Happy Holidays

Venetian Vibe

While studying architecture in Italy, I had the extreme fortune of attending the Venice Biennale. Uncharacteristically, it left me speechless.

It is an unbelievable spoil of contemporary and highly controversial art.
What I loved about the exceptional collection of installations was their feral ability to deliciously "push the envelope". There is such a fine line between art and architecture that I bathed in each artist's journey of percolation. The pieces challenged traditional methods of human interaction and perspective within our benignly neglected surroundings.

Enjoyably, the Biennale was inappropriately perfect.

Floored

I had always been suspect of architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. From a cast of thousands, it was he, who was shoved down my throat as an undergrad architecture student. His selection of over commercialized architectural sundries; pens, playing cards and picture frames left me feeling drown by his Fallingwaters.

I'm sure Fountainhead was tucked under my arm when I made an iconoclastic move to "stick it to the man" and boycott all things Wright.

And then I moved to the Upper East Side and realized my judgement was wrong. My morning run would inevitably take me past his Guggenheim en route to the Park. The formidable facade along Fifth Avenue would suddenly break open with the double-wide sidewalk in front of the Museum. Brilliant. Referencing the rotunda, the steel circles implanted into the skin of the sidewalk played out like a revolving fascination of sexy urban tats. Depending on pace, traveling through the space was a throwback to gym class- running through an obstacle course of hula hoops expertly designed to slow the occupier of the space down.
The architect's simple gestures had created a dance floor of human interaction. Genius.

"nothing good happens after midnight"

....were the words my father affixed to my social epitaph in high school.



There is always a temptation to embellish the fundamentals of necessity with excess.

In design, a sotto voce perspective takes achieved skill.

I'm in awe of those who can convey restrained volume in their work.

Maya Lin, Robert Smithson, Anish Kapoor and Andy Goldsworthy.

Runner's Hi

In grad school I was taught to design landscapes according to emotion. "How do you want the occupier to feel when they are in the space?" A Maya Lin memorial would command appropriate, grave pause and exposed retrospection as opposed to Central Park with pockets to provide a buffet for mixed emotions.

No matter the tone, I think an expected baseline of happiness should fuel the pursuit of positive open space. As any Landscape Architect would suggest, there are many technical and expensive avenues to achieve this but, I believe that there's a freebie out there.

I take great delight in experimenting with my theory. I run every morning on the well travelled roads of my Town. I'll see ladies pass in cars applying makeup, folks hiding behind steering wheels buttressed by flasks of coffee, bus drivers navigating their routes like cats chasing their tails and shop keepers prepping their windows for market. With many that I pass, I smile or wave. I reserve a peace out* to those whom allow me to cross intersections against the light. Each gesture is met with great return. Faces light up, mascara wands salute, horns honk, headlights flash, police sirens even give a quick beep. Immediately, the air and our surrounding landscape seems warmer, happier.

Not every landscape needs to be designed by a starchitect and his toolbox of expensive products to make it successfully defined. The power of the smile is the blueprint for positively transforming any canvas but, you just have to exercise it.



*I should note, not the dreaded Celine Dion chest punch but the good ole two fingered "V" synonymous with good will and ambassadorship not Canadian weirdness

Looming on the Landscape

Magda Sayeg is a funky fiber artist who has taken her work to the streets. I respect her ingenuity and the color experiments she introduces to the given landscape.

My favorite, is the installation that covers tree trunks with knit legwarmers. I like the way it references Europe's historical practice of whitewashing it's lime trees with a glib "Flashdance" nod.



Her Sydney staircase ranks up there too. Traditionally, I see stairs akin to "designated drivers". You desperately need them to get you from A to B but, not so much in between. It's as if Sayeg gave this staircase a stein of Red Bull. The bold shot of color theory allows them to hold their own under any presumption.
Love it.

high design

I think the terrace at Armani's new Milan Hotel is beyond clever. By harnessing the reflective surface of the building's facade, the designer was able to make this scrap of real estate a destination.
Once the vertical garden had been dressed, the space immediately became a formal garden -only when you allow your eye to entertain the reflection seen in the facade. The vanishing point appears to seal the space where the planted wall meets the facade to create an "opening". All at once, the site feels exceedingly larger and greener than reality. Genius.