Archive for the 'Architecture' Category
Friday, June 18th, 2010
With Move, New Challenges for Whitney
(Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Architects via NY Times)
In his New York Times piece today, Nicolai Ouroussoff provides an insightful, if somewhat critical overview of the Whitney’s proposed design for its new location in New York’s meatpacking district. The article comes weeks after the museum’s board officially announced plans to break ground next year on their future downtown home, with completion targeted for 2015. With construction prices at a long-time low and its endowment hit hard by the economic downturn, the museum has given architect Renzo Piano the task of trimming costs and meeting crucial building deadlines, before prices rise back to pre-recession levels.
While acknowledging the necessity to do so, Ouroussoff skeptically questions what the final result of such cutbacks in both dollars and time will be. Noting that few institutions’ identities are as closely linked to their physical structures as the Whitney’s is to its original Marcel Breuer building, Ouroussoff challenges the museum and its architect to succeed at making sure the new location “rise at least to the same level as the original building as a place to view art,” warning “Anything less will not only be a shame for the city, but a defining emblem of failure for the Whitney.”
A rendering of the new Whitney, viewed from Washington and Ganesvoort Streets, with the High Line shown in the foreground. (Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Architects via NY Times)
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Inside Out :: Ernesto Neto’s Largest Installation Opens in London
Ernesto Neto – anthropodino, 2009, commissioned for the Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2009 (Image: James Ewing via)
In what is being billed as his most ambitious exhibition to date, Brazilian sculpture artist Ernesto Neto will open a new site specific, all-encompasing environment at London’s Southbank Centre Hayward Gallery this Saturday, June 19. Viewers will act as participants, exploring a sequence of connected spaces that merge sculpture and architecture, at times recalling biological systems. For this new exhibition, Neto will create his first outdoor installations, including a sculptural pool that visitors will be allowed to enter.
Neto’s installation is part of The New Décor, an international survey of some 30 contemporary artists whose whose work explores interior design as a means of engaging with changes in contemporary culture.
Ernesto Neto – The Edges of the World / The New Decor
July 19 – September 5
The Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
KAWS + Wonderwall Designing New Brooklyn Studio
Image © Complex
Complex has just published a new interview with KAWS, where the artist speaks of a new Brooklyn studio being designed with Masamichi Katayama, founder of Wonderwall Inc., who are highly regarded for retail design including Uniqlo, Bathing Ape, Marc Jacobs, and Colette stores.