NYC and Architecture

There are some buildings which become the icon for the entire city. With Manhattan's density, it isn't simply one building that stands out, but the cumulative vertical effect of skyscraper next to skyscraper. Philip Johnson's Chippendale detail on the AT&T building is barely visible from the street, but soon became part of the post-modern movement in architecture. It was only from this 36th floor window that I was able to get a good look and snap a pic.

The Guggenheim, recently renovated, is another architectural 'must-see' for its graceful exterior and its inspired floor plan. Currently housing a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition, Wright's desire to establish a modern and distinctly American form of architecture is detailed in his beautiful drawings and in the handful of models on display. What was most interesting about the show were the residential floor plans as evidence of how our homes have evolved. Most significantly is the change in the placement of the kitchen. What is now the center of a contemporary home for cooking, eating, and socializing, Wright relegates the kitchen into a separate space meant just for food preparation with little to no connection to the living space. What remains true, however, is his desire to place the house on the site be be best integrated with nature.

Another great, but often overlooked NYC building, is the Park Avenue Armory between 66th and 67th street, built for New York State’s Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, the first volunteer militia to respond to President Lincoln’s call for troops in 1861. The building was completed in 1880. Members of what was known as the “Silk Stocking” Regiment included New York’s most prominent Gilded Age Families including the Vanderbilts, Van Rensselaers, Roosevelts, Stewarts, Livingstons and Harrimans. The Armory’s drill hall, one of the city's largest unobstructed interiors, uses industrial steel arches for support, reminding one of what Penn Station had been. The vast 9,000 square foot space was used most recently for the Ernesto Neto exhibition, whose fluid transparent forms were nearly dwarfed in the enormity of the space.

I hope to spend a good portion of this summer continuing the search for great NYC architecture, so if you have any suggestions, please drop me a note!

The Body as Inspiration

When James was working on his thesis for his MFA, he combined painting and sculpture with a series of works called "The Inhabitables." Working on a scale which would mimic the relationship of mother and infant (the paintings were huge and the viewers were the infants) he placed protruding orifices in strategic spots. The result was simultaneously comforting and disconcerting. Years later we attended an exhibition at the New Museum called Cloaca, a mechanical digestive system by Dutch artist Wim Delvoye which was fed twice a day and eliminated at 2:30 pm to much glee from the expectant crowd. This biotechnical sculpture fueled itself, creating its own energy from the corn it digested.

Most recently, the Park Avenue Armory in NYC is hosting the Ernesto Neto exhibition, seen above. With his womblike structures dripping with sacks of spices, the space combines art, architecture, and body in a multisensory installation. The show, which closes on June 14th, is one that is worth rearranging your weekend to see.

Clearly, the body as artistic inspiration is nothing new; however it has never seemed more pertinent as our society moves forward in terms of stem cells and cloning. Some of the advances come from seemingly surprising places. One such place is the International Science and Engineering Fair. Seventeen year old winner Pragya Kakani's project A Microarray Based RNA in situ Hybridization Screen for Novel Cell Adhesion Genes in Cerebellar Basket and Stellate Interneurons almost lost me at the title, but upon hearing how she analyzed brain function, I became curious to see how her research could inspire art and architecture. The cerebellum and its interneurons play a key role in integrating of sensory perception and motor coordination; however, currently little is known about the mechanisms guiding synapse formation. The goal of her study was to identify genes that may be responsible for synapse formation by coding cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), or proteins that facilitate cell to cell interactions. Her research isolated approximately nine genes which are strong candidates for future investigation. One can only begin to imagine the possibilities if this type of scientific research on sensory perception and motor coordination could make its way into modern medicine as well as art and architecture.