary from the Richard Meier set. “The work and teachings of many of my colleagues is mostly lacking in self-promotion but overflowing with substance,” Bernheimer writes. “This is what makes them influential and, at times, heroic. But it is also, perhaps, what makes them far less visible to Mr. Ourosoff. He should be looking more closely.”
New York might actually have been better off without Ouroussoff’s architectural heroes, and the star system that produced them. The architects of Gwathmey’s generation too often degraded the city fabric by inserting glass towers without regard to context or proportion. Too much neighborhood character was sacrificed on behalf of development disguised as architectural expression. Does Ourosoff really think that young New York architects should aspire to build things like the 21-story luxury condo (above) with blue-green reflective glass that Gwathmey preposterously positioned above Astor Place?
For more than a decade we lived in a culture of real-estate ambition as up-ticking values made every house a potential nest egg. God help us, we were a nation of bidders and flippers consumed by balloon mortgages, rate locks and transfer taxes.
Now that Americans are resigned to staying put for a while, will they spend more on renovating and refurnishing their existing homes? A $20 million ad campaign launched yesterday by Ogilvy & Mather urges Americans to think of their homes as the focus of their emotional lives, if no longer their financial lives, and to spend accordingly. "Things that fill our home also fulfill us," an online version of the ad states. "They become who we are. Giving us joy. Providing us with comfort." A print version (above), which appears in Metropolitan Home and Elle Decor, shows a cute family cuddling on a couch. A pricetag affixed to the couch says: "22 percent cotton, 13 percent giggles, 15 percent group hugs, 11 percent afternoon naps."
The message: investing in family bonding is not luxury. Maybe not, but spending on couches, drapes and other furnishings is considered a leading economic indicator precisely because it is so discretionary. That new end table is among the first items deferred when the economy sours, and among the last to come back during a recovery. Furniture spending generally trails housing by six to nine months, according to Warren Shoulberg, editor-in-chief of HFN, a trade magazine. That means any upswing is still six months off. Sales of home furnishings fell 12.9% over the last year, and they're still dropping. Sales were down .9% in July from June, according to the Commerce Department.
Behind the ad lies a bit of industry intrigue. For decades the American furniture business has been based in High Point, North Carolina, where much of it was once (but no longer) manufactured. But over the past four years the momentum has shifted to the flamboyant World Market Center (above), a 1.3-million-square-foot showroom and exhibition space in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas group commissioned the ad campaign, which amounts to a declaration that it now speaks for the industry. "None of the individual companies has the ability to do something like this on their own so Las Vegas just stepped up and did it," Shoulberg said. "They're clearly trying to one-up High Point with this."
If the dozen most famous architects had gathered for a group portrait five years ago it would have looked like a fraternity of pasty white men from New York, Los Angeles and London. Picture the clubby assembly smiling for the Leica: Richard Meier, Michael Graves,Frank Gehry, and Robert A.M. Stern, seated in the front row with Norman Foster, Steven Holl and Richard Rogers standing behind.
That group bagged the lion's share of high-profile institutional projects--museums, libraries, federal courthouses--over the past few decades in part because they delivered a predictable level of design with minimal risk to the institution. Who could object to a museum by Gehry or a library by Graves? Simmons Hall at MIT (above) by Steven Holl, for example, was beset with lighting and circulation problems, but the architect's name inoculated it against any sever criticism of its performance.
After their long domination, architecture's lily-white cohort may finally e edging off the stage, at least for now. As the focus of design shifts from high-budget icons to the needs of less privileged communities around the world, a diverse group of young architects like Carin Smuts from South Africa and Diébédo Francis Kéré from the West African country of Burkina Faso are gaining notice. (The school Kéré designed for his hometown of Gando is above.) Though many were trained in Harvard or Yale, the newcomers are based in India, the Far East, South America and other archipelagos of design, and they are more concerned with problem-solving and sustainability than making iconic forms for powerful clients.
A sampling of this scattered group convened this month at a villa in Jyväskylä, Finland, for a symposium on what organizers at the Alvar Aalto Academy called "Edge-Paracentric Architecture", or architecture that lies outside the mainstream. So what are the characteristics of the new Edge architecture? Many of its partisans use contemporary design in a ways that supports craft and locally sourced materials. Bijoy Bain of Studio Mumbai, for example, created the house shown above on the Arabian Sea using Ain, a local hardwood, and traditional Indian interlocking joinery.
Unlike the museums and other institutional buildings the old boys imposed on communities--often with scant relationship to the surroundings--the new Edge architecture is designed from the ground up. In fact, the line between architect and citizenry can be almost indistinguishable. Patama Roonrakwit of Thailand, for example, invites locals to help her map the site and develop schemes for the structures in that country's poorest neighborhoods, like the temporary shelter in Chianmai shown above.
Five years ago we all gushed and oohed over how the Internet had shrunk the world, bringingMoscow as close as Massachusetts. In reaction against growing globalism we now cebrate the local: we buy carrots from nearby farms, and the greenest among us buy furnishings made from local materials. Could the new localism lead to local currencies, as well?
Douglas Ruskoff, author of Life Inc.,a condemnation of corporate culture published in June, advocates the use of local currencies as a way of preventing national companies from sapping value from neighborhoods without reciprocating. “... if you start using alternative currency for your entertainment activities, you are supporting your community rather than having your resources drained to Hollywood or some DVD manufacturer or liquor distributor,” he told Flavorpill. By way of inspiration, Flavorpill posted a handful of its favorite notes, including the Cook Island dollars shown above.
There is apparently no law forbidding the use of alternative currencies. The Ithaca Hours (above) has been used by more than 500 businesses in Ithaca, N.Y., since 1991.
Brooklyn may be the next to come up with its own currency. Last month, seven artists calling themselves the Brooklyn Torch Project put out a call for graphics to be used in a new paper currency that would provide “Brooklynites with a tangible medium of exchange that will circulate and support the resident community.” According to The New York Daily News the group has received designs that would replace the traditional presidential portrait with a kielbasa, a mustache, a woman holding a finger to her lips, an ice cream cone and a man with lightning bolts shooting out of his eyes. No word on when a final selection will be made. In the meantime, Daily Intel nominated the above design featuring Brooklyn writer Jonathan Safran Foer.
As Alison Arieff pointed out last month in her blog for The New York Times, good design brings clarity out of confusion. Given the chaos of our financial lives, the troubled national currency, which assumed its basic form in the Great Depression, is ripe for reworking. A brand consultant named Richard Smith held an online competition for a redesign the summer. The submissions can be seen here. The winning design, by Kyle R. Thompson, is above.
Five years ago, we all gushed and oohed over how the Internet had shrunk the world, bringing Moscow as close as Massachusetts. Now, in reaction against growing globalism, we celebrate the local, buying carrots from nearby farms, and furnishings made from local materials. Local currencies are emerging as well.
Hyper-localized currencies have been popping ever since the
economy went sour--not surprising, since local currencies also gained
popularity during the Great Depression. Five local Massachusetts banks have developed Berkshares (above)--there are 185,000
paper notes are already in circulation--each of which is designed by a local artist. California's Humboldt County
has distributed $130,000 in currency since 2005, and Canada's Toronto Dollar (below) moved $90,000 worth of currency in the past year.
Douglas Ruskoff, author of Life Inc.,a condemnation of corporate culture published in June, advocates the use of local currencies as a way of preventing national companies from sapping value from neighborhoods without reciprocating. "... if you start using alternative currency for your entertainment activities, you are supporting your community rather than having your resources drained to Hollywood or some DVD manufacturer or liquor distributor," he told Flavorpill.
There is no law forbidding the use of alternative currencies. The Ithaca Hours (above) has been used by more than 500 businesses in Ithaca, NewYork, since 1991.
Brooklyn may be the next to come up with its own currency. Last month, seven artists calling themselves the Brooklyn Torch Project put out a call for graphics to be used in a new paper currency that would provide "Brooklynites with a tangible medium of exchange that will circulate and support the resident community." According to The New York Daily News the group has received designs that would replace the traditional presidential portrait with a kielbasa, a mustache, a woman holding a finger to her lips, an ice cream cone and a man with lightning bolts shooting out of his eyes. No word on when a final selection will be made. In the meantime, Daily Intel nominated the above design featuring Brooklyn writer Jonathan Safran Foer.
As Alison Arieff pointed out last month in her blog for The New York Times, good design brings clarity out of confusion. Given the chaos of our financial lives, the troubled national currency, which assumed its basic form in the Great Depression, is ripe for reworking. A brand consultant named Richard Smith held an online competition for a redesign the summer. The submissions can be seen here. The winning design, by Kyle R. Thompson, is above.
