Archinect - News

Elyn Zimmerman’s Marabar sculpture redebuts as Sudama in D.C.

2023-04-04T19:19:00-04:00

Artist Elyn Zimmerman’s 1984 Marabar sculpture has been officially rededicated on the campus of Washington, D.C.’s American University after a yearslong preservation effort spearheaded by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF).

A reconfiguration of the site-specific 225-ton granite sculpture was installed next to the school’s Kay Spiritual Life Center over the last year after being moved from the courtyard surrounding the National Geographic Society headquarters in order to make room for a new plaza expansion designed by Hickock Cole and OLIN.

TCLF President Charles Birnbaum said: “Though we regret the loss of Marabar at its original location, we are pleased that its creator, artist Elyn Zimmerman, with the support of National Geographic, retained the ability to control its reconfiguration and relocation to the American University campus. Had TCLF not intervened beginning in March 2020, when the artist was resigned to the loss of one of her most important works, Zimmerman's instal...

Elyn Zimmerman’s Marabar installation finally has a new home

2021-12-29T19:28:00-05:00

The fate of one of the most iconic artworks in the nation’s capital has been officially resolved months after The Cultural Landscape Foundation assured that its future would be set in stone.

Artist Elyn Zimmerman’s massive granite Marabar installation has found a new home after a planned modernization at D.C.’s National Geographic Society previously caused uncertainty about its future.

The New York Times is reporting that the million-pound installation will now be relocated to the campus of American University following an agreement between the two institutions. The university’s art museum is taking the piece that served as the centerpiece of the David Childs-designed building since its inception in 1984.

The Society had previously announced its intention to do away with the piece in lieu of a new plaza from Hickock Cole and OLIN which featured a pavilion and trendy rooftop garden. The installation seemed doomed after the city’s Historic Preservation Board okayed the removal be...

Site-specific installation MARABAR, threatened by National Geographic expansion, to be moved to new site

2021-03-05T19:42:00-05:00

In a defeat tinged by cautious hope, an accord has been reached to remove Elyn Zimmerman’s 1984 sculptural installation Marabar from the headquarters of the National Geographic Society (NGS) in Washington, DC, but to keep it intact and move it to a new location.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation, advocating for the preservation of the threatened sculptural installation by the artist Elyn Zimmerman, announced that the newly reached resolution expects the acclaimed artwork to be moved and reinstalled on a new site.

Previously on Archinect: Polished stone sculpture threatened by National Geographic expansion prompts reconsideration

"I have been assured by NGS that I will have an active role in overseeing the removal, transportation and eventual installation of the components of MARABAR on a new site which will be carried out at National Geographic’s expense," said Elyn Zimmerman, an Isamu Noguchi Award recipient.

Christo, master of monumental art, has died

2020-06-01T14:28:00-04:00

The artist Christo, who with his late wife and partner Jeanne-Claude was known for his monumental, often whimsical interventions on architecture and landscape, has died, aged 84. The artist’s studio confirmed on Twitter that he died at his home in New York [...]

Due to the scale and spatial nature of their art, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have made frequent appearances in the Archinect news over the years.

Recently on Archinect: Christo comes to Paris in 2020 to wrap the Arc de Triomphe

Photographer documents where human-imposed grid must bend to Earth

2018-01-04T13:28:00-05:00

Photographer Gerco de Ruijter is widely known for his work focusing on grids and other signs of human-imposed geometry on the landscape. His latest work explores instances in the North American landscape where the Jeffersonian road grid is forced to go awry due to the curvature of the Earth. His film Grid Corrections was made digging through Google Earth imagery of the Thomas Jefferson Grid, a grid built of exact square mile increments that must bend every 24 miles.

Photo: still from “Grid Corrections” by Gerco de Ruijter, courtesy of the Ulrich Museum of Art.

Check out a one minute clip of his film documenting these strange instances of T-intersections and zigzagging turns, where the human grid is forced to account for its natural environment. Read more about the project on Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG.

Christo abandons $15 million U.S.-based river project as protest against "landlord" Trump

2017-01-31T12:46:00-05:00

Christo's proposed silver-fabric-panel draped "Over the River" project has been in the making for about 25 years, after he started hunting for a natural host site in 1992 and then gradually garnered the neccessary official approvals and permits over the following decades for a 42-mile stretch along the Colorado River. However, the artist is abandoning the $15 million dollar project as a protest against President Trump, explaining that “The federal government is our landlord. They own the land. And I can’t do a project that benefits this landlord.” Although it's doubtful that the official landlord would appreciate the nuance and splendor of Christo's work, the people of Colorado would have undoubtedly benefitted economically from tourists.

First look at the 2017 International Garden Festival landscape installations

2017-01-24T18:24:00-05:00

In response to the all-too-familiar “nature-deficit disorder” in society these days, participants in this year's competition had to create inventive “Playsages” that would inspire, if not remind, today's tech-savvy kids — and adults — to spend more time outdoors. Out of 162 proposals from 30 countries, six lucky designers had the winning schemes that will be exhibited during the 2017 International Garden Festival starting June 23.

Here's a glimpse of the winning projects:

↓ LA CHRYSALIDE by landscape architects Gabriel Lacombe & Virginie Roy-Mazoyer

↓ PAYSAGE EUPHONIQUE by MANI

↓ L'ESCALE by Collectif Escargo

HAIKU by architects Francisco A. Garcia Pérez & Alessandra Vignotto

SOUNDCLOUD by Johanna Ballhaus, landscape architect & Helen Wyss, architect

↓ THE WOODSTOCK by Atelier Yok-Yok

More details on Bustler.

Monumental land art emerges in Montana's new Tippet Rise Art Center

2016-08-12T13:36:00-04:00

"They have strong architectural properties: they create space, they provide shelter and shade, they change the thermal and acoustical properties of the surrounding context and thus they enable new activities and programs to take place. But also, they can live empty without looking like empty buildings...”

Land art installations stand majestically against the pristine Montana landscape at the Tippet Rise Art Center, a working sheep ranch turned art destination that opened in June about an hour away from Billings and 2.5 hours north of Yellowstone. Ensamble Studio principals Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa briefly talk about the collaborative design process behind the Center's masterplan and the landscape works they created.

Wim Wenders discusses the role of architecture and landscape in his films

2015-10-08T14:06:00-04:00

I slowly became more and more of a storyteller and less and less of a painter until I embraced film-making as the only profession that really included everything I liked. It was photography and architecture, music and writing and acting—everything I liked together into one package that was called “film-making”.

In an interview with The Economist, film director Wim Wenders speaks about the relationship of landscape and architecture in his work, and how focusing on a scene absent of anyone often amplifies the stories of everyone.

"I try to make places tell their stories about us," he says. Indeed: from "Paris, Texas" to "Wings of Desire" to "Pina," Wenders' filmmaking agilely pairs emotional and physical terrain.

Richard Serra engages with the Qatari desert landscape in his new sculptural piece

2015-04-30T18:51:00-04:00

Richard Serra’s new sculpture, 'East-West/West-East,' is a set of four standing steel plates rolled in Germany, shipped via Antwerp, and offloaded, trucked, and craned into place in the middle of the western Qatari desert...the steel is the same that he’s used in his other pieces, and it will oxidize in the same way, albeit more quickly in the hot, salty conditions of the Brouq Nature Reserve. The plates will [ultimately] turn a dark amber—approximately the same color...as the Seagram Building.

Olafur Eliasson turns Louisiana MoMA into a 'Riverbed'

2014-08-19T14:04:00-04:00

Olafur Eliasson has tried something else. For his latest site-specific project, which opens on 20 August, the artist has transformed the entire south wing of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark into a convincing riverbed – a messy, stony accumulation of sedimentary rock and watery channels that threatens to silt up the white space of the gallery entirely. The result is an uncanny collision of manmade and natural views, and a Sublime reminder of the slow power of nature to erode [...].

Bruce Munro Announces Largest Solar-Powered Field of Light for Ayers Rock, Australia in 2013!

2012-06-29T14:12:00-04:00

After a series of acclaimed installations around the world, Munro will be bringing his Fields of Light back to the project’s birthplace at Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the heart of the Australian red desert in 2013. The installation will be his largest to date, and it will be powered entirely by solar energy.