Archinect - News

Occupying institutional space with light: The Illuminator

2018-10-31T16:29:00-04:00

Enter the Illuminator, a New York-based art activist collective, whose shifting membership has mastered the legal grey zone that regulates projection in public. [...] the Illuminator takes the normally stationary technology out of the classroom and onto the streets, affixing a high-powered, 12,000-lumens projector atop a van — or, when special nimbleness is required, a trolley — to ignite urban façades with political statements that are as bold as they are temporary.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

For this recent Urban Omnibus feature, digital media scholar Eli Horwatt interviews art-activist collective The Illuminator. Since capturing the public attention with their Occupy-inspired 99% Bat Signal projection in 2011, the collective has been, quite literally, making headlines with large-scale interventions on institutional facades such as the "We’re all sitting ducks" slogan beamed on the outside of the United Nations building during a Nuclear Non-Proliferation conference in 2015 as well as smaller installations like the Edward Snowden hologram.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

"When we project directly onto the facade of an institution whose policies and actions we stand against, we know that we are working within a set of constraints that require precise planning and rapid adaptability. We know that if they become aware of our actions, institutions will work quickly to remove any type of critical messaging from association with their buildi...

Michael Kimmelman on Public Squares

2016-04-01T14:40:00-04:00

Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. [...] I don’t think it’s coincidental that early in 2011 the Egyptian revolution centered around Tahrir Square, or that the Occupy Movement later that same year, partly inspired by the Arab Spring, expressed itself by taking over squares like Taksim in Istanbul, the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, and Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan.

Beyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public

2012-09-24T19:08:00-04:00

The root cause of diminishing public resources and the privatization of urban public space today is precisely the privatization of our political system — a crisis that cannot be addressed simply by creating more public spaces or by making these public spaces more inclusive and accessible. This deeper crisis requires the attention and intervention of a much more active and engaged public, a public willing and capable of speaking up and mobilizing politically to change the system.

The recent wave of citizen protests — from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park to the streets of Athens — has brought renewed attention to the role of public space in democratic society. In an essay on Places (excerpted from the new book Beyond Zuccotti Park, by New Village Press) Jeffrey Hou shifts the emphasis from physical space to citizen action. We need to focus not just on ensuring the right to public assembly, he writes, but also on "the making and mobilization of the public as an actively engaged citizenry."

Occupying Wall Street and Mapping Liberty Plaza (Video Trailer)

2012-09-17T12:41:00-04:00

As Occupiers posted links, updates, photos and videos on social media sites; as they deliberated in chat rooms and collaborated on crowdmaps; as they took to the streets with smartphones, they tested the parameters of this multiply mediated world. What is the layout of this place? What are its codes and protocols? Who owns it? How does its design condition opportunities for individual and collective action?

On the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, architects Jonathan Massey and Brett Snyder investigate the spatial dimensions of political action in two related features on Places, including axonometric drawings that follow the transformation of Zuccotti Park into Liberty Plaza. See the trailer below.

The Interventionist's Toolkit: Project, Map, Occupy

2012-03-27T13:53:00-04:00

With Nuit Blanche New York absorbed — even if temporarily — into the rebranding of the Lower East Side, it's instructive to recall an earlier era and another light projection. I'm thinking of the November 1984 projection by artist Krzysztof Wodiczko of Ronald Reagan’s hand onto the elevation of the AT&T Long Lines Building just before the election that made Reagan a two-term president. This past November Wodiczko's act of spectacle and protest would inspire Occupy Wall Street's "Bat Signal."

In the latest installment of her ongoing series on Places, Mimi Zeiger surveys some of the events and exhibitions organized in New York City last year and inspired by Occupy Wall Street. Along the way she analyzes the unfolding dynamic between the grassroots tactics of activist artists and designers and the institutional strategies of the city's cultural leaders.

Housing and the 99%

2012-02-14T21:07:00-05:00

How should the state pursue the goal of making decent housing affordable and accessible to all its citizens? How can we mobilize our collective resources in the service of social justice? In what other ways might we imagine living together? What is a house?

On Places, architectural historian Jonathan Massey puts Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percenters into the historical context of housing in America. Walking us from the 1920s to the present day, he explores how governmental and banking policies have worked to promote the ideal of home ownership — and lately to endanger it.

Occupy: The Day After

2011-12-08T16:02:26-05:00

For if there is one abiding historical certainty it is that, eventually, things change. And they can be made to change. There is no such thing, however, as a revolutionary architecture. Nor does history ever simply start from scratch. Instead, post-revolutionary questions can be posed in advance to infrastructures that already exist.... to reinvent what used to be called housing, schools, hospitals, factories, and farms in a way that asks: What else must change for these changes to be possible?

Reinhold Martin argues that architects must plan for post-revolutionary conditions. A follow-up to his earlier essay for Places, "Occupy: What Architecture Can Do."

Open Letter by Bryan Bell: PUBLIC SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC – OR 99% OF IT

2011-11-25T14:57:23-05:00

The message of the 99% movement is even more fundamental -- that the 99% should have representative voice in the decisions made for this country. I feel aligned with their message and ours. We support their message and their tactics 100%. As designers, we should respect the rights of the 99% to gather in public spaces.

Open Letter by Bryan Bell, founder of Design Corps, sends this open letter in support of #OWS

PUBLIC SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC – OR 99% OF IT

In a time when the Supreme Court grants the constitutional rights of free speech to corporations, for corporations to have the same rights as individuals to shape the political process through unlimited financial gifts, it is bitter to see the same rights being denied to the individuals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 08-205, 2010).

Daily, protesters are being removed from public spaces all across the country. Their primary message could not be of more relevance to the public, that the voice of the 99% is not being heard in the decisions that are shaping our country. What irony that this message is being physically moved from our public spaces. Who is public space for? Whose resources paid for public space? Whose resources pay the mayors and police who are removing this democrat...

ORTO ERRANTE - Episod 2.0 Terme di Caracalla for the Accampata / Occupy Rome

2011-11-21T18:34:20-05:00

The Roman shared gardens, the guerrilla gardening groups, the associations and citizens last weekend took care of the movable edible garden “ORTO ERRANTE” which has moved ("orto errante" in Italian means wandering garden) from Santa Croce in Gerusalemme to a spot near the ancient CARACALLA BATHS with the Occupy tents.

The ORTO ERRANTE chorally (1) built has a low environmental impact and is reversible since it is made with painted reused wooden market boxes and hemp bags filled with earth and plants brought by the Roman shared gardens.

Originally Zappata Romana was asked by the Rome Occupy to put up an edible garden in the square of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, near the tents. Zappata Romana called the people who take care of the many shared gardens in city and the response was surprising, more than 20 groups joined and came to the appointment. In one afternoon it was built with the enthusiastic help of everyone, passing by citizens included. Zappata Romana b...

Editor's Picks #234

2011-10-23T19:45:44-04:00

Orhan noted that in the language of "architectural poetics, the living room bathes you in a beautiful California light, washes your soul and takes your thoughts into the Pacific Ocean through the large window which sets the elevation on that side. Outside is wide and open, nurturing the peaceful inner space, this is something only great architecture can bless you with and masterfully achieved as in Schindler made experience."

Orhan Ayyüce, reported on his visit to Schindler's 1926 Lovell Beach House which the MAK Center and its brilliant curatorial team were able to gain access to as a 2011 fund raising event. Orhan noted that in the language of "architectural poetics, the living room bathes you in a beautiful California light, washes your soul and takes your thoughts into the Pacific Ocean through the large window which sets the elevation on that side. Outside is wide and open, nurturing the peaceful inner space, this is something only great architecture can bless you with and masterfully achieved as in Schindler made experience." SDR then posted some older B+ W documents "As a contrast to (or context for) Orhan's new photos".

In The Ideal Firm's Profile, Sherin Wing, laid out a number of working conditions by which firms large and small can try to whether the effects of poor economic policies and deregulation throughout the 2000’s will be felt for years to come. Lian Chikako Chang commented "'But ...

Whose Public Space Is This? 80 Arrested in 'Occupied Wall Street'

2011-09-27T20:13:33-04:00

Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have camped out in a square near Wall Street since Sept. 17, 2011, as part of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street."

On Saturday NYPD and its counter terrorism beat arrested and humiliated 80 activist for terrorizing Wall Street. These are the peaceful protesters with articulate voice and a message, aware of social injustice growing in American cities. Could this be the beginnings of American Spring?

In the mean time around the high culture speak, the architectural press has a more positive 'view' of a thriving city, ohh.., the Big Apple love... "The decade has been a golden age for the city, a renaissance in architecture and urban design."

Urban Design how and for whom madam? For the tourists of New York?

Anyway.

Occupy Wall Street! It is about time and It is your City!