Displaying items by tag: design

A low-lying acrylic box glows in the woods outside Madrid like a futuristic polytunnel. Half submerged in the forest floor, it is an unlikely container in which to find an architecture office – particularly one that’s working on projects from Stockholm to Los Angeles. But then Selgas Cano, the Spanish firm chosen to design next year’s Serpentine Gallery summer pavilion, are no ordinary architects.

“We think nature should take precedence over architecture,” says José Selgas, who founded the practice with his wife, Lucía Cano, in 1998. “We try to hide the presence of our architecture as much as possible. In fact, people are sometimes upset when we finish a project because they are expecting something more visible.”

The Guggenheim has announced the finalists in the competition to design Guggenheim Helsinki, whittling down the entrants from a record-breaking 1,715 submissions to just six. Representing both emerging and established practices with offices in seven countries, the shortlisted entries show a variety of responses to the challenge of creating a world-class museum.

“The final shortlist encompasses a number of different scenarios: from schemes which are more experimental in engaging with the program and whose outward form will only emerge in the second phase, to ones that might seem more resolved from the outside but whose programmatic concept will only evolve fully in the second phase,” notes the jury’s official statement.

“I didn’t think in a million years that something like this was gonna happen in my life,” said Lee Yazzie, a famed Navajo jeweler, as he stood next to an exhibit of his and his family’s jewelry work at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in New York. Yazzie, who has worked as a silversmith since the late 1960’s said that, as he departed for New York, he told people back home that he would only believe what was happening when he would see it.

“Glittering World: the Navajo Jewelry of the Yazzie Family” is a retrospective into the decades-long work of the Gallup, New Mexico, family in the intricate art of Navajo jewelry design.

New York’s Collective Design, an innovative fair that presents a curated selection of 20th-century and contemporary design, has released a handful of details about its 2015 edition. The upcoming fair will take place at a new location, Skylight Clarkson Square, from May 13 through May 17. Located in Manhattan’s design-forward SoHo neighborhood, Skylight boasts 60,000-square-feet of raw event space. The 2014 edition of Collective Design was held at Moynihan Station in Midtown.

Fair organizers have also announced a portion of the exhibitor line-up, which features a global roster of emerging and established galleries.

Over the last few years, Culture Shed, the visual- and performing-arts institution planned for the Far West Side of Manhattan, has been nurtured by prominent designers (Elizabeth Diller and David Rockwell); substantial city support ($75 million); and influential advocates (former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his deputy, Daniel L. Doctoroff). Hanging over the project was always a question: Who is going to run it?

Now there is an answer: Alex Poots has been named artistic director and chief executive. 

Iris van Herpen’s work has always pushed the boundaries of art and fashion, being so often more conceptual than wearable, so it seems fitting that her oeuvre will soon be presented stateside in an exhibition.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta announced November 20 that it will exhibit the work of the cutting-edge Dutch fashion designer, who was the first to successfully embrace 3D-printed fashion, and was most recently inspired by the Large Hadron Collider for her Spring-Summer 2015 ready-to-wear collection.

The Guggenheim has named architect and scholar Troy Conrad Therrien as Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives. As the first person to hold this position, Therrien will contribute to the development of the museum’s engagement with architecture, design, technology, and urban studies, in addition to providing leadership on select new projects under the direction of the Chief Curator and the Director’s Office.

The Guggenheim's role in architecture has always been one of patronage, commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright to design its landmark building in New York City and Frank Gehry to design the celebrated Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which extended the institution's global constellation of museums.

A new arts center will make its Miami Beach debut at 32nd Street and Collins Avenue in December 2015. Founded by Alan Faena, an Argentine hotelier and real estate developer, the 50,000-square-foot Faena Forum will be dedicated to the development of the area’s cultural programming, including the arts, urbanism, politics, science, and technology.

Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the center will be a partner institution to Argentina’s Faena Arts Center Buenos Aires. Ximena Caminos, the executive director of the Faena Arts Center Buenos Aires, will work with an advisory committee of arts professionals to fine-tune the Faena Forum’s mission and develop programs that will help it reach its goal of fostering dialogue about Latin American cultural practices in the United States.

The Smithsonian Institution has announced the details of a new $2 billion plan to renovate the area of museums and gardens in its South Mall campus, including a “revitalization” of the Castle, its administrative headquarters.

Under the design by the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, new entrances will be installed and connections made between the museums and gardens along Independence Avenue, SW, from Seventh to 12th Streets.

Back in 2013, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, acquired Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman Wilson House from Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, a husband-and-wife architect-designer team. The only catch was that the house was located in Millstone, New Jersey. Staff at the Crystal Bridges quickly got to work devising a plan to disassemble, transport, and rebuild the house on the museum’s sprawling 120-acre campus. After months of preparation, The Art Newspaper reports that the structure’s first posts are due to be raised this month.

Wright designed the Bachman Wilson House for Abraham Wilson and his wife Gloria Bachman, whose brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice in the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin Fellowship, in 1954. Perched on a bank of the Millstone River, the house was subject to repeated flooding over the decades as the river and surrounding landscape continued to encroach on the glass-and-mahogany structure.