Hasta La Ideas

Controversial modernist, notorious drinker, architectural tycoon—Edward Durell Stone wore many hats during his long and storied career. In “Edward Durell Stone: Modernism’s Populist Architect,” historian Mary Anne Hunting hopes to uncover yet another dimension of the figure: that of an architect for the everyman. Although reliant on funding from…

Continue Reading…

Family trees flung all over the world captured in photos at MoMA

Taryn Simon is part bloodhound, part photographer. For “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I – XVIII,” she spent four years tracking down 18 families spread all over the world. Nine of those families, or chapters, as Simon calls them, are now on display at MoMA. Each chapter is made up of three segments, most notably a large group portrait shot yearbook-style with each family member photographed individually. “In each of the 18 chapters,” Simon explains, “you see the external forces of territory, governance, power and religion colliding with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance.” The sequence is arranged in order of the oldest living ascendants followed by their living descendants. This orderly family tree is accompanied by a short text and footnote images that add to the narrative.

This extremely organized coding system belies the complicated and, at times, even messy process of tracking down family members and getting them to agree to be photographed. Take the living descendants of Hans Frank, Hitler’s legal advisor and Governor-General of occupied Poland. In addition to his involvement in setting up Jewish extermination camps, Frank oversaw campaigns to destroy Polish culture by massacring thousands of Poles, all of which he denied when he was brought to trial at Nuremberg and subsequently executed. As you might imagine, his children and relatives aren’t exactly bragging about their family name, and most refused to participate in Simon’s project. Those who agreed to be photographed don’t exactly look thrilled to be there.

Not every bloodline is so full of holes. Joseph Nyamwanda Jura Ondijo’s polygamous Kenyan family is brimming with 32 children and 64 grandchildren, courtesy of his nine wives, most of whom he met through his practice, where he treats patients suffering from a wide range of ailments from evil spirits to HIV/AIDS. Ondijo is usually paid in cows and goats, but sometimes, when a family can’t afford that, they offer a daughter instead. Five of his wives came to him as patients; Three were plagued by evil spirits, one had asthma and two were suffering from infertility (they were cured and bore him children).

Reading about the Frank or Ondijo family, or about the stories in Simon’s other chapters—an over-crowded, underfunded Ukrainian orphanage, for example—is one thing, but seeing the faces of these people, and in one chapter, the animals, is something else altogether. In grid form, one right after the other, it becomes not so much about the similarities among relatives in each chapter, but how they’re so surprisingly unique—and depressing. Homi Bhanha notes in “Beyond Photography,” his essay about the exhibition, that “a precarious sense of survival holds together the case studies…It is the extremity of such precariousness that sets the stage upon which the human drama of survival unfolds…Survival here represents a life force that fails to be extinguished because it draws strength from identifying with the vulnerability of others (rather than their victories), and sees the precarious process of interdependency (rather than claims to sovereignty) as the groundwork of solidarity. We are neighbors not because we want to save the world, but because, before all else, we have to survive it.”

Simon’s subjects show that struggle for survival. Even the children look world-weary. With few exceptions, every slumped figure looks irrepressibly sad. Maybe it’s the bandaid-colored backdrop she used as what she calls “non-place, a neutral cream background that eliminates and erases any environment or context,” that renders the emotionless faces so flat. Collectively, Simon’s work sucks the energy right out of the room. Though it’s true that your DNA only determines part of who you are and that the rest is your own making, the subjects here look resigned to accept the fate of their forefathers. In fact, you can’t help but be touched by the overwhelming emptiness that pervades the room. Though the title refers specifically to one chapter in which a living man is declared dead on paper so that a distant relative can inherit his land, Simon hopes it acts as a metaphor for the entire show, noting that “We are all steadily heading toward death.”

“A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I – XVIII” is on display at MoMA until 3 September 2012.

Architects HWKN have won this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program competition and will install a giant spiky structure that cleans the air in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.

Nylon fabric will be stretched across a grid of scaffolding to create the pointy arms of the installation, which is to be named Wendy.

This fabric will be treated with a spray that can neutralize pollutants in the air, such as car exhaust fumes.

Visitors will be able to climb up inside the huge structure, while those outside run the risk of being squirted by a water cannon hidden inside one of its arms.

Wendy is due to open at the end of June.

Last year a twisted rope canopy occupied the courtyard for the summer, while the year before visitors could take part in circus-style acrobatics.

Here’s some more explanation from HWKN:

HWKN’S Wendy to Provide the Setting for the Warm Up Summer Music Series in the Courtyard of MoMA PS1

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 announce HWKN (Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner, New York) as the winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York. Now in its 13th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling. HWKN, drawn from among five finalists, will design a temporary urban landscape for the 2012 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

The winning project, Wendy, opening at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in late June, is an experiment that tests how far the boundaries of architecture can expand to create ecological and social effect. Wendy is composed of nylon fabric treated with a ground breaking titania nanoparticle spray to neutralize airborne pollutants. During the summer of 2012, Wendy will clean the air to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road. Wendy’s boundary is defined by tools like shade, wind, rain, music, and visual identity to reach past the confines of physical limits. Wendy crafts an environment, not just a space. Spiky arms made of the nylon fabric mentioned above will reach out with micro-programs like blasts of cool air, music, water cannons and mists to create social zones throughout the courtyard. Wendy sits far enough away from the stage used for the annual Warm Up events to let the concerts go on unimpeded, but close enough to the entrance to create a filter and initial impact to visitors. It bridges over the walls into the large and small courtyards of MoMA PS1. Wendy features a simple, inexpensive construction system: the scaffold is deployed efficiently to create a 70’ x 70’ x 45’ volume to form the largest surface area possible.

“The jury was greeted with a particularly impressive group of proposals this year, all of which represented months of sustained research into problems both specific to a summer installation at MoMA PS1 and to new directions for architecture in terms of material research, ecological responses, and recyclability,” said Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA. “HollwichKushner’s design is at once based in emerging science of materials related to environmental cleansing—the material actually removes the carbon dioxide emissions produced by cars in Long Island City—but also on a zany quest for a space that is simply good fun. Even passengers on the elevated 7 train will feel compelled to head to MoMA PS1 to experience Wendy and figure out what in the world it can possibly be all about.”

“HollwichKushner is proposing a monumental gesture in the MoMA PS1 courtyard that, in its dimension and volume, creates a dialogue with the, at the moment, currently installed geodesic dome,” added Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at MoMA. “While the dome hosts our winter series SUNDAY SESSIONS, Wendy will enhance the courtyard environment for our famed summer Warm Up series. The project is not only innovative but also visualizes ecological awareness and responsibility.”

“HollwichKushner’s proposal for YAP 2012 is sure to make a memorable impression over the summer at MoMA PS1,” said Pedro Gadanho, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. “It is iconic, but with a twist. By combining off-the-shelf materials and scaffolding systems with the latest cry in nanotechnology it is able to produce both an out-of-the-box ecological statement and a bold architectural gesture. It is economical and terse in terms of its design, and yet, through its positioning and scale, it also smartly projects different possibilities for use and social appropriation across the entire site where it sits—including the ability to reach out for those outside the museum’s walls.” The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were AEDS|Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio (Ammar Eloueini, Paris, France/New Orleans, LA), Cameron Wu (Cambridge, MA), Ibañez Kim Studio (Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim, Cambridge, MA), and UrbanLab (Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn, Chicago, IL). An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer, organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA Philip Johnson Chief Curator, with Whitney May, Department Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

A look back at MoMA’s 1968 landmark show on our changing relationship to technology

At the time of the MoMA‘s 1968 seminal exhibition, “The Machine,” modern technology was at a point of critical transition between the mechanical age and the rise of electronic development. The Machine stands as the first exhibition entirely focused on and in recognition of the mechanical influence on the Western World. Through the artists central to the Futurist, Dada and Surrealist movements the exhibition illustrated the attitude of their time toward technology.

The metal book cover serves as a symbol of the mechanization of the modern world and makes it one of the more interesting book designs you’ll enjoy having on your library. The exhibition catalogue offers an in depth look at the 100+ included artists, chronologically ordered from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. The catalogue ventures from early mechanical depictions by Leonardo Da Vinci to the inventive diagram drawings of Suprematist Francis Picabia nearly four hundred years later. Each piece is accompanied by extensive black and white imagery and a collection of informative text and comments on technology by the artists themselves. From this the viewer learns of the Furtists’ aesthetic admiration of the machine and the Surrealist’s decisive opposition to machines as enemies of nature.

As the introduction poignantly states, “We take the machine’s usefulness for granted: yesterday’s new invention, no matter how amazing, quickly becomes the commonplace of today.” Some forty years later this noteworthy aside seems even more relevant today.

From Eadweard Muybridge’s historical photographic studies of motion to the groundbreaking sculptures and projection installations by Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman’s Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), the catalog details the revolutionary group who reshaped the new technology of their time with art’s individualism and freedom.

Seen by many as the last great exhibition of its period, The Machine continues to inspire. Look to Amazon or any number of other auction sites to snap up a vintage copy for yourself.

Brooklyn studio Interboro Partners have won this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program competition to design a temporary installation in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.

The installation, entitled Holding Pattern, will feature a twisted rope canopy stretched over the courtyard.

The space below will feature benches, mirrors, ping-pong tables and floodlights, creating a temporary urban landscape where the MoMA/P.S.1 Warm Up summer music series will be hosted. Holding Pattern will open in June this year.

MoMA and P.S.1 are also partnering with the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program, with Italian studio stARTT chosen to create an event space in the museum’s piazza. More information to follow.

See last year’s installation by SO-IL in our earlier story.

See all our stories on past winners of the Young Architect Program »

The following information is from The Museum of Modern Art:

INTERBORO PARTNERS SELECTED AS WINNER OF THE 2011 YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM AT MoMA PS1 IN NEW YORK

Interboro Partners’ Holding Pattern to open in the Courtyard of MoMA PS1 in June

NEW YORK, February 16, 2011—The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1 announce Interboro Partners of Brooklyn, NY, as the winner of the 12th annual Young Architects Program in New York. Now in its 12th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop highly innovative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling. For the first time, MoMA and MoMA PS1 are partnering with another institution, MAXXI in Rome, to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program.

Interboro Partners, drawn from among five finalists, will design a temporary urban landscape for the 2011 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

Interboro Partners’ Holding Pattern brings an eclectic collection of objects including benches, mirrors, ping-pong tables, and floodlights, all disposed under a very elegant and taut canopy of rope strung from MoMA PS1’s wall to the parapet across the courtyard. Creating an unobstructed space, the design incorporates for the first time the entire space of MoMA PS1’s courtyard under a single grand structure, while creating an environment focusing on the audience as much as the Warm Up performance. A key component of the theme is recycling; objects in the space will be donated to the community at the conclusion of the summer. The designers met with local businesses and organizations including a taxi cab company, senior and day care centers, high schools, settlement houses, the local YMCA, library, and a greenmarket to determine what components of their installation could be used by those organizations following the Warm Up summer music series.

Incorporating objects that can subsequently be used by these organizations is a means of strengthening MoMA PS1’s ties to the local Long Island City community.
The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were FormlessFinder (New Haven, CT/Brooklyn, NY, Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi), MASS Design Group (Boston, MA, Michael Murphy), Matter Architecture Practice (Brooklyn, NY, Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger), and IJP (London/Cambridge, MA, George L. Legendre). An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects as well as YAP_MAXXI’s five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer. It will be organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA Philip Johnson Chief Curator, with Whitney May, Department Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Mr. Bergdoll explains, “Simple materials that transform a space to create a kind of public living room and rec room are trademarks of this young Brooklyn firm. Interboro is interested in creating elegant and unpretentious spaces with common materials. Their work has both a modesty and a commitment quite at odds with the luxury and complex computer-generated form that has prevailed in the city in recent years. With a few gestures they transform parts of the city to achieve new temporary atmospheres and attract new participants.”

Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA PS1 Director and MoMA Chief Curator at Large, adds, “MoMA PS1 is very excited about the innovative architecture of Interboro, which describes the famous MoMA PS1 courtyard as one architectural volume, especially since the YAP 2011 opening will coincide with the much anticipated opening of the new MoMA PS1 entrance kiosk by Andrew Berman Architects.”

See also:

.

Pole Dance by SO-IL at P.S.1	Afterparty by MOS at P.S.1	Public Farm One by Work Architecture Company