German artist Tobias Rehberger has created a temporary replica of his favourite Frankfurt bar in a New York hotel and covered the entire thing in bold geometric stripes (+ slideshow).
New York Bar Oppenheimer has exactly the same size and proportions of the original Bar Oppenheimer, a regular hangout for the artistic community in Frankfurt. It contains the same furniture and details, from the lighting fixtures to the tall radiators.
Unlike the original, Rehberger has decorated every surface of the replica bar with black and white stripes, which zigzag in every direction and are interspersed with flashes of red and orange.
The patterns are based on the concept of “dazzle camouflage”, a tactic employed during World War I to make it difficult for soldiers to pinpoint a target.
New York Bar Oppenheimer opened last week at Hôtel Americano, coinciding with the annual Frieze New York art fair. Functioning as both an installation and a working bar, it will remain in place until 14 July.
“The way I look at it is like a suitcase,” Rehberger told Wallpaper magazine. “I’m going to be in New York for a bit so I’m able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. And because I’m there for the art fair, the bar has to come dressed as a work of art.”
Here’s some more information from the exhibition organisers:
Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer
Pilar Corrias, London and Hôtel Americano are pleased to announce a new sculptural artwork, Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer by the German artist Tobias Rehberger. Presented from 11 May until 14 July 2013, the piece opened to coincide with Frieze New York and is on view at Hôtel Americano.
Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar. It is in this spirit that Rehberger has created a ‘second edition’ of Bar Oppenheimer, the Frankfurt late-night hangout he frequents and which is at the heart of the city’s artistic community. The work is a sculpture and, at the same time, a fully functioning bar. Rehberger remains faithful to the essence of the original bar: dimensions of space and objects are replicated and re-imagined to produce a familiar yet unfamiliar environment. Vodka Steins, Rehberger’s own favourite drink, are seconded to New York, transporting the artist’s own Frankfurt Oppenheimer Bar experience to Hôtel Americano for two months only.
A place where creatives and thinkers meet to form, discuss, argue, and pursue ideas and follies late into the night, Bar Oppenheimer acts as a catalyst for change. Repatriated in New York as Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer, the artist is curious as to the effect that its influence will have on a new audience.
11 May – 14 July 2013 Tues – Sat 5pm – midnight Hôtel Americano, 518 W. 27th Street, New York
This holiday home in upstate New York by US firm Gluck+ features an elevated living room that hovers nine metres above the ground (+ slideshow).
As the weekend retreat for Thomas Gluck – one of the firm’s principals – and his family, Tower House was designed as a four-storey tower with a “treetop aerie”, affording mountain views across the nearby Catskill Park.
The house is glazed on every side. In some places Gluck+ has fitted dark green panels behind to camouflage the walls with the surrounding woodland, while other areas remain transparent, revealing a bright yellow staircase that zigzags up behind the southern elevation.
Taut vertical cables form the balustrade for this staircase and are interspersed with small lights, intended to look like fireflies after dark.
One of the main aims of the design was to minimise the impact on the landscape. The architects achieved this by lifting the large living areas off the ground and stacking bedrooms and bathrooms on the three floors beneath, creating a base footprint of just 40 square metres.
This arrangement also allows all of the wet rooms to be arranged in an insulated central core. When the house isn’t is use, this core isolates the heating systems, helping to reduce energy consumption.
The three bedrooms are positioned on the north side of the house, where they can benefit from the most consistent daylight, and contain yellow furniture to match the colour of the staircase.
The living room above is divided up into four different zones by the arrangement of furniture and features a 12-metre-long window seat that spans the entire space. There’s also a secluded roof terrace on the next level up.
New York-based Gluck+ was known until recently as Peter Gluck and Partners. The firm is now run by Peter, his son Thomas, and three other principals.
Photography is by Paul Warchol, apart from where otherwise stated.
Photograph by Gluck+
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Tower House
This small vacation house is designed as a stairway to the treetops. Keeping the footprint to a minimum so as not to disturb the wooded site, each of the first three floors has only one small bedroom and bath, each a tiny private suite. The top floor, which contains the living spaces, spreads out from the tower like the surrounding forest canopy, providing views of the lake and mountains in the distance. An outdoor roof terrace deck above extends the living space above the treetops, offering a stunning lookout to the long view. The glass-enclosed stair also highlights the procession from forest floor to treetop aerie, while the dark green, back-painted glass exterior camouflages the house by reflecting the surrounding woods, de-materialising its form. At dusk, mini lights dotting the cable rail of the stair mimic local fireflies sparkling in the woods as day turns to dark.
As a vacation home, the Tower House is used during a few weekends in the winter and most weekends in the summer. The design imperative was to develop a sustainable, energy efficient solution with minimal operating costs and maintenance for a house occupied part-time. The stacked north-facing bedrooms take advantage of light and views with floor to ceiling glass. In order to optimise energy savings for heating and cooling in this part-time residence, a two part sustainable strategy was employed to reduce the heating footprint of the house in the winter and to avoid the need for air conditioning in the summer.
While the house is heated conventionally, by compressing and stacking all of the wet zones of the house into an insulated central core, much of the house can be “turned off” in the winter when not in use. When not in use, only 700 square feet of the 2,545 square foot house is heated. By closing the building down to only the insulated core, there is a 49% reduction in energy use. In the summertime, the house feels comfortable without air conditioning. Cool air is drawn in and through the house using the stack effect. South-facing glass throughout the stairwell creates a solar chimney and as the heated air rises, it is exhausted out the top, drawing in fresh air through the house from the cooler north side.
Architecture and Construction: GLUCK+ (Peter L. Gluck, Thomas Gluck, David Hecht, Marisa Kolodny, A.B. Moburg-Davis) Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates P.C. Mechanical Engineer: Rosini Engineering P.C. Façade: Bill Young Environmental Engineer: IBC Engineering Lighting: Lux Populi
Shelves are supported by dowels slotted into pegboard walls at a new store for skin and haircare brand Aesop in the Hamptons, New York (+ slideshow).
Designed and built by New York studio NADAAA, who previously completed another Aesop shop in San Francisco, Aesop East Hampton has pegboard walls around three sides of its interior and a free-standing basin at its centre.
Dowels of different sizes can be slotted into various places on the walls to change the arrangement of shelves for displaying the brand’s signature brown-glass bottles. Walls above and below are painted in a pale shade of blue.
The central sink – a key feature in Aesop’s stores – is made from a Vermont soapstone that is typical in north-American bathrooms, while the taps are fixed to copper pipes.
Aesop is pleased to announce the opening of a signature store in the Hamptons, and to take up residence in an area that has been home to many gifted creative spirits – Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Frank O’Hara and Jean Stafford among them.
In recognition of the Hamptons’ cultural and maritime heritage, Aesop East Hampton presents a tableau of practical and programmatic objects within a simple installation. Digitally fabricated pegboard panels line the walls, with dowels of varying lengths inserted to support orderly product display. A basin crafted from Vermont soapstone – a material long used for wash sinks in northeast United States – occupies the central space, with taps employing the simple copper valves often seen in the neighbourhood’s carefully constructed gardens. A picture window opening onto the sidewalk allows for abundant natural light.
News: One World Trade Center in New York has become the world’s third-tallest building after topping out at a height of 541 metres.
A 124-metre steel spire was installed last Friday, pushing the skyscraper’s height to 1776 feet – a number commemorating the year of America’s independence.
One World Trade Center is now the tallest structure in the USA and the third-tallest in the world, although there is debate over whether the spire is actually a removable antenna – a vital distinction in measuring buildings.
Built at a cost of $3.9 billion, the tower also has the distinction of being the most expensive office building in the world.
Previously known as the Freedom Tower, the building is located in the northwest corner of the site where the former World Trade Center towers were destroyed in the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Originally designed by Daniel Libeskind – the architect behind the masterplan for the entire Ground Zero site – the tower underwent numerous revisions before US firm SOM was brought in to oversee its design.
When finally completed it will offer 241,000 square metres of commercial office space as well as observation decks, TV broadcasting facilities and restaurants.
In a board meeting yesterday, the museum’s directors heard that design studio Diller Scofidio & Renfro had been selected to oversee MoMA’s expansion and explore the option of integrating the former American Folk Art Museum into the plans.
Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director, told trustees and staff that the architects wanted to consider “the entirety of the site, including the former American Folk Art Museum building, in devising an architectural solution to the inherent challenges of the project.”
Diller Scofidio & Renfro said the institution’s directors had given the design team “the time and flexibility to explore a full range of programmatic, spatial and urban options.”
“These possibilities include, but are not limited to, integrating the former American Folk Art Museum building, designed by our friends and admired colleagues, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien,” the studio said in a statement.
In its initial announcement last month, museum officials said the bronze-clad building had to be pulled down because its facade did not match MoMA’s glass aesthetic and its floors would not line up with MoMA’s.
Designed by US architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the American Folk Art Museum opened its doors just 12 years ago but was sold to MoMA in 2011 to pay off a $32 million loan.
The museum’s collection of paintings, sculptures and crafts by self-taught and outsider artists now resides at a smaller site on Lincoln Square, further north in Manhattan.
MoMA’s initial decision to tear down the building was met with disappointment by Tsien, who told the New York Times it was “a loss for architecture”.
An exhibition charting punk’s influence on high fashion has opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this week. Above: Chanel by David Sims, 2011.
Aiming to examine the relationship between 1970s anarchic subculture and fashion design today, vintage punk outfits are shown alongside contemporary clothing by brands such as Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela and Karl Lagerfeld.
Rodarte by David Sims, 2008
“Since its origins, punk has had an incendiary influence on fashion,” said Andrew Bolton, curator in The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Although punk’s democracy stands in opposition to fashion’s autocracy, designers continue to appropriate punk’s aesthetic vocabulary to capture its youthful rebelliousness and aggressive forcefulness,” he said.
Comme des Garçons by Peter Lindbergh, 1982
Approximately 100 garments for both sexes are displayed across seven galleries, each with a different theme.
One room is based on iconic Manhattan music bar CBGB, represented by bands such as Blondie and the Ramones, while the space opposite takes reference from Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries boutique at 430 King’s Road in London.
Hussein Chalayan by Eric Nehr
Located in the museum’s second-floor Cantor galleries, Punk: Chaos to Couture opened earlier this week and runs until 14 August 2013.
Read the full press release from the museum below:
Punk Fashion Is Focus of Costume Institute Exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Exhibition dates: 9 May – 14 August 2013 Exhibition location: Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall
PUNK: Chaos to Couture, organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, examines punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence today. The exhibition is on view from 9 May through 14 August at the Museum.
John Lydon by Richard Young, 1975
The Exhibition
The exhibition, in the Museum’s second-floor Cantor galleries, features approximately 100 designs for men and women. A few iconic punk garments from the mid-1970s are juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols, with paillettes being replaced with safety pins, feathers with razor blades, and bugle beads with studs. Focusing on the relationship between the punk concept of ‘do-it-yourself’ and the couture concept of ‘made to measure,’ the exhibition is organised around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style. Presented as an immersive multimedia experience, the clothes are animated with vintage videos and soundscaping audio techniques.
Organized thematically, each of the seven galleries has footage of designated punk ‘heroes’ who embody the broader concepts behind the fashions on view. The first gallery is devoted to CBGB in New York City, represented by Blondie, Richard Hell, The Ramones, and Patti Smith. Opposite is a gallery inspired by Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries boutique at 430 King’s Road in London, and between the two is Clothes for Heroes, embodied by a slow motion video of Jordan. This gallery examines designers who extend the visual language of punk, as it was originally articulated by McLaren and Westwood, by merging social realism with artistic expression.
Sid Vicious by Dennis Morris, 1977
Do-it-yourself, punk’s enduring contribution to high fashion, is explored in the four final galleries: D.I.Y. Hardware, focusing on couture’s use of studs, spikes, chains, zippers, padlocks, safety pins, and razor blades, with Sid Vicious as its icon; D.I.Y. Bricolage, highlighting the impact of punk’s ethos of customization on high fashion, including the use of recycled materials from trash and consumer culture, as epitomized by Wayne County; D.I.Y. Graffiti and Agitprop, exploring punk’s tradition of provocation and confrontation through images and text exemplified by The Clash; and D.I.Y. Destroy, examining the effect of punk’s rip-it-to-shreds spirit, typified by Johnny Rotten, via torn and shredded garments associated with deconstructionism.
Designers in the exhibition include Miguel Adrover, Thom Browne, Christopher Bailey (Burberry), Hussein Chalayan, Francisco Costa (Calvin Klein), Christophe Decarnin (Balmain), Ann Demeulemeester, Dior, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Dolce and Gabbana), John Galliano, Nicolas Ghesquière (Balenciaga), Katharine Hamnett, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (Viktor & Rolf), Christopher Kane, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons), Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel), Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Malcolm McLaren, Alexander McQueen, Franco Moschino and Rossella Jardini (Moschino), Kate and Laura Mulleavy (Rodarte), Miuccia Prada, Gareth Pugh, Zandra Rhodes, Hedi Slimane (Saint Laurent), Stephen Sprouse, Jun Takahashi (Undercover), Riccardo Tisci (Givenchy), Gianni Versace, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamamoto, and Vivienne Westwood.
Jordan, 1977
The exhibition is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator, in the Met’s Costume Institute. Photographer Nick Knight is the exhibition’s creative consultant working with exhibition design consultant Sam Gainsbury (who was creative director for the Met’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition in 2011) and production designer Gideon Ponte (a set and production designer for photo shoots and feature films including Buffalo 66 and American Psycho). All mannequin head treatments and masks are designed by Guido Palau, who also created treatments for Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and last year’s Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.
The design for the 2013 Costume Institute gala benefit is created by Nick Knight, Sam Gainsbury, and Gideon Ponte with Raul Avila, who has produced the benefit décor since 2007. Additional funding for the gala benefit is provided by Givenchy.
Richard Hell by Kate Simon, late 1970s
Related Catalogue and Programs
A book, Punk: Chaos to Couture, by Andrew Bolton, with an introduction by Jon Savage, and prefaces by Richard Hell and John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), accompanies the exhibition. This publication is illustrated with photographs of vintage punks and high fashion. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the $45 catalogue (hard cover only) is distributed worldwide by Yale University Press.
A series of programs will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition, including a Sunday at the Met discussion on the origins of punk with Glenn O’Brien, Jon Savage, and Roberta Bayley on June 16; a gallery conversation with Vivien Goldman and Curator Ian Alteveer on July 26; and performances by Liars on May 18; and by So Percussion as wellas Man Forever on June 8; a studio workshop on July 20; and related gallery talks in the Museum’s permanent collection.
News:America’s largest bicycle sharing scheme will begin this month in New York City, with 6000 bikes available to rent from docking stations in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.
The scheme, dubbed Citi Bike after its multi-million-dollar sponsorship from Citibank, will invite commuters and tourists to take advantage of New York’s 700 miles of cycle lanes.
The May launch will see bikes placed in 330 docking stations across the city, spanning from 59th Street in Manhattan down to the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.
City officials plan to eventually expand the scheme to 10,000 bikes and 600 docking stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Thousands of New Yorkers have already signed up as Citi Bike members, paying an annual fee of $95 for access to unlimited rides of 45 minutes.
Cyclists who don’t have a membership will be able to purchase a 24-hour pass for about $10, or a seven-day pass for $25, allowing an unlimited number of half-hour trips.
The three-speed aluminium-frame Citi Bike has front and rear LEDs that flash when the wheels are in motion and an adjustable seatpost to accommodate riders of different heights.
Both the bikes and docking stations are part of a system called Bixi, which was first developed by French Canadian designer Michel Dallaire as a cycle-share scheme for Montreal.
A Citi Bike app will also help cyclists to locate their nearest docking station, plan their route on a map and find local shops, services and restaurants.
The launch follows the successful roll-out of bike-share schemes in cities including London, Washington D.C., Paris and Barcelona, while Chicago and San Francisco are both preparing to launch their own schemes later this year.
High-rise living is no longer just for people. A team of architecture students from the University at Buffalo has recently constructed a skyscraper for a colony of bees (+ slideshow).
Erected amongst a desolate group of disused grain silos beside the Buffalo River, the seven-metre tower provides a new hive for honey bees that had formerly taken up residence in the boarded-up window of an old office block.
The tower is clad with a honeycomb of hexagonal steel panels. Triangular perforations speckle the surfaces, allowing light to filter gently inside.
The bees are housed in a hexagonal wooden box suspended near the top of the tower. The base of the box is glazed so visitors can enter the tower and look up into the hive.
The box is also attached to a system of pulleys so that beekeepers can bring it safely down to ground for maintenance tasks. University at Buffalo students Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern and Scott Selin named the project Elevator B, as a reference to this mechanism.
The tower represents the winning entry of the university’s Hive City competition, which asked students to design a habitat for the bees. Other entries included a wooden cube and a geodesic dome.
Elevator B is an urban habitat for a colony of honeybees, which originally occupied a boarded window in an abandoned office building in Buffalo, NY. Although not created for a specific client organization per se, the project has generated a great deal of public curiosity because of the combination of the colony of honeybees, an interesting and until very recently, a restricted-access site, and a well-designed object. The site, Silo City, is a group of largely abandoned grain elevators and silos on the Buffalo River. Elevator B is intended as a symbol of the site’s environmental and economic regeneration.
The 22′ tall tower is a honeycombed steel structure designed and built utilizing standard steel angle and tube sections. It is sheathed in perforated stainless steel panels that were parametrically designed to protect the hive and it’s visitors from the wind, and allow for both solar gain in the winter and shading in the summer. The bees are housed in a hexagonal cypress box with a laminated glass bottom through which the bees can be observed.
This “beecab” provides protection, warmth and separates entry access between bees and humans. Visitors are able to enter the tower, stand below the cypress beecab and look up to view the colony of bees behind glass, similar to an ant farm, as they build their hive. Beekeepers gain access to the hive by lowering it, allowing them to ensure the health and safety of the bees. This feature also caters to the school groups that visit the site, encouraging children to get a close up view.
Visitors to the site have ranged from school groups discussing the natural ecosystems of Western New York and the Great Lakes, to adult photography classes using Elevator B and the site as a subject. A nearby nature preserve has also led several field trips to the project and is in the process of developing a formal education program centered on the bees and on colony collapse disorder, which threatens the species. Interpretive signage about honeybees and the site is currently under development and will be part of the larger redevelopment plan for Silo City.
The questions asked by visitors range from the simple to the complex, but they would never have been asked in the first place if the visitor did not have the access to bees that is fostered by Elevator B. This is a clear demonstration that architecture can and does do more than serve aesthetic or structural purposes. In Elevator B’s example, it sparks children to learn and adults to reconsider what they thought they knew. This includes the designers themselves, who have not only designed for the needs of their clients but have become inspired to become advocates for them as well.
Location: Silo City in Buffalo NY Firm Name: Hive City Team: Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern, Scott Selin Project Sponsors: University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, Rigidized Metals Corporation
News: the Museum of Modern Art in New York is to raze the former American Folk Art Museum next door just 12 years after its completion by US architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.
The bronze-clad museum, which opened its doors in December 2001, will be demolished and replaced with a glass-fronted building linking MoMA’s existing space on West 53rd Street with a planned 82-storey tower designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.
The American Folk Art Museum, which holds a collection of paintings, sculptures and crafts by self-taught and outsider artists, was sold to MoMA in 2011 to pay off a $32 million loan. It currently exists at a smaller site on Lincoln Square, further north in Manhattan.
While the MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry said the demolition was not a comment on the architectural quality of the building, the news was met with disappointment by Tsien, who told the New York Times she saw the building as a “beloved small child”.
“It’s a kind of loss for architecture,” she said, “because it’s a special building, a kind of small building that’s crafted, that’s particular and thoughtful at a time when so many buildings are about bigness.”
The expansion across both the folk art museum site and the Nouvel building will provide MoMA with approximately 4600 square metres of additional floor space.
When Nouvel’s tower is complete in 2017 or 2018, its second, fourth and fifth floors will line up with the same levels in MoMA’s existing building over the road, but the art museum is still deciding what to put at ground level on the site of Williams and Tsien’s building.
In January this year, the architects’ Barnes Foundation art gallery in Philadelphia won an Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
This movie tours the interior of New York penthouse apartment Skyhouse, which contains a quadruple-height living room, columns with climbing treads and a tubular steel slide that plunges down from the attic.
Architect David Hotson and interior designer Ghislaine Viñas collaborated on the renovation, which involved restructuring the uppermost storeys of a late nineteenth century tower in lower Manhattan to accommodate a family residence.
The movie shows how the rooms of the apartment are connected to one another with indoor balconies and a faceted stairwell, but that residents can also climb up one of the existing steel columns or glide down using the two-stage slide.
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