Archinect - News

FreelandBuck's new Washington Metro art installation invites viewers to an engrossing play on perspective

2024-04-23T13:24:00-04:00

FreelandBuck has released images of a recent art installation for the Washington Metro Area Transit Agency (WMATA) in Washington, D.C. Staged as an optical illusion, their new piece titled ‘Tunnel Vision’ works by projecting an image of a metro station over three intersecting aluminum cones that are suspended from the ceiling in the lobby of the organization’s new Alexandria, Virginia, offices.

Image courtesy FreelandBuck and WMATA

The sculpture's grid pattern and convex geometry center a 3D image of an iconic coffered station designed by Harry Weese in the viewer’s vision field, creating the effect of watching a metro train approach while standing on the platform. The firm says, "The piece suggests both realism and familiarity, inciting curiosity for passersby to come take a closer look."

Image courtesy FreelandBuck and WMATA

Brennan Buck, the firm's principal and co-founder, told the Washingtonian magazine recently, "We thought it was just a real...

Richard Serra, monumental steel sculptor and inspiration to many architects, has died at 85

2024-03-27T11:20:00-04:00

Richard Serra has died. The 85-year-old sculptor who made architecture more or less a permanent condition of his art was known for inventing a process for bending corten steel to create works he explained were about eliciting sensation and intended to display the unseen physical forces of nature.

More than any other contemporary artist (Sarah Sze, Robert Irwin, Richard Estes, etc.) whose work is informed by or makes as its subject architecture, Serra’s use of steel as a means of organizing space and sequencing experience within it is, arguably, the greatest primer for any learner embarking on academic studies in the field.

He began his experimentations first with rubber before advancing to cast lead and then finally steel, a material whose properties and building potential he understood innately thanks to time spent working in steel mills during his early years in California. The opportunity to study art at Yale University changed his life thereafter.

Serra's 'Bend' sculpture at the...

ETH Zurich’s 3D printed sculpture oscillates between ‘opaque boundary’ and ‘transparent curtain’

2024-03-14T12:06:00-04:00

ETH Zurich has unveiled a 6.5-foot-tall lightweight shell fabricated from 3D printing.

Named 'Fluid Forms,' and created by the institution’s Digital Building Technologies group, the structure seeks to showcase “an innovative robotic additive manufacturing method that enables the printing of doubly curved thin shells more efficiently.”

Video courtesy Ιoanna.M/YouTube

The design of Fluid Forms was inspired by the Costa minimal surface, which belongs to a family of shapes that minimize area for a given boundary, resulting in a geometry with strong structural properties. In contrast to horizontal plane printing, the fabrication process sees the print paths align to principal curvature directions, which, according to the team, reduces the need for external support and enhances the precision and surface quality of the curved surface.

Image credit: Dominik Vogel

“The print path orientation is controlled through a vector-field optimization method that has been fi...

Frank Gehry's 'Ruminations' comes to Madison Avenue

2024-02-23T18:36:00-05:00

The Gagosian Gallery’s Madison Avenue location has recently opened an exhibition of Frank Gehry artworks titled Ruminations.

On view until April 6th, the gallery will be showing recent works Gehry’s team says are in dialog with the architect’s engagements with fluid aquatic animal forms that date to an inspirational early-80s commission with the Formica Corporation.

Frank Gehry, Ruminations, 2024, installation view. Image: © Frank O. Gehry. Photo: Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy Gagosian

Notably, the show features the East Coast debut of Gehry’s "Crocodile Lamp" sculpture besides selected works on paper and other elaborations on the animal theme.

Frank Gehry, Untitled (Black Crocodile New York), 2023. Metal wire, Colorcore formica, and silicone 13 3/8 x 102 3/8 x 51 1/4 inches (34 x 260 x 130 cm). Image: © Frank O. Gehry/Photo: Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy Gagosian

Ruminations follows the 2021 exhibition Spinning Tales, which was staged by the Gagosian in Los Angeles. This is the chance fo...

Record-setting 3D printed memorial will light up Super Bowl LVIIl next weekend

2024-02-01T16:14:00-05:00

With the presentation of this month’s NFL Super Bowl LVIIl in Las Vegas, a specially-made design constituting the world’s tallest free-standing 3D printed structure will also be on display inside Allegiant Stadium courtesy of the Kansas City tandem MANICA Architecture and fabrication firm Dimensional Innovations (DI).

The special Al Davis Memorial Torch is made in tribute to the eccentric former Raiders owner, author of the phrase "Just Win Baby," and a favorite among NFL fans for many decades.

Over 50,000 work hours went into the project between 2019 and 2020. When it culminated at 93 feet, it featured 1,148 total aluminum panels robotically painted in silver and supported by 226 individual 3D printed carbon fiber blocks weighing approximately 350 pounds apiece.

Image: © Dimensional Innovations

Each metal component was machined on a five-axis router to an incredible tolerance (approximately the width of a human hair) before DI could take over the installation. The result was a po...

Janet Echelman completes rippling sculpture in Riyadh informed by earthquake and tsunami data

2024-01-12T13:52:00-05:00

Janet Echelman has completed a sculpture in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of the artist’s Earthtime series.

Named Earthtime 1.26 Riyadh, and installed in the city’s Wadi Namar in December 2023 for the Noor Riyadh light art festival, the sculpture “celebrates the interconnection of sky and earth, flexibility and strength, humans and our physical world, bridging opposites with bold colors and soft curves,” according to the artist.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Ahmed Hasan

The sculpture is composed of knotted fibers, and designed so that as a single knot moves in the wind, the location of every other knot in the sculpture’s surface is changed in what the artist describes as “an ever-unfolding dance of human-made creation with the forces of nature beyond our control.” The custom-engineered fibers are fifteen times stronger than steel by weight and were knotted and spliced with the help of centuries-old craft techniques.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Janet Echelma...

Groundbreaking conceptual artist Robert Irwin dies at 95

2023-10-26T15:35:00-04:00

Robert Irwin, a pioneering conceptual artist and leading figure of the Light and Space movement whose work had significant influences in architecture, passed away last night in San Diego. He was 95.

Irwin helped push the boundaries of American post-war art with his understanding of the principles of design. Along with a cohort of artists like James Turrell, Richard Serra, Larry Bell, and Donald Judd, Irwin worked to constantly challenge the perception of his viewers. He left behind painting to pursue a “conditional art” that espoused a further shift away from pictorial composition and towards the responsiveness of art objects to the context of a site.

Irwin’s collaborative site-conditioned work with institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Art Foundation, and LACMA set new precedents for the inclusion of living artists in a museum’s program, the influence of which today can be seen in the careers of Marina Abramović and Isaac Julien, among others. Irwin was also ...

Janet Echelman’s 229-foot-long floating Current installation debuts in Columbus, Ohio

2023-06-07T18:38:00-04:00

Artist Janet Echelman’s soft-fiber Current installation premiered over the weekend in Columbus, Ohio, adding the city to a list of others to have showcased her experiments with site-specific sculptures and computational design since 2009.

Stretching to a total of 126 feet at its zenith, the 229-foot-long sculpture is made from 78 miles of twine strewn into more than 550,000 individual knots and cast from the facades of buildings located at the intersection of Gay and High Streets.

Current by Janet Echelman. Photo by Infinite Impact © Janet Echelman Inc.

Echelman says she “absorbed” herself in Columbus’ local history for the creation of the commission, which has seen antecedents installed in Oslo, Santiago, New York, and other major metropolises on three continents so far.

Current by Janet Echelman. Photo by Infinite Impact © Janet Echelman Inc.

She describes further: “I witnessed exceptional cooperation to achiev...

David Adjaye previews his Asaase III earthwork installation for COUNTERPUBLIC in St. Louis

2023-06-02T13:51:00-04:00

It’s very significant. In terms of personal meaning, I have approached it as a kind of meditation and reflection on the idea of deep time—planetary and galaxy time that is beyond the human timeline. Asaase III is, in a way, a representation of how I imagine an ideal city—a city that is in symbiosis with the Earth, acknowledging it and honoring it in a very deep way, but also absolutely transforming it and creating new features.

The new (permanent) addition to the Griot Museum of Black History is Adjaye’s second foray into rammed earth sculpture, following a 2021 installation at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. COUNTERPUBLIC curator Allison Glenn says the commission was born of her desire to connect the museum to the history of land use and the story of architecture in the community — in addition to Adjaye’s previous U.S. museum designs.

Adjaye says he was motivated to use materials as a means of invoking historical reference in light and also breaking us from our lost sense of place in universal spacetime, adding his concern that "Artifice has taken over our sense of reverence for the Earth."

The three-month COUNTERPUBLIC exhibition is on view in St. Louis until July 15th.

Davidson College unveils plans for a new memorial to enslaved and exploited people, led by Hank Willis Thomas and Perkins&Will

2023-06-01T12:17:00-04:00

Davidson College has unveiled its plans for a new memorial to the enslaved and exploited people whose hands built the 186-year-old liberal arts institution. The design effort of the sculpture titled “With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited” will be led by Perkins&Will in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas.

The artist of Boston's new commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King will deliver a similar monumental bronze sculpture that emerges prominently from a refuge-like space nearby the campus’s original Oak and Elm buildings.

Thomas was selected for the commission following a two-year search process led by alumni that reflects similar reconciliation efforts at Brown University, The College of William & Mary, UNC Chapel Hill, and perhaps most notably, the Höweler+Yoon project at the University of Virginia spearheaded by alumna Mabel O. Wilson.

The Met announces Nairy Baghramian for its Fall 2023 Facade Commission

2023-04-11T13:57:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced Iranian-born German artist Nairy Baghramian as the next participant in its Fall 2023 Facade Commission series.

Baghramian follows Carol Bove, Wangechi Mutu, and last year’s Hew Locke for the fourth installment of the series, which first began in 2019 under the auspices of museum Director Max Hollein.

The museum says: “These projects are the latest in The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist's practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met's audiences.”

Baghramian, also the winner of the 2022 Nasher Prize, will install four abstract polychromatic sculptures as part of the commission. Working in the blank niches left behind after Richard Hunt Morris was unable to complete his work on the museum in 1902, the sculptures are said to have components that evoke images of flotsam and will be titled Scratching the Back.

R...

Artist Janet Echelman will transform downtown Columbus this summer with a 229-foot-long floating sculpture

2023-04-07T17:41:00-04:00

Sculptor Janet Echelman will transform the skyline of Columbus, Ohio with a newly-announced commission set to debut this June.

Her soft fiber piece, titled Current, expands on past experiments with architecture and computational design and will stretch to 126 feet at its pinnacle. The 229-foot-long sculpture is made from 78 miles of twine strewn into more than 550,000 individual knots and cast from the facades of buildings located at the intersection of Gay and High Streets.

Image courtesy Studio Echelman

Echelman says she “drew inspiration from the evolution of downtown Columbus and its role throughout history as a place of innovation and light.” Her latest commission will be the first permanent piece to be suspended over street level, following temporary installations in Munich, Santiago, New York, and two other continents.

“When I approach a new project, I start by diving into the history of the place,” Echelman said. "I became absorbed in Columbus’ historical narrative and quickl...

Thomas Phifer's Richard Serra sculpture pavilion at the Glenstone Museum debuts in new film

2023-04-05T11:35:00-04:00

Thomas Phifer's custom-designed building for Richard Serra's monumental 2017 Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure sculpture at Maryland's Glenstone Museum is the subject of a new documentary short from Rava Films.

Premiering at last month's Montreal International Festival of Films on Art, You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone charts the journey of the 656,000-pound sculpture from New Jersey to its new home at the 230-acre museum, where it was installed in July 2021.

According to the Glenstone, the film features previously unpublished reflections from the artist and the museum's Director and Co-Founder, Emily Rales, along with other key collaborators.

Still from "You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone”. Image courtesy Glenstone Museum

The sculpture comprises four 82-ton forged steel segments which are now housed in a dedicated 4,000-square-foot pavilion that the architect designed in collaboration with Serra. This is now Serra's third site-specific piece at t...

Albany's 'Million Dollar Staircase' to add permanent bust of late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, its first woman

2023-03-14T15:52:00-04:00

Even then, the gender imbalance was glaring. The so-called Million Dollar Staircase, spanning 444 steps and four floors of the New York State Capitol, memorialized the faces of dozens of distinguished figures in delicate carvings, but not one was a woman. Scrutiny prompted a state official to hastily authorize the addition of several women to the staircase’s lower level. The year was 1898.

After 125 years, New York State will make its first new addition, Brooklyn native and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The carving will be formed from the same Scotland-sourced Corsehill sandstone used for the original stairs. It is expected to cost around $150,000 and complete sometime this spring. The piece will be sculpted by artist Meredith Bergmann.

The Million Dollar Staircase, also officially known as the Great Western Staircase, was carved in place from large blocks of sandstone from 1884 to 1898. It was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and features 78 carvings of distinguished figures from that time. The few faces of women that are present on the staircase seem to serve a more decorative purpose, including babies, goddesses, and the architect’s granddaughter. The six proposed female additions include Susan B. Anthony, novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Civil War nurses.

Anish Kapoor completes 'mini-Bean' at Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard

2023-02-06T13:51:00-05:00

After years of delays, New York City finally has a shiny silver bean of its own. A new sculpture by Anish Kapoor—modeled after his famous Cloud Gate, known as the Bean, in Chicago—was officially unveiled this week. [...] Despite its resemblance to Cloud Gate, is different in several key ways, reported Tribeca Citizen in 2018. For example, while Chicago’s Bean is bolted securely to the ground, Manhattan’s mini-Bean is more free-flowing, able to move and shift depending on the weather.

The $8 million freestanding sculpture has been teased since 2008 when renderings for Herzog & de Meuron’s domineering 56 Leonard Street tower were first revealed to the public. It has a less-expensive twin at the MFA Houston and will get an official name later in the coming months, according to Hyperallergic.

“[It’s] small change for these people,” Kapoor (who purchased a condo in the building in 2016) said, speaking of developer Alexico Group’s private financing. “They should be giving something back already, and more, honestly.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by M I C H A E L T. Y O U N G (@mchlanglo793)

MASS Design Group's touching Hank Willis Thomas MLK memorial commission debuts in Boston

2023-01-17T15:57:00-05:00

The wait for artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group’s public memorial to Martin Luther King on the Boston Common finally ended over the weekend with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included the sculpture's design team and a host of local political dignitaries.

They were on hand to witness the unveiling of Thomas’ monumental The Embrace sculpture that now sits at the southern edge of America’s oldest public park in the newly-created 1965 Freedom Plaza, a short distance away from the 236-year-old statehouse and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. By rights, putting the legacy of its subjects in proper place alongside the Hub’s other paragons of social justice causes from centuries past.

Image courtesy MASS Design Group

Dr. King met his wife, the late Coretta Scott King, at Boston University’s Myles Standish Hall while the two were both graduate students at different institutions in early 1952. Thomas wanted to create a lasting monumen...

Acclaimed visual artist Sanford Biggers offers the opportunity to join his studio of social and political interplays

2023-01-12T15:37:00-05:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for an Architect at the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open position on Archinect Jobs for a Shop Manager at Studio Sanford Biggers.

The role, based in Biggers’ New York City studio, calls for an individual prepared to be responsible for “organizing and executing in-house production” of the studio’s artistic projects. Ideal experience requested for within candidates includes proficiency with wood and light metal fabrication, and a demonstrated experience with artwork and design fabrication.

Blossom, 2007. Photo: The Brooklyn Museum. Copyright: Sanford Biggers. Courtesy of the artist and The Brooklyn Museum.

Why the role interests us

The role in Sanford Biggers’ studio offers an opportunity to reflect on the work of the Los Angeles-born artist; whose unique approach to fabrication and materiality is sure to create an engaging environment for the can...

Finally complete, the Watts Towers’ restoration is a turning point for public art in Los Angeles

2022-12-06T18:17:00-05:00

One of Los Angeles’ most significant cultural landmarks, Simon Rodia’s monumental Watts Towers sculpture, finally re-opened last month after a five-year multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by LACMA.

The project was overseen by the museum’s Senior Conservation Scientist Dr. Frank Preusser, Art Conservator Elisabetta Covizzi, and other staffers whose focus fell mainly on repairing the aging concrete and makeshift armature of the 100-year-old towers in addition to cleaning, stabilizing, and reattaching its many thousands of vulnerable ornamental elements.

Image of Elisabetta Covizzi working on Rodia's sculptural canopy at Watts Towers. Taken May 4, 2022, by Sara Chao. Image via Covizzi's Instagram ©master_conservation.

The complex had been standing largely unaltered since a previous late-90s restoration aimed at seismic upgrades was completed in 2001. A decade later, LACMA began organizing a City Hall-backed effort that identified critical areas of need with help from t...

Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut

2022-08-26T17:51:00-04:00

The long-awaited public opening of land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental earthwork City is just around the corner, and the Triple Aught Foundation, the group which manages its remote Lincoln County, Nevada site, has shared some amazing new photos that offer a sense of the scale and stasis of the massive sculpture which has taken 52 years and another $40 million to finish.

City © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex One and Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Critic Dave Hickey recently described it as "a gracious intervention in the desert...composed and complete."

LACMA Director Michael Govan reflected on its realization, stating: "Over the years I would sometimes compare Michael Heizer's City project to some of the most important ancient monuments and cities. But now I only compare it to itself. It's an artwor...

Michael Heizer’s land art masterpiece 'City' finally sets an opening date

2022-08-22T10:00:00-04:00

City, a vast complex of outdoor structures and landmasses the Land artist Michael Heizer began constructing in the desert of Nevada in 1970, will finally begin welcoming public visitors next month. The site’s opening on 2 September, more than 50 years after work at the site began, marks the fulfillment of Heizer’s most ambitious and career-defining project.

Get ready to weep (assuming you are among the select art tourists willing to travel to the site-specific installation, as Heizer intended): The 50-year saga surrounding the National Mall-sized sculpture is over, and the Triple Aught Foundation, which manages the site, will begin accepting up to six visitors a day in an outcome that has at times seemed impossible.

Heizer's masterpiece has been the subject of an Obama-era protective designation (a measure first proposed by the late Senator Harry Reid) and later the failed Trump Administration attempt to open up the 740,000-acre tract to mining and development. Plans were originally for the earthwork to be made public in 2020. LACMA director Michael Govan says it is "an artwork aware of our primal impulses to build and organize space."

As the artist, who began the piece in 1970, told the Los Angeles Times in 2012: "The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for ins...

An altered AD photoshoot landed one wealthy Bay Area couple in hot water over potentially looted Cambodian relics

2022-08-16T16:23:00-04:00

The January 2021 issue of Architectural Digest featured a remodeled $42 million San Francisco residence described as a Spanish Renaissance Revival palacio. [...] ...shows ancient Khmer sculptures resting on the same pedestals. The Cambodian government says those stone relics, depicting the heads of gods and demons, match a set that was looted years ago from one of the nation’s sacred sites.

The tony $42 million Peter Marino-designed San Francisco manse was the subject of a multi-page spread in the January 2021 edition of the magazine. A spokesperson for Architectural Digest said that photoshopping was required by “unresolved publication rights around select artworks,” but an eagle-eyed attorney working for Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts who originally spotted the empty plinths indicated their resemblance to a pair allegedly taken from one of the country's most sacred sites a few years ago.

“It’s easily one of the most important statues in the temple, and probably all of Koh Ker,” Bradley J. Gordon is reported to have told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “By having this in their collection, the Lindemanns essentially had the Cambodian equivalent of a sarcophagus stolen from King Tut’s tomb sitting in their living room.”

...

Maya Lin's next sculptural installation will grace the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago

2022-08-08T13:10:00-04:00

The forthcoming Obama Presidential Library, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien, will now include a sculptural installation from Maya Lin, according to an announcement made on August 4 by the Obama Foundation.

The sculptural piece, titled “Seeing Through the Universe,” will anchor the library’s newly-announced water garden, which has been named to honor Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham. It includes a stone oculus and pebble water feature surrounded by pathways leading away from the installation and into the library’s other recently-unveiled outdoor gathering spaces designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

“When we thought about what may be a fitting way to commemorate my mother’s influence on my sister and me, I thought about where she would want to be in this space,” this year’s A’22 keynote speaker said in a statement. “I could picture her sitting on one of the ...

MVRDV designs mixed-use building in the shape of a bust of Albania's national hero

2022-08-03T16:20:00-04:00

Construction has begun on a mixed-use building by MVRDV that, at 279 feet tall and sculpted into the shape of a bust of Albania’s national hero, will be one of the world’s largest buildings that double as a sculpture. The Skanderbeg Building, officially known as Tirana’s Rock, will provide functional housing while serving as a landmark in the heart of Albania’s capital, Tirana.

Gjergj Kastrioti (1405-1468), commonly known as Skanderbeg, is a central figure in Albania’s history. He is celebrated for his role in Albania's conception as a nation-state. The building is located on the northeastern corner of the main public square in Tirana, which is named after the figure, Skanderbeg Square.

Image render courtesy of MVRDV.

“Carved” into the volume, Skanderbeg’s head is turned to the right facing the square, with "his shoulders aligning with the widest parts of the site," shares the firm. To achieve this design, balconies are found wrapped around the building on every level. Their curved ...

Thompson Center sculpture will be relocated following building's sale

2022-08-01T19:31:00-04:00

One of Chicago’s iconic pieces of public art will be getting a new home. French artist Jean Dubuffet’s sculpture “Monument with Standing Beast,” in place in front of the Thompson Center since the building opened in 1985, is moving to a different spot in the Loop.

Following last week’s $105 million sale of the Thompson Center to Google, the famed Dubuffet sculpture will be relocated to a former bank building at 115 S. LaSalle Street, a space purchased by the state of Illinois to house office space lost with the sale. The 29-foot, 10-ton fiberglass sculpture was seen as an extension of the Helmut Jahn-designed building. Nicknamed “Snoopy in a blender,” the piece is made up of four shapes representing an animal, a tree, an architectural form, and a portal. It was inspired by Dubuffet’s 1960 series of paintings called Hourlope.

Previously on Archinect: Google will take over Thompson Center following $105 million sale

“Monument with Standing Beast” was donated in 1984 by Ruth Horwich, an art collector and co-founder of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, in memory of her husband, Leonard Horwich. It was unveiled outside an under-construction Thompson Center in November of that year. A date for the sculpture’s arrival at its new home has not bee...

Artist Hew Locke will activate the Met facade with a quartet of trophy-like reflections on the museum's history and collection

2022-04-11T15:31:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Hew Locke will be the next artist featured in its provocative Facade Commission series.

The Guyanese-British artist’s effort is titled “Gilt” and will follow recent interventions by Carol Bove and Wangechi Mutu for the third version of the commission, which was begun in 2019 as the museum looked for new ways to engage its collections, history, and neoclassical exterior with the public and its newfound mandate for institutional self-reflection.

Architect Richard Hunt Morris was never fully able to realize his vision for the museum’s facade by the time of its completion in 1902. As a result, four extended niches were left empty until the commission began and will now showcase a quartet of trophy-like sculptures from Locke that are “informed by [his] deep knowledge of the Met’s collection and […] reference the institution in ways both direct and indirect,” according to Director Max Hollein....

Frank Gehry's twin crocodile sculptures will star in Bonhams' upcoming LA auction

2022-02-23T18:53:00-05:00

Two sculptural pendant crocodile designs that once formed the centerpiece of Frank Gehry’s most significant mid-career designs are now for sale at Bonhams as part of the auction house’s first Modern Designs | Art sale of the year.

Frank Gehry, Illuminated Pendant Crocodile, 1983, custom-designed for Rebecca's Restaurant, painted metal and glass. Image courtesy Bonhams.

The pair is predicted to fetch somewhere in the $50,000–70,000 and $30,000–50,000 range respectively when the hammer drops in Los Angeles on March 8th.

The sculptures were created as part of Gehry’s 1983 commission from restaurateurs Bruce and Rebecca Marder for the design of the interior of their then-new Venice, California restaurant called Rebecca’s.

Related on Archinect: 'I think the fish form is architectural': Watch Frank Gehry talk about his latest sculpture exhibition in Los Angeles, Image: Spinning Tales, 2021, installation view. © Frank Gehry. Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy of Gagosian

Gehry’s design instantl...

Destination Crenshaw reveals new renderings as LA grants approval for its arts program

2021-10-15T18:52:00-04:00

New renderings have been unveiled following the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission approval of the recently announced first slate of sculptural installations set to line the forthcoming Destination Crenshaw development in Los Angeles.

The $100 million community redevelopment scheme features a streetscape designed by Perkins&Will’s local office in addition to several green community meetings spaces from Studio-MLA.

Overhead view of Destination Crenshaw’s Sankofa Park featuring designs for works by Maren Hassinger, Kehinde Wiley, and Charles Dickson. Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw.

Overhead images reveal the Sankofa Park section of the corridor dotted with artworks by Kehinde Wiley, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, and Charles Dickson. The park lies along 46th Street on the northernmost bookend of the 1.3-mile-long site. Its elongated avian shape is derived from the eponymous sankofa bird, a traditional African symbol representing movement that Dickson captures...

Check out SOM's movement-inspired collaboration with artist Janet Echelman in Munich

2021-09-16T17:32:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has once again come together with American artist Janet Echelman for a site-specific sculptural installation in Munich’s historic Odeonsplatz Square.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

The atmospheric sculpture is in constant motion, activating the public space below while changing shape and color with the wind using a 3D data model of the earth’s floor following a powerful 2010 Chilean earthquake from which the ‘1.26’ monicker is taken.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

“My artwork reflects an interconnectedness of opposites — flexibility with strength, earth with sky, things we can control with the forces beyond us,” Echelman said.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

The sculpture is comprised of more than 361,000 individual knots formed by handmade splices of woven nylon and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene rope fibers. The sculpture weighs 700 pounds and occupies about 3,300 square feet of total area. Its responsiveness and adaptivity represent th...

The global reach of 9/11 through the memorials across the world

2021-09-11T20:16:00-04:00

Since the events of 9/11 twenty years ago, a vast array of memorials, from modest sculptures to landscaped gardens, have been erected across the world, honoring the victims, survivors, and first responders. While many of the overseas works are lesser known, they have an equally local and worldwide meaning, paying homage to specific individuals and groups while commemorating the tragedy, as a whole. Many are composed of repurposed steel from the towers, breathing new life and meaning into the former structures. In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is a collection of impactful tributes, from New Zealand to Germany.

Tribute to Firefighters (2002). Image: Courtesy Graham Bennet

Tribute to Firefighters (2002), Christchurch, New Zealand - Graham Bennett

Sculptor Graham Bennett was invited by the Christchurch City Council to create a sculpture commemorating the firefighters whose lives were lost during 9/11. The piece is composed of steel from the World Trade Center that had fal...

'I think the fish form is architectural': Watch Frank Gehry talk about his latest sculpture exhibition in Los Angeles

2021-08-06T19:37:00-04:00

“I think the fish form is architectural, that’s my take. I like the expression of movement. I wondered if we could recreate that in some way, could get in a building,” Frank Gehry reflected in a new video released by the Gagosian Gallery in conjunction with his Spinning Tales exhibition on view through today.

Video via Gagosian on YouTube.

The exhibition traces the lineage of Gehry's famous fish sculptures from their beginnings as an unintentional side-product of his experimentations into a plastic laminate called ColorCore to their zenith in the form of an installation at the 1992 Olympic Summer Games in Barcelona, and finally to their terminus in the gallery’s eighth showing of the fluid copper and polyvinyl sculptures that opened June 24th.

The gallery pulled out all the stops for the exhibition, which included a performance from Grammy-winning artist Esperanza Spalding as well as an appearance by conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who is working with Gehry on an upcoming project.

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Archinect - News

FreelandBuck's new Washington Metro art installation invites viewers to an engrossing play on perspective

Richard Serra, monumental steel sculptor and inspiration to many architects, has died at 85

ETH Zurich’s 3D printed sculpture oscillates between ‘opaque boundary’ and ‘transparent curtain’

Frank Gehry's 'Ruminations' comes to Madison Avenue

Record-setting 3D printed memorial will light up Super Bowl LVIIl next weekend

Janet Echelman completes rippling sculpture in Riyadh informed by earthquake and tsunami data

Groundbreaking conceptual artist Robert Irwin dies at 95

Janet Echelman’s 229-foot-long floating Current installation debuts in Columbus, Ohio

David Adjaye previews his Asaase III earthwork installation for COUNTERPUBLIC in St. Louis

Davidson College unveils plans for a new memorial to enslaved and exploited people, led by Hank Willis Thomas and Perkins&Will

The Met announces Nairy Baghramian for its Fall 2023 Facade Commission

Artist Janet Echelman​ will transform downtown Columbus this summer with a 229-foot-long floating sculpture

Thomas Phifer's Richard Serra sculpture pavilion at the Glenstone Museum debuts in new film

Albany's 'Million Dollar Staircase' to add permanent bust of late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, its first woman

Anish Kapoor completes 'mini-Bean' at Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard

MASS Design Group's touching Hank Willis Thomas MLK memorial commission debuts in Boston

Acclaimed visual artist Sanford Biggers offers the opportunity to join his studio of social and political interplays

Finally complete, the Watts Towers’ restoration is a turning point for public art in Los Angeles

Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut

Michael Heizer’s land art masterpiece 'City' finally sets an opening date

An altered AD photoshoot landed one wealthy Bay Area couple in hot water over potentially looted Cambodian relics

Maya Lin's next sculptural installation will grace the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago

MVRDV designs mixed-use building in the shape of a bust of Albania's national hero

Thompson Center sculpture will be relocated following building's sale

Artist Hew Locke will activate the Met facade with a quartet of trophy-like reflections on the museum's history and collection

Frank Gehry's twin crocodile sculptures will star in Bonhams' upcoming LA auction

Destination Crenshaw reveals new renderings as LA grants approval for its arts program

Check out SOM's movement-inspired collaboration with artist Janet Echelman in Munich

The global reach of 9/11 through the memorials across the world

'I think the fish form is architectural': Watch Frank Gehry talk about his latest sculpture exhibition in Los Angeles

Artist Janet Echelman will transform downtown Columbus this summer with a 229-foot-long floating sculpture