We were invited to the group show “Overlap” at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, opening tonight.

From the press release:
Art and architecture are often portrayed as distinct, even opposing fields, though they share many material and conceptual practices. The invited artists and architecturally trained designers share common interests in generating forms, pattern, and geometries through tactile material processes -whether hand crafted or through the use of computational technology. They often incorporate an awareness of codes or conceptual layers in their work as well as new generative methods and modes of production. The intent of OVERLAP was to begin with these commonalities, and provide space for indefinable qualities to emerge, hinting at something new.

Read the full release here.

Tonight at 7pm is the launch of the first edition of Evolo magazine at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Don’t miss it, I’ve seen a preview of the magazine (courtesy of my good friend Carlo Aiello, Editor-in-Chief) and its is fantastic.
Read more about the history and mission of the magazine @ the Storefront’s site here .
See you guys there.

I made it last night to the WILDCHILD show at the Bridge Gallery. The work on display is absolutely fantastic and the opening was quite a succes.
Take a look at a few pics of the show below.

This evening is the opening of the show Wild Child in the Bridge Gallery down in the LES. The show is curated by Bridge Gallery + Peter Macapia. SOFTlab made the exhibition’s site, featuring a cellular war between East Coast and West Coast. Check it out here.

The list of people include:
THEVERYMANY,
Kokkugia,
KolMac,
SOFTlab,
Emergent,
Aranda/Lasch,
p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s

among others.

The NY Times has a pretty interesting interactive map of homicides in NYC dating from 2003 to the present based on data provided by the police department.

Take a look at it here.

My good friends and hyper-talented guys behind studio[mode] – Gil Akos and Ronnie Parsons – have just launched mode[lab], the lab component of their studio. In their own words: mode[lab] “is conceived of as a laboratory and serves as a knowledge base for design research and experimentation. The laboratory is distributed in nature and operates across multiple time-scales and locations ranging from intensive workshops to design studios throughout North America and Europe.

Our primary objective is to discover novel and inventive design solutions through the identification of key concepts relevant to contemporary architectural discourse and the development of related maps of action.”

My good friend Hayley from EFGH just sent me these pics of a sneak-peek from Sunday at the (soon to open) High Line project by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Kudos of course to everyone involved in the project, a refreshing addition to a park-starved section of the city.

View more images after the jump below.

SOFTlab’s website for Urban A&O was featured in Net Diver’s 10 year Anniversary Web Issue. Check out the Architectural Website Strategies article by Elsye Alam.

So this is a bit more refined version of the P(h)ixel. For one, the structure is now laser-cut plexi and way less embarrasing than before. Second, it allowed for the test with the latex, which, is already giving me nightmares. I’m calling this thing my-own-private-videodrome.

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A few things to resolve:
Re-centering the vertical element.
Lowering production cost (servos are clunky and gets expensive fast!).
Create a field!

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Sulan Kolatan and Bill MacDonald’s (KolMac studio) Lounge is on display at Moss. Go check it out.

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My good friends at EFGH – Frank Gesualdi and Hayley Eber- were recently featured in the latest issue of Frames Magazine for their design of the Dogmatic restaurant here in NYC.
Go check out the work in their site, pretty incredible stuff.

Congrats guys!

The second phase of the Blue Marlin lighting project was the design and installation of lamps for the existing/future conference rooms and reception area. To continue with the same language as the overall lighting of the space, we developed a chandelier out of the same laser-cut/flat packed elements we used in Phase I and off the shelf components. As you can imagine, I have by now a masters in pipe bending…

More images after the jump below.

SOFTlab recently completed a lighting installation at the Blue Marlin offices in NYC. 6 pairs of branches populate the ceiling and not only distribute light, but articulate and organize the space. The branches end in the light fixtures which we designed and fabricated at the studio, while the rest of the structure was made out of standard electrical conduit.

Take a peek at more images of the installation after the jump below.

We made it on Thursday to the opening of the show Darkness Descends: Scandinavian Art Now curated by Christina Vassallo. Our friend Marius Watz had three of his pieces in the show and performed with/vs Alexander Rishaug. His responsive visuals were absolutely stunning.

View more images and short clips after the jump.

SOFTlab worked with Marius on the laser etching and mounting of the pieces.

My good friend Gabe and I made it to Mr. Talking Head David Byrne’s concert at Radio City last night. Mr. Byrne was of course his quircky-goofy-smart-loose kneed self and the concert couldn’t have been better. He sang while walking backwards, spinning on a chair, wearing a tutu, running the talking heads run and completely intermingled himself with the choreographies. We both were probably amongst the youngest ones in the crowd, which means we got schooled on the knee-breaking-elbow-flapping dance moves of the 80′s.

I’ll post some clips later this week.

And finally, here are the clips…

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I made it tonight for the opening night at Alice Tully Hall for an incredible performance: Diaspora Sefardi, From Medieval Spain to Eastern Mediterranean. an exceptional concert of revived medieval songs and ballads in what I imagine can be considered old Castilian.

The show itself was just the excuse to make it to the building of course, and right from the approach, the building is truly fantastic: the huge lobby, with a gigantic glass paned curtain wall on one side and the warm wood behind the bar give it the right contrast between scale and warmth. The super long bar of course works wonderfully in crowded evenings like tonight. Heading towards the auditorium itself, the ceiling height is much lower and the scale becomes much more intimate. You walk below the ‘watch-me-im-uber-rich’ balcony then turn right and down towards the auditorium. Upon walking into the orchestra level there is a shift which is pretty surprising: the height from the floor to the balconies is quite low but it soon opens up. The scale of the space is just perfect and the wood/resin paneling looks incredible. It is quite remarkable how close everything looks to the original images. Truly a fantastic building, and can’t wait to go there in the summer.

A couple more images after the jump.

Frank, Amanda and Mara @ the bar.

Gabe pointed me to Christoph Niemann’s lego constructs of New York, they’re just awesome.

View the rest in his NYT blog here.

You can also read the thread on his bathroom tile saga from his blog here.

Take a look at the primitive huts here in the NYT slideshow.

Just as a refresher, the other two entries were in ’07 (Prehistoric Future) and ’04 (Plug-in Drop-out)

The New Yorker’s Paul Goldberger has a pretty good review on DS+R’s renovation of Lincoln Center.

Read the article here and don’t miss the video here.

I had forgotten to upload these images on Zaha’s Pavilion. It was definitely good walking through it, too bad though that (most of) the art was just, mediocre to say the least.

More images after the jump.

The pavilion itself was ‘a cool shape’, but that is about it. It seems like keeping the form a ‘signature’ Zaha form makes whole idea of it being a dismountable structure go through a lot of gymnastics.