Hasta La Ideas

New work by the Campana Brothers including a cabinet made from the skin of the world’s largest freshwater fish is on show at gallery Friedman Benda in New York (+ slideshow).

The exhibition features several new series, including Boca – a range of pieces upholstered in a patchwork of roughly stitched cowhide.

The Pirarucu cabinet is made from the leathery skin of the eponymous fish, which is sustainably harvested in Brazil.

Racket is a collection of chairs and screens made from bent brass rods with nylon threads used for the seat and back, which also features sections taken from the backs of old Thonet chairs.

The Fitas series consists of a buffet, cabinet and table featuring surfaces filled in with spiralling strips of bent steel.

A new sofa and chair covered in stuffed alligators is made by Orientavida, an NGO that teaches underprivileged women embroidery skills.

The Detonado chair is made from stainless steel with a wicker patchwork covering the arms, back and seat.

Amethyst rocks sourced from the brothers’ home city of Sao Paulo are fixed to glass surfaces in the Ametista collection.

Concepts is the first solo gallery show dedicated to the work of the Campana Brothers in the United States and is at gallery Friedman Benda until 3 July.

A collection of furniture decorated with detailed gold motifs by Fernando and Humberto Campana is currently on show at David Gill gallery in London and their bed surrounded by hairy raffia curtains was presented in Milan in April.

See more design by the Campana Brothers »
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Photography is by Fernando Laszlo, except where stated otherwise.

Here’s some more information from the gallery:

Campana Brothers: Concepts
June 5-July 3, 2013
Opening reception: Wednesday, June 5, 6-8 PM

New York, NY — Friedman Benda will present Campana Brothers: Concepts, the first solo gallery show in the United States by the renowned Brazilian designers, June 5-July 3, 2013.

The exhibition will introduce several new bodies of work that demonstrate a different direction for the brothers, while offering a complex and in-progress view of their practice as it stands during a pivotal moment in their careers. Loose and experimental in nature, Concepts will see the Campanas exploring a series of new approaches to their practice while overturning previously held certainties and expectations.

Arguably the most influential and acclaimed designers from any emerging country in the world, the Campana Brothers’ work is strongly influenced by their home country, Brazil, and thematically touches upon issues ranging from globalization to sustainability. Light-hearted and playful in nature, the Campanas’ designs often employ the use of recycled and humble materials, elevating these materials to a higher level in the creation of works that cross cultural boundaries while incorporating themes of transformation and reinvention.

The new works for Concepts include the Boca (Portuguese for “mouth”) series–new works in cowhide including a wall-mounted bookshelf, table, and standing shelf; the Racket collection–chairs and a screen in bent brass with a nylon stitched base and a hand-stitched motif made from remnant Thonet chair backings; Fitas (Portuguese for “stripe”)–a buffet, cabinet, and table made from bent steel; Pirarucu — a cabinet made out of the sustainably harvested tanned and leathered skin of the Brazilian Pirarucu, the world’s largest fresh water fish; and the Ametista collection–a series of glass hanging panels adorned with Sao Paulo-sourced amethyst rocks. Concepts will also include a new sofa and chair created out of a series of life-like stuffed alligators made by OrientVida, an NGO that employs underprivileged women.

The Campana Brothers, Fernando (born 1961) and Humberto (born 1953) have steadily built a career, achieving both national and international recognition since opening their studio in 1983. Based in Sao Paulo, Estudio Campana is constantly investigating new possibilities while creating bridges and dialogues where the exchange of information is a source of inspiration.

Campana pieces are part of the permanent collections of renowned cultural institutions including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, and the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo.

The brothers were honored with the Designer of the Year Award in 2008 by Design Miami/ and were awarded the Designers of the Year Award by Maison & Objet in 2012. That same year they were selected for the Comité Colbert Prize in Paris, honored at Beijing Design Week, and received the Order of Cultural Merit in Brasilia. In May 2013, they will be awarded the Order of Arts and Letters in Paris.

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at Friedman Benda appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Facebook has announced that Frank Gehry will design a new office in New York for its engineering team.

The collaboration with Frank Gehry, who is also working on Facebook’s new Silicon Valley campus, was announced in a note posted on the company’s website by Serkan Piantino, site director for Facebook New York’s engineering team.

He said the new offices would “share many of the features of [Facebook’s] headquarters, but will be distinctly Big Apple in design and speak to the unique experience of working in a place like Manhattan.”

Gehry’s design will provide employees with “big, open spaces for people to work and collaborate, and lots of room for conference rooms and cozy spaces where people can meet or grab a white board to talk through ideas on a whim,” Piantino added.

The 9300-square-metre office will cover two floors of an existing building in the city, reported to be 770 Broadway in lower Manhattan, which is currently home to companies including AOL and the Huffington Post.

Scheduled for early 2014, the move will double the size of the firm’s engineering offices, which are currently based at 335 Madison Avenue, and will also accommodate sales, marketing, communications and design teams.

Gehry was announced as the designer of Facebook’s Menlo Campus in Silicon Valley last August, but was recently asked to revise his design to make it more anonymous.

Other projects by Gehry in New York include a plywood-panelled theatre at the base of the city’s Signature Center tower, and the rippling New York by Gehry tower.

Dezeen was in New York recently as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour, where designer Stephen Burks took us on a tour of New York’s new high-profile architecture and explained how the city’s inhabitants are becoming more interested in quality of life.

See more stories about Facebook »
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offices for Facebook appeared first on Dezeen.

New York studio HWKN has resurrected the nightclub of New York’s popular gay resort Fire Island Pines inside an asymmetric pavilion with criss-crossing timber braces (+ slideshow).

The Fire Island Pines Pavilion had been the main attraction of the Pines community since the 1980s, so when the building was destroyed by fire in 2011 HWKN was asked to rebuild it with an improved design.

The new building is a two-storey timber construction with a bar and terrace at ground floor level, plus a dance club and outdoor lounge on the first floor. There’s also a retractable roof so the club can be opened to the sky on warm summer evenings.

The corner of the structure appears to have been sliced away, angling the building’s terraces to face the nearby harbour and directing views towards new arrivals.

HWKN’s Marc Kushner explains: “When it is empty, [the new pavilion] is a muscular icon for the energy and vitality of the Pines – it visually welcomes every ferry that arrives to the island. As it fills with an afternoon crowd, the architecture fades in importance. The building becomes an armature to display the social spectacle of a weekend in the Pines.”

Bars on both floors feature zig-zagging outlines, intended to encourage more social encounters. Inside the nightclub, bleacher-style seating areas create viewing platforms and a rectangular skylight offers a window to the stars.

“We infused every space with a social engine, including the triangular bars that encourage casual meetings, the arena-like bleachers in the nightclub that put the ‘see and be seen’ opportunity into the third dimension and the inviting openness of the triangular facade frames,” comments HWKN’s Matthias Hollwich.

Hollwich and Kushner are the founding partners of HWKN. The studio’s most well-known project to date is Wendy, the giant spiky air-cleaning sculpture installed outside the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre last summer.

See more bars and nightclubs on Dezeen, including one with copper pipes stretching across its walls and one with chunky black trees inside.

Here’s some more information from HWKN:

Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) and Blesso Properties announce the near completion of the New Fire Island Pines Pavilion.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so goes the Pavilion. The Fire Island Pines Pavilion, destroyed in 2011 by a devastating fire, is now near completion, once again giving the Pines community a central hub for culture and nightlife. The reincarnation of the legendary dance club is designed by New York-based Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) and developed by Blesso Properties.

“The building, located at the intersection of all traffic to and from the island, is shaped to become a part of the everyday way of life for the community by fitting in comfortably with the open, beachy, and modern feel of the Pines,” says Matthias Hollwich, co-founder of HWKN. “Going beyond that, we infused every space with a social engine, including the triangular bars that encourage casual meetings, the arena-like bleachers in the nightclub that put the “see and be seen” opportunity into the 3rd dimension, and the inviting openness of the triangular facade frames.”

The building’s form is sheared towards the harbour to visually welcome the over 800,000 visitors who arrive via ferry to Fire Island Pines every summer. The first floor offers a Welcome Bar to serve as a meeting place for all residents and visitors. The dance club encompasses the building’s second level, with a 2,400 square-foot dance floor and a 2,600 square-foot outdoor terrace which will host High Tea in the evenings, and double as an additional lounge at night. The Welcome Bar, the High Tea deck, and the Pavilion club space are all connected by an internal loop of stairs. Inside the club, stadium steps cascade out from one wall, creating an elevated view of the dance floor, with a skylight overhead providing a constant view of the starry night skies.

“The new pavilion is an architectural chameleon,” says Marc Kushner, co-founder of HWKN. “When it is empty, it is a muscular icon for the energy and vitality of the Pines – it visually welcomes every ferry that arrives to the island. As it fills with an afternoon crowd, the architecture fades in importance. The building becomes an armature to display the social spectacle of a weekend in the Pines.”

The building is an exercise in sustainability. Many of the design elements that make the space fun, like the massive retractable roof over the dance floor, serve a double purpose by providing passive cooling on hot summer nights. The decision to open half of the building to the outdoors vastly reduces the need for air conditioning, while also re-connecting people to the beauty of the natural environment in Fire Island. Additionally, the choice of finishes on the exterior and interior is calibrated to minimise material usage by exposing the Pavilion’s raw construction.

Hollwich adds, “When we started designing the Pavilion, we came to realise that we were not just reporting to Blesso Properties, but that there are also all of the Fire Island Pines homeowners and visitors who are our clients as well. We knew we needed to listen to all of them – and we believe we did, integrating everything we learned into the design of the new building.”

Throughout the entire rebuilding process, the team received hundreds of letters, emails and Facebook messages from Pavilion devotees offering ideas, critiques, and support for the new complex.

“In most of our projects, if I can achieve 90% of our design goals we view it as a triumph. In this case we got 100% as HWKN designed a flawless building,” says Matthew Blesso, Founder & CEO of Blesso Properties. “The design is incredibly bold, appropriately masculine and modern yet rustic. And they achieved this while meeting our diverse and demanding functional goals. The building will be a timeless icon for generations to come and I couldn’t be happier with the end result.”

The Pavilion’s reopening is perfectly timed with the 60th anniversary of the Pines, as the club has a long-standing heritage in the community. Originally built in 1985, it instantly changed the social landscape, imbuing it with the type of heartbeat only a nightclub can provide. The legacy of the Pines has been lovingly interwoven into every part of the new Pavilion, from the architecture to the programming.

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by HWKN appeared first on Dezeen.

The New York home and studio of the late American artist Donald Judd will open to the public next month following a three-year restoration (+ slideshow).

Led by New York-based Architecture Research Office (ARO), a team of consultants and engineers have restored the interiors of the five-storey residence at 101 Spring Street, where Judd lived and worked from 1968 until his death in 1994 and amassed a collection of over 500 artworks.

The project involved maintaining the open-plan layout created by Judd and reconditioning the timber floors and exposed plaster walls. The team also had to replace an existing spiral staircase to bring the building in line with current health and safety standards.

“Our goal has been to preserve Donald Judd’s vision for the building and make it accessible to the public, while satisfying contemporary building requirements,” said ARO principal Adam Yarinsky. “The entire design team worked with creativity, diligence, and sensitivity to resolve the complex challenges involved in reconciling these objectives.”

The team meticulously catalogued the situation of every sculpture, painting and object in the house, including pieces by Judd himself as well as works gifted by artist-friends such as Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, plus older artworks by Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt and more. Following the restoration, each object was returned to its exact position.

The ground floor of the house was previously used by Judd as a living room and will now serve as an event and lecture space for the Judd Foundation, the charity responsible for the building. As visitors arrive, one of the first things they’ll spot is a sculpture by Andre comprising a stack of bricks.

A Judd-designed kitchen with a wooden table and central stove features on the first floor, while the fourth floor accommodates a bedroom with a fluorescent lighting installation by Flavin along one side.

The restoration also included the exterior of the building, where the team replaced around 13,000 cast-iron pieces.

See more recent projects in New York City, including a stripy replica of a Frankfurt bar and a Camper store filled with ghostly white shoes.

Here are a few words from the Judd Foundation:

When Donald Judd’s New York City building in the SoHo Cast Iron Historic District opens to the public in June 2013 after a three-year restoration, visitors will experience Judd’s home and studio as originally installed by the artist. The restoration of 101 Spring Street began on June 3, 2010 (the artist’s birthday) and will conclude three years later. Donald Judd lived in the building with his family beginning in 1968, and it was his New York studio until his death in 1994.

Guided visits will be offered for small groups by appointment through an online ticketing system and by telephone. Visitors will be guided through all floors of the home, including Judd’s studio, kitchen, and his stately fifth-floor bedroom, which is installed with a floor-to-ceiling 1969 Dan Flavin fluorescent light piece, extending the length of the loft space.

Each floor will remain as installed by Donald Judd with pieces from his collection of over 500 objects, including original sculpture, paintings, drawings, prints, and furniture designed by Judd and others. Judd installed artworks by Jean Arp, Carl Andre, Larry Bell, John Chamberlain, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Flavin, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, Lucas Samaras, and Frank Stella throughout the building, all of which viewers will be able to explore.

Overseen by board members Flavin Judd and Rob Beyer, the restoration project shares the same goal and mission of Judd Foundation: to preserve Judd’s living and working spaces and promote a wider understanding and appreciation of Donald Judd’s legacy. The New York City design firm Architecture Research Office (ARO), led Judd Foundation’s project team of consultants, which includes a preservation architect and engineers.

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by Architecture Research Office appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen archive: we’re currently in the Big Apple for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour, so we’ve rounded up our stories from the city that never sleeps. See all architecture and design in New York City »

See all our archive stories »

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