Hasta La Ideas

After being forced to scrap their expansion plans last November at the behest of I.M. Pei so as to not upset his 1966 Silver Towers complex, NYU has just unveiled their new plans for the central Washington Square area. While far less towering than the idea before it, the new plan still calls for a massive construction effort (labeled by NYU as a series of “superblocks”), building no fewer than 10 new structures, some as tall as 27 stories, with lots of landscape architecture and attractive through-ways in between. What’s more, the new layout seems like it’s trying hard to appease anyone and everyone, saying that all the building will both benefit the school and the community (with “the creation of playgrounds and a dog run”), everything “built without the use of eminent domain and without any residential tenant relocation,” no angering Pei anymore with careful height restrictions already in place, and they’re even planning to build a new public school for the city, and who wants to argue with or deny someone who wants to build you a school? The thing we’re most excited about, and we absolutely refuse to believe it’s just a test rendering, is the new “Lorem Ipsum Garden.” Please oh, please, NYU, make this a reality. It would make all of our stupid hopes and dreams come true.

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Still in his first year as the new head of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, former dealer Jeffrey Deitch dogged a bullet to some degree with his first major blunder. You’ll recall that as he was getting lots of local and web attention for his decision to paint over a mural by a street artist the museum itself commissioned but later worried would be too controversial, all of it was largely overshadowed by the raging controversy on the other side of the country, as the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian were still trying to repair damage from their own pulled-art fiasco. Sure, there were protests in Los Angeles and depictions of Deitch in far from positive lights wound up appearing, but fortunately for he and the museum, it seemed to pass quickly. And while everyone knew that hiring the wronged artist, Blu, and the mural he was supposed to paint, was all in support of the museums soon-to-launch exhibition on street art, we get the idea that maybe they held off publishing news about it until the fires died down. Now it’s finally come out, with their press release announcing Art in the Streets, the first major exhibition in the US of graffiti and street art, running from mid-April through to early August. Here are some of the details and artists involved:

Art in the Streets will showcase installations by 50 of the most dynamic artists from the graffiti and street art community, including Fab 5 Freddy (New York), Lee Quinones (New York), Futura (New York), Margaret Kilgallen (San Francisco), Swoon (New York), Shepard Fairey (Los Angeles), Os Gemeos (Sao Paulo), and JR (Paris). MOCA’s exhibition will emphasize Los Angeles’s role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with special sections dedicated to cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture. The exhibition will feature projects by influential local artists such as Craig R. Stecyk III, Chaz Bojorquez, Mister Cartoon, RETNA, SABER, REVOK, and RISK.

A special emphasis will be placed on photographers and filmmakers who documented graffiti and street art culture including Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, James Prigoff, Steve Grody, Gusmano Cesaretti, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton, Larry Clark, Terry Richardson, and Spike Jonze. A comprehensive timeline illustrated with artwork, photography, video, and ephemera will provide further historical context for the exhibition.

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Following up on a story from a couple of weeks back, this weekend marked Facebook‘s all-day, everyone’s-invited conference to look at their new Menlo Park neighborhood, where they’ll be moving this summer into the old Sun Microsystems campus. As reported by the San Jose Mercury News, more than 150 architects and designers showed up to help try and think of methods of updating the campus, and how to incorporate and work with its surrounding area and the neighboring community (no word on whether or not these people were compensated for this). As the paper tells it, the mass of people were broken into four groups who looked at different aspects of their soon-to-be-new-headquarters, including walking around, meeting the locals (who are sure to enjoy the tax boost once the company moves in), and sketching out ideas, unveiling them at the end of the long, 12 hour day. Even Mark Zuckerberg showed up toward the end. Here’s a bit:

As the blizzard of ideas swirled, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suddenly appeared, strolling nonchalantly through the crowded room. John Tenanes, Facebook’s director of global real estate and Zuckerberg’s tour guide, asked some of the blue team members to fill him in.

…Zuckerberg seemed stoked by the ideas. He nodded, said “cool” several times, and then vanished into a backroom.

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Usually when you have unexpected visitors wandering a still-under-construction skyscraper, it’s squatters, renegade skydivers, the tightrope guy from Man on Wire or some mix of all three. However, this week in London was something new altogether. Found by way of Archinect is the news that a six month old fox had been found living at the very top of the city’s and Europe’s soon-to-be tallest building, the Shard. After what would have been a very harrowing climb for a person, moving from the completed 35th floor to the completely open air 72nd, the sort of thing that apparently doesn’t bothers foxes, the animal had been living “on a squash-court sized platform,” living off food that construction workers had left behind. Fortunately, thanks to the daring efforts of animal control officers, he was rescued and returned to terrain more native to foxes:

“We think he got the message and, as we released him back on to the streets of Bermondsey shortly after midnight on Sunday, he glanced at the Shard and then trotted off in the other direction,” Mr Burden said. Barrie Hargrove, cabinet member for transport, environment and recycling at Southwark Council, said: “Romeo has certainly been on a bit of a jaunt, and proved rather elusive, but I’m glad our pest control officers were able to help out.”

With that nice story to leave you with, this writer heads off on a quick vacation to someplace much warmer than Chicago. See you again on Tuesday.

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Remember back in the early summer of 2009 when all eyes were on the raging battle between Prince Charles and Richard Rogers, the former using his stature and influence to remove the latter from the project because it was believed to be too modern for royal blood’s taste? That eventually died down a bit by the end of the year, and save for a few little pieces of news popping up here and there (like in the court hearings about the matter last year and even more recently when the Prince said his critics reporting on his supposed anti-modern bias drive him “insane”), in the end, a new architecture firm was hired for the project and all parties have seemingly gone their separate ways. However, in a very slight, quiet way, there’s been a bit of a bite back recently. Last year you might recall that the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) had its government funding pulled during the massive financial cuts that swept the whole of Britannia. At that time, some critics were crying foul as it appeared the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment was trying to move in to take CABE’s place, helping to oversee the design of buildings in the UK. Since then, CABE has managed to stay afloat by recently securing a partnership with the also-budget-cut Design Council. Got all that? Now late last week, if you read into it and are angling for an angle (which we’re more than happy to do), the newly reinvigorated CABE handed down a number of critiques to the newly submitted plans to the firm in charge, Dixon Jones, Squire & Partners and Kim Wilkie Associates, saying that the development needed to better adapt and grow into the 21st century, instead of just exist in the moment as a “traditional garden square.” Granted, CABE also handed down recommendations for alterations on Richard Roger’s plans, and by and large, they seem to like the new project layout, but we’d like to believe there’s a subtle little dig at work here, whether there is one or not. Here’s a bit from Building Design on CABE’s response to the new plans:

Cabe said it commended the quality of the proposal and welcomed its “elongated squares”, but added that the project needed to be less formalist and more flexible in meeting the “more varied” surrounding area. It also said the proposed development was not ambitious enough in allowing for “a modern, sustainable, low-carbon lifestyle, community engagement and social interaction”.

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