Storefront for Art and Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

José Esparza Chong Cuy has been appointed as the new Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture. Following the departure of former director Eva Franch i Gilabert to London as the new Director of the Architectural Association, the extensive international search to fill her shoes began. An architect, curator, and writer, originally from Mexico, Esparza Chong Cuy was named and will assume the position starting November 1st.

Storefront, a non-profit organization based in New York City, engages in the advancement of design and architecture with interdisciplinary dialogue through exhibitions and projects that aim to transcend geographic and ideological boundaries. Charles Renfro, President of Storefront's Board of Directors, remarks, "We are thrilled to welcome José to the helm of Storefront, the very institution where he began his curatorial career over a decade ago."

With Argeo Ascani, Anne Guthrie, Zev Greenfield, Margaret Anne Schedel, Elaine Sisman, Emily Thompson, and Peter Zuspan

Storefront for Art and Architecture, in collaboration with the New York Comedy Festival (NYCF), has commissioned Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe to create Paranoia Man in a Rat Fink Room at Storefront's gallery space. The exhibit opened on November 8, 2016, with special preview performances from November 2 - 6, 2016 during the NYCF. Paranoia Man in a Rat Fink Room continues after the festival with events and discussions curated by Storefront through February 18, 2017.

Currently on display at the Storefront for Art & Architecture gallery in New York, Sharing Models: Manhattanisms is the latest exhibition put on the nonprofit organization, which asked 30 international and up-and-coming firms to answer the question: “How will the sharing movement of today affect the way we inhabit and build the cities of tomorrow?”

Each firm was tasked with creating a drawing and model of their vision for the future of a given slice of the island. When pushed together, the 30 pieces create a single composite figure, a collage of a shared Manhattan that is “simultaneously fictional and real, and one that opens a window to new perceptions of the city’s shared assets.”

Continue after the break to see the 30 visions.

The TWA Flight Center, designed by Eero Saarinen, opened to the public in 1962 and has been out of use since 2001. On the evening of Sunday, May 8th, Storefront for Art and Architecture’s 2016 Spring Benefit, BEYOND BORDERS, will be the last public event to be held at the iconic terminal before its redevelopment.

UNFINISHED

The act of creating new objects from scratch is often no longer possible for the professional architect given the social and economic contexts of our contemporary world.

In some societies, building booms during periods of high economic growth have resulted in a collection of contemporary ruins that are now neglected due to a lack of resources or lack of need for their use. In other contexts, architecture emerges as a result of decision-making processes that allocate minimal resources to the basic human need of habitation.

On Saturday, February 27th, Storefront for Art and Architecture and The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union will jointly present a public conference, Closed World: Encounters That Never Happened. Presenters and discussants will engage in debate and discussion on the history and future of closed systems in architecture and design.

EXHIBITION BRINGS 41+1 CLOSED SYSTEM PROTOTYPES TO STOREFRONT GALLERY

Exhibition Dates: February 17th - April 9th, 2016
Press and Members’ Preview: Tuesday, 2/16 from 6-7 pm
Public Opening: Tuesday, 2/16 from 7-9 pm

On Tuesday, February 16th, Storefront for Art and Architecture will open Closed Worlds, an exhibition curated by Lydia Kallipoliti that presents an archive of 41 living prototypes of closed resource regeneration systems built over the last century. The archive represents an unexplored genealogy of closed systems in architectural practice. The exhibition will also feature Some World Games, a virtual reality installation by Farzin Farzin that presents a contemporary 42nd prototype of a closed system inside the walls of Storefront’s gallery space at 97 Kenmare Street. A related public conference that further explores closed worlds will take place at The Cooper Union on Saturday, February 27th from 12-6 pm.

What does it mean to build? Traditionally, building has been defined as the assembly of parts or materials toward the creation of a whole. While to build is often perceived as an Apollonian pursuit, to destroy appears to be its Dionysian counterpart. Understanding that our built environment is the product of many forces, it can dialectically be reduced to the tensions between creation and destruction, addition and subtraction, and erection and demolition.

What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy.

Critical Halloween is a party, an intellectual debate, a costume competition, and a space for the expression of radical thought. Over the past few years, it has become a referential event that brings people together through music, dance, and costume design to engage in critical discussion in New York City.

"If one wants to dance on a tightrope, one has to first tension the wire.” - Siegfried Ebeling, 1926, Space as Membrane

MEASURE August 14th, 2015 – September 12th, 2015
Opening: August 13th at 7 pm
Members’ Preview: August 13th at 6 pm

To measure, to quantify the physical and intangible dimensions of a place, is to articulate facts in order to construct values. The process of creating standards and guidelines of representation allows innovation to enter the realm of the establishment. What can be measured can be capitalized, historicized, and sold.

While architectural representation conforms to a system of standards and guidelines that allows for the production of buildings, architecture is also the practice of giving form to thought. In the process of creating edifices that house social, political, and spatial relations, architects make visible the functions of society in operational and aspirational terms. In this sense, architecture is constantly innovating new forms of measurement and representation.

Storefront for Art and Architecture hosts Facing East: Chinese Urbanism in Africa, an exhibition by journalist Michiel Hulshof (Tertium, Amsterdam) and architect Daan Roggeveen (MORE Architecture, Shanghai). Facing East investigates the impact of Chinese development on fast-growing African cities, and is built around personal stories of individuals involved in the urbanization process.

SecondMedia has been selected as the winner of Storefront for Art and Architecture's 2015 Street Architecture Prize Competition. Now in its third year, the biennial international competition seeks to implement temporary outdoor installations that facilitate "new forms of collective public gathering." Participants in the 2015 competition were asked to respond to the theme of New York's IDEAS City Festival, "The Invisible City." SecondMedia's winning proposal 'Foamspace' -- which envisions creating an "urban lounge" with Geofoam blocks -- beat out over 70 submissions from teams of artists, engineers, and architects across the globe.

Learn more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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BLUEPRINT is the latest exhibition on display at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Curated by Sebastiaan Bremer, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, the exhibition features 50 blueprints from participating artists and architects, ranging from as far back as 1961 to 2013.

On the occasion of Ideas City 2015, the biennial Festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, Storefront for Art and Architecture, along with the New Museum and the New York City Department of Transportation, is launching a competition for the design and construction of an outdoor structure—a work of "Street Architecture" that facilitates new forms of collective gathering and engagement with the city.

Starting September 19th, the ten winners of WorldWide Storefront (WWSf) - an initiative by Storefront for Art and Architecture to create alternative spaces for the expression/exchange of art/architecture - will open across the globe for the next two months. While one winning proposal invites artists to travel the world on commercial freight ships, another will host exhibits and events out of a traveling semi-truck in the United States. For the full list of winners and more information, click here.