Recently I've seen a car commercial far too many times that is shot partly, of all places, in a bookstore. My first thought was not, "Gee whiz, what a nice car," it was, "My, that's a nice bookstore."
[Screenshot | click image to view commercial]
Digging around the internet with keyword searches "bookstore", "tree", "car commercial", and combinations of those and other words, I could not find the store. But then I considered that most likely a commercial would be shot in Los Angeles, then Hennessey + Ingels came to mind. I'd visited their Santa Monica store many years ago, and even though they no longer have that store on the 3rd Street Promenade (they moved to nearby Wilshire Blvd.), the commercial actually happens to be shot in their Hollywood store.
Space 15 Twenty is the name of "the unique retail setting" where Hennessey + Ingels is located. It is one of nine stores (Urban Outfitters is the anchor) in "the curated environment" that also includes an outdoor courtyard, local music, film and art venues, a gallery and a pop-up shop. I'm not sure if the tree is a permanent fixture in the store or placed their for the commercial, but the curved ceiling and exposed structure are features shared by it and the other stores. Combined with the courtyard and skylights (note they light cast on her red dress from one), it adds up to a pretty damn nice bookstore.
Update/Correction: As Quixote's comment indicates, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. The store is not Hennessey + Ingels, it's Skylight Books on Vermont Ave. also in LA. Below is a photograph comparing H+I and Skylight Books:
The reason for my confusion is evident, given the ceilings' shapes and materials, but the diagonal articulation of the wood members is clearly not happening at H+I, only at Skylight. Not sure how I'd think straight members are the same. Nevertheless, thanks to Quixote for fixing my error.
Last night the Design Trust for Public Space and project partner Added Value celebrated the launch of Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City. The book, which is accompanied by a website, surveys the more than 700 citywide farms and gardens that grow food; metrics are outlined toward gauging the success of urban agriculture; and the project is aimed at affecting policy, so that farms and gardens will be formally recognized and supported in the city. Much more will follow from the Design Trust and Added Value in the next year, but the book is a watershed in examining the benefits of urban agriculture. A review of the book on this blog is forthcoming.
Urban agriculture is booming in New York City, with more than 700 food-producing urban farms and gardens citywide. In all five boroughs, New Yorkers have turned vacant lots and rooftops, schoolyards and NYCHA gardens into places to grow food. But urban agriculture also encompasses a wide range of other activities: participants earn income at farmers markets, capture stormwater, compost food waste, gain leadership and job skills, learn about nutrition and the environment, and create safe, attractive public spaces. These activities contribute to many citywide health, social, economic, and ecological benefits, as well as to the goals of municipal agencies and elected officials.
Yet while many government agencies are engaged in urban agriculture, there is no citywide policy or plan to coordinate actions across agencies, and few systematic efforts to track the full range of urban agricultural activities that take place at the city’s farms and gardens.
Project Origins
In 2009, the Design Trust for Public Space issued an open call for projects to improve public space in New York City, receiving twenty submissions from organizations citywide. The nonprofit organization Added Value (with the assistance of the design firm thread collective) submitted a proposal to address urban agriculture. This proposal was one of two selected by an independent jury of architects, policy experts, open space advocates, and Design Trust board members for the Design Trust to take on as a project.
Project Goals
Survey and document New York City's existing urban agricultural activity using photographs, maps, and infographics.
Establish a shared framework and tools to enable farmers and gardeners to track urban agricultural activity and evaluate their social, health, economic, and ecological benefits.
Develop policy recommendations that will help make urban agriculture a more permanent part of the city's landscape and governance.
Earlier today I walked up Fifth Avenue and noticed that the Louis Vuitton at 57th Street, designed by Jun Aoki, looked a bit different.
Crossing the street to take a closer look, I realized that the storefront is decked out for Yayoi Kusama's exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is sponsored by Louis Vuitton. Corporate ties to the world of art are hardly new, and brands like Louis Vuitton are particularly well connected to artists. I remember Takashi Murakami putting his cartoon characters on their handbags some years ago, so this one doesn't come as a shock.
But putting the artist in the storefront would be a shock. I must admit that I was fooled in my quick glance at this shop window. Was she taking the corporate tie-in to the next level? But photos of the 83-year-old artist around the Whitney opening and the unveiling of the polka-dot exterior show her in a wheelchair, so she is probably not up for standing in a window acting out the Abramovic Method. Nevertheless the facade and displays are quite fun and playful, bringing plenty of attention to Louis Vuitton and Kusama's art.
Recently I've been lucky enough to do a radio show and an interview around my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture. Earlier today I was on Heritage Radio Network's Burning Down the House, and a week before my Oculus Book Talk I did a short interview. Thanks respectively to Curtis B. Wayne and Miguel Baltierra for the questions and coverage.
Summer in New York City may be when people skip town (at least on weekends), but flipping through the Brooklyn Rail I came across some shows that look interesting. If anything, these should provide good places in and around NYC to escape from the heat.
Model Theories at Ford Project, Jun 26 to Aug 10: [Artwork by Haus-Rucker-Co]
Emily Kinni at 1:1, Jul 12 to Aug 4: ["Execution Chambers" by Emily Kinni]
Art in Buildings at 125 Maiden Lane, Jun 27 to Oct 20: [Left: Flock House "Chromasphere" by Mary Mattingly (photo is previous installation at Battery Park City). Right: "Matrix V" by Erwin Redl, a permanent installation by appointment only.]
Recently the New York Times ran a story about "a clean new life for grimy gas stations," including the Breadbox Bakery by ODA, which is now complete. Oil changes have given way to baked goods, but the gas station next door is still in business. (Per the Times story, the owner eventually wants to develop a larger project on the site, which would be above the bakery and replace the gas station.) Here are a few photos by Frank Oudeman of the converted service station located on 11th Street, a couple blocks from MoMA PS1:
Yes, those are rolling pins on the outer, screen-like facade.
[The Anderson set at Time Warner Center | image source]
While I can't say I'm excited that the space is being used for a daytime talk show, I'm glad to learn that "Unlike most TV studios, the room will continue to be used for other events and performances." Therefore Mr. Cooper is sharing the space with the jazz musicians who the space is designed for; he gets it during the day, and they get it at night, or something like that. Below are a couple technical drawings (click image for larger view) that give a sense of not only the space's shape but also how the tiers can be adjusted to allow for various seating configurations, and how the lighting and audio equipment fits into the space. In other words, the space is highly flexible down below, with lots of technical equipment up above to work with whatever the space is being used for. And perhaps most importantly, a retractable shade helps to cut down on the natural light entering the space, so that a television show can even tape when the sun is shining.
[The Allen Room plan and section | Click image for larger view | image source]
At approximately 12:12 p.m. in Christian Marclay's "The Clock" -- showing at the David Rubinstein Atrium as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2012 -- comes a clip from the 1948 film Hamlet, in which the title character holds the skull of the court jester, Yorick, and says, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! [quote snipped from Wikipedia]"
Before setting foot within the black box space erected within the privately owned public space spanning between Broadway and Columbus, I had a number of preconceptions about Marclay's 24-hour visual artwork. One was a parallel with the video in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (which is supposedly named for the Hamlet quote), the one that people can't stop watching because the film taps into a part of the brain that provides it pleasure, an unending pleasure that eventually leads to death. I was hardly expecting to lose myself to that extent, but descriptions from friends who saw the piece in Venice (where it won the Golden Lion Prize last year) and raves from critics pointed toward a hypnotic state reached by viewers. I stepped into the space at 10:40 a.m. this morning and did not leave until 2:40 p.m. I was not hypnotized, but I did thoroughly enjoy the piece.
[Don't call it a cinema: the black box in the Rubinstein Atrium | Photo by John Hill]
For those not familiar with "The Clock", it is a 24-hour video that is composed of clips from thousands of films, most illustrating the time -- through a clock, a watch, a piece of dialogue -- that coincides with the actual time where it is being shown. Therefore it acts as a timepiece. But it is not just a clock, it is much more complex and artistically intentional than just a cutting together of short clips that tell us the time. It is an overlapping collage of video and sound that washes over the viewer likes waves on the sea. Yet these are waves of time that are orchestrated to the minutes and hours of the day as embodied in the films and television shows (there are a few in there) that by nature take liberties with time yet are reflections of our daily lives. The experience of watching it is somewhere between that of a film, where action and plot require us to keep a tally of what is going on, and something like Andy Warhol's Empire, where the movement of time is natural and without any apparent action. "The Clock" does not require a memory of events, and it is much more frenetic than Warhol's anti-film, so the viewer is free to paradoxically lose one's sense of time by constantly being reminded what time it is. It's magical.
Here is a short clip at 12:04 to 12:07 p.m. to give a sense of how Marclay expresses time and how he layers video and audio:
Before spending three years making "The Clock" Marclay had created the 7-1/2-minute "Telephones" (1995) that collages Hollywood clips with, yes, telephones. Like smaller sections of "The Clock", this earlier piece has an apparent flow that is obviously intentional:
So how did Marclay end up making a 24-hour-long video artwork? (He's clear in saying it's not a film, since it does not have a beginning or an end like a film: "It begins when you walk in and ends when you walk out.") Stepping back in time further, this clip from the television show Night Music shows the "turntablist" at work creating soundscapes from records:
So Marclay's love for and experience with sound collages is really at the root of his art, and "The Clock" is as much about sound as the moving images. Hence it's being shown at Lincoln Center in an enclosed space that lets the sounds be clearly heard. This staging of the film unfortunately limits the occupancy to 96 people at any one time. Combined with the free admission, this means there will most likely be lines for its 16-day run, especially if people, like me, watch it for four hours at a time. "The Clock" runs from July 13 until August 1, showing 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. during the week (minus Mondays) and for 24 hours on weekends. Highly recommended and worth any wait.
On Saturday, July 14 at 11am, I'll be giving a walking tour of the Bowery, focusing on new buildings on and near the street. More information and a link for tickets can be found at 92Y Tribeca.
In March I informed readers about the New York CityVision Competition, run by CityVision Magazine (here's my review of issue 5). Yesterday the winners were announced, and below are images of the first, second and "farm" prizes. Be sure to click the links for more information on the winning designs.
