Snarkitecture – DesignApplause

5vie – an integrated design district. milan design week 2019.

Apr 4, 2019

above > materialmessage laufen x snarkitecture

thanks to the uniqueness of the curatorial program and the continually expanding success of previous editions, 5vie art+design is now recognized internationally as an important new hub of cutting-edge design. with a special focus on one-of-a-kind pieces, art design, and the cross- contamination among the various arts, the 2019 edition aims to build on this growing success and embrace experimentation more openly than ever and to cultivate an even more international presence.

this year’s goal: consolidate our reputation as a cultural reference point,bringing together plurality of thought and international heterogeneity.

working as always in close contact with curators and designers and concentrating on clusters of creativity, 5vie is increasingly establishing itself as a meeting place for generating connections between different areas, investing in research, in the selection of projects, and in their final implementation. as such, our identity as a true “integrated design district” becomes crystal clear.

as always, 5vie uses respected curators to trace the editorial line and confirms its collaboration with annalisa rosso, maria cristina didero and nicolas bellavance-lecompte, entrusting them with site-specific installations to reaffirm 5vie’s attention to the territory. as if to say…: “never change a winning team”.

in the mystical setting of the oratorio della passione, didero works with carlo massoud to create her first solo show, a social and political exhibition filtered through a child-like vision. roberto sironi decides to tackle the hot-button topic of big data in a sophisticated exhibition curated by annalisa rosso installed in the intriguing setting of the roman cellars of siam in via santa marta. nicolas bellavance’s curates the work of anton alvarez, who experiments with new casting techniques for bronze with surprising results in a solo exhibition entitled l’ultima cera. the exhibition will be held at the church of san bernardino alle monache, which will open to the public only on this occasion.

born out of a trip to eindhoven, the collaboration with kiki van eijk and joost van bleiswijk takes the form of a site-specific installation in the by now familiar apartment on via cesare correnti 14, headquarters of 5vie with the participation of niels hoebers, sander wassink, and michele castagnaro. the objects, designed expressly for the occasion, represent autonomous forms whose function is only barely suggested, transporting the viewer into their creative process. “in my capacity as general consul of the netherlands, i appreciate the high standards of the international curatorial selection, and i consider the growing presence of dutch designers in the 5vie district to be a very positive development”, comments johan verboom. “since 2016, the embassy and consulate have collaborated with the district, and this year we decided to support this project with the shared aim of promoting talent and design”.

like every year, 5vie dedicates design week to a great master. the guest of honor for this edition will be ugo la pietra, an artist who established his reputation back in the late ‘50s and whose production has since explored an incredible variety of creative techniques. his exhibition is entitled design territoriale, genius loci.

caesarstone presents: altered states by snarkitecture. milan design week 2018

Apr 6, 2018

snarkitecture worked with caesarstone to create conceptual takes on the kitchen island in an immersive installation at palazzo dell’ufficio elettorale.

the best of design miami 2015 #1.

Dec 3, 2015

as the market for collectible design continues to evolve and mature with each edition, design miami/ celebrates the full diversity of its field. with the 11th edition of design miami/ this december, the fair offers extraordinary works from galleries based on five continents that specialize in everything from classic early twentieth century design to the conceptual cutting edge. work ranging from full-sized architectural elements to the most delicate jewelry, by designers from as far afield as the philippines and japan, south africa and brazil, will be on show under one roof at the global forum for design.

above > unbuilt installation | click on image to engage lightbox | 4 images

[ unbuilt ] a key installation to the event now held in the design miami/ tent across the street from art basel is the annual commission of an entry installation. previous years include architects david adjaye and snarkitecture, and most recently designer in 2014, jonathan muecke.

for the 11th edition in 2015, design miami/ has awarded a harvard graduate school of design student team the entry-pavilion commission. the chosen design, titled unbuilt, was selected last may through a gsd-wide competition that drew 32 teams comprising 100 gsd students.

this collaboration marks the first time that the design miami/ pavilion will be designed by a student group. the completed pavilion will stand at the entrance of the fair for its duration from 2 > 6 december, serving as both a beacon for the show and a place to welcome its tens of thousands of visitors.

“it is a privilege to partner with harvard gsd, one of the most amazing sources of creative thinking in the world of design,” says craig robins, design miami’s founder. “we are excited to see the students’ vision realized at design miami—a platform that has always been committed to presenting the work of emerging talent alongside material by established and historic designers.”

the unbuilt team comprises joanne cheung, jenny shen, steven meyer, doug harsevoort, and yiliu shen-burke (all march ’18). the team is advised by luis callejas, lecturer in architecture and landscape architecture; hanif kara, professor in practice of architectural technology; and dan borelli (mdes ’12), director of exhibitions.

[ galleries ]

above> there are 36 galleries this year. here are several we follow | click on images to enlarge lightbox | 18 images
[ market ] the inaugural design miami/ market brings a new kind of product to the fair, with a fresh approach to retail offered by j.crew, lizworks, dean & deluca and artbook. this first edition is designed and produced by local designer emmett moore to remind visitors of an outdoor market with hints of south beach permeating the kiosks, made with whitewashed wood and blue vinyl strapping reminiscent of beach loungers.

[ satellite venues ]

[ untitled, miami beach ] the 4th edition of untitled international art fair continues its dedication to providing an innovative approach to the art fair mode. artists are at the center of unititled’s mission and the curators christophe boutin and melanie scarciglia have worked with the fair’s artistic director omar lópez-chahoud to identify a strong and diverse selection of galleries (119) and artists that reflect the fair’s commitment to presenting exceptional contemporary art | ocean drive and 12th street

[ belong.here.now by airbnb ] created by design with company, this 5,000 square foot open space will harness the power of place and time to deliver moments of belonging for all those willing to engage. acting as a piece of urban theater, the space will invite guests to become part of the evolving performance. for example, on saturday 5 december from 14:00 on, cultural curator kim hastreiter will invite members of pink martini and the public for a sing-along | meridian ave. & 19th street (across the street from the entrance to design miami/)

site-specific poolside painting by katherine bernhardt at [ nautilus hotel ] 1950s morris lapidus designed, south beach hot spot nautilus hotel just reopened. new owner sixty hotels, ceo jason pomeranc led an in-house design team in the restoration. this year artsy commissioned artist katherine bernhardt to create an original pool painting for the hotel, continuing a tradition set by david hockney, keith haring and pablo picasso | nautilus 1825 collins avenue

[ snarkitecture ] collaborated with netjets to customize a bombardier jets global 5000 with an ombre design for art basel. it will be staged at the landmark aviation private jet terminal in miami international airport.

ritsue mishima with installation ‘all’ombra della luce’ – ‘shadow of light’ / champagne house [ perrier-jouët ] traditional collaborations with designers or artists continue with a partnership with venice-based glass artist ritsue mishima. mishima creates a glass installation and a series of unique ice buckets for champagne bottles.

the installation is made of 1.400 handmade round glass plates. each of the five large blown ice bowls come with embedded round glasses for champagne, but also with traditionally-shaped, blown champagne glasses, all in mishima’s signature style of working with transparent glass and asymmetrical forms. the pieces represent bubbles of champagne in both the installation and the glasses.

[ moma design store ] the museum of modern art (moma) design store is excited to announce its first-ever installation and pop-up during the week of art basel miami beach with the skateroom at delano south beach, a morgans hotel celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. featured, a limited edition set of 32 decks each featuring a different flavor soup from andy warhol’s 32 campbell’s soup cans | delano south beach 1685 collins avenue

[ fendi ] opens its 5,400 square foot location in the design district. exposed brick walls and cement floors add a raw element to the store’s design in deliberate contrast with the opulence of textured design. the color-blocked façade and east exterior, a collaboration with designer and architect johanna grawunder, touts the brand’s commitment to the design world. the store will house the breadth of fendi’s products including men’s and women’s rtw, fur, handbags, shoes and accessories | 150 ne 40th street

@designmiami #designmiami

Expo Chicago 2013. Preview.

Aug 6, 2013

More than 120 international galleries from 17 countries will set up shop on Chicago’s Navy Pier next month for the art fair Expo Chicago, 19 > 22 September. Tours, panel discussions, and uniquely curated site-specific projects are on tap. And there’s plenty of big names to get excited about. Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects designed the interior environment with a floor plan patterned after the city’s gridded streets; Dean Otto of the Walker Art Center curated the video artists showing at Expo Video, an exhibition area and lounge; David Salkin Creative designed a table-service restaurant to be held within the exposition; Casa Spazio will furnish the VIP lounge and Room & Board another rooftop lounge; and NYC’s Snarkitecture will create a series of upholstered foam seats under the main center atrium. [ details ] @expochicago

event> Expo Chicago
date> 19 > 22 September 2013
venue> Navy Pier’s Festival Hall
vernissage> The opening night preview benefiting MCA Chicago | Thursday, 19 September 6 > 9p [ $100 tickets available ]
general admission> 20 > 22 September 2013 | Sunday 22 Sept. 22 | Fri + Sat 11a > 7p | Sun 11a > 6p

Playing exquisite corpse with wolf-gordon's new wink. ICFF 2013.

May 28, 2013

click > enlarge

Wolf-Gordon introduces an innovative new product ‘Wink’, a clear dry-erase coating that tranforms any surface into a write-and-erase canvas. In the process they were honored with the Editors Award for Wall Coverings for its interactive, conceptually charged seven-panel installation. If you attended you probably are caught tagging in the following video. Booth attendees tried their hand at completing landscape-themed drawings started by ten artists and designers by playing the game known as “exquisite corpse.” The visitors had a chance to photograph their drawings and share the images on social media sites using hashtag #WGWink.

from left: boym partners, michael graves, snarkitecture

from left: jan wilker and hjalti karlsson, ali tayar, laurene and constantin boym | photos: donnelly marks

The artists included Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym of Boym Partners, Michael Graves, Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker of karlssonwilker, Myles Karr, Ben Katchor, Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham of Snarkitecture, and Ali Tayar.

[ wolf-gordon ]
Wolf-Gordon is an American design company founded in 1967 to offer designers a comprehensive source for all types of wallcoverings, united by the common qualities of excellent design and dependable performance. The product line includes wallcoverings, upholstery and drapery textiles, paints, and Wink, clear, dry-erase coating.

Snarkitecture. Now & then 5.13.

May 2, 2013

[ New Museum’s IDEAS CITY StreetFest ] Snarkitecture will premiere Stack, a free, public installation and performance as part of New Museum’s IDEAS CITY StreetFest. saturday 4 may 2013 | 8:30 > 10P | mulberry and jersey streets nyc

[ Snarkitecture at Collective Design Fair ] Snarkitecture is debuting two new pieces with Grey Area at Collective Design Fair in New York next week. The new works include Slice, an all black ping-pong table and Trunk, an all white cabinet commissioned by Grey Area.

Volume Gallery will present a new version of Bend, a series of upholstered seating, along with select pieces from the Funiture series.

Snarkitecture will also take part in “Predicting the Future“, a panel discussion moderated by Sight Unseen 8 May at 5p. wednesday 8 > 11 may 2013 | pier 57 west side highway at 15th street nyc

[ Architizer A+ Awards Gala ] The Snarkitecture-designed statuette for the Architizer A+ Awards will premiere at the first annual A+ Awards Gala. 16 may 2013 | nyc

photo by noah kalina

[ New Museum Spring Gala ] Lift was a performance and installation for the New Museum Spring Gala that took place on 10 April 2013 in New York. An array of forty-five inflatable spheres transformed over the course of the evening, slowly manipulating the qualities of the existing architecture in a series of choreographed movements.

[ Felt Light at Wallpaper* Handmade ] Felt Light is a new series of light fixtures commissioned by Wallpaper* in collaboration with Woolmark. Made from wool felt, the exterior of the fixtures recall familiar forms while the interiors reveal stacked topographic landscapes. Felt Light was on view with Wallpaper Handmade during Milan Design Week and will tour internationally with Wool Lab Design Fair tour.

[ Snarkitecture Shop ] Snarkitecture’s online shop is open for business.

[ now & then ] snarkitecture’s latest news to DesignApplause arrived in a format that inspired a possibly new category ‘Now & then‘. if you’re unashamed of self-promotion, alert us to your current and recent latest & greatest. you just never know.

Design miami 2012. Looking back #1.

Dec 11, 2012

snarkitecture’s ‘drift pavilion’ greets you at the entrance of design miami pavilion | click > enlarge

forthcoming interview w/ alex mustonen + daniel arsham | snarkitecture

fendi invited belgian designer maarten de ceulaer to interpret modernist-inspired pequin pattern in the design performance ‘transformations’

we chat with asif. “this exercise is a bit different in that we attempt, and succeed, to reproduce a natural phenomenom.”

main sponsor [ swarovski crystal palace ] commissions london designer asif khan to explore the relationship between crystal, light, nature and architecture using 1.3 million swarovski crystals to create ‘parhelia’

[ demisch danant ] For Design Miami 2012, the gallery presented the first show focused entirely on the works of French designer Pierre Guariche (1926–1995). Displayed in two sections, this exhibition presents rare and significant works of 1950–1955 and 1958–1962, to highlight two distinct periods of the designer’s illustrious career.

[ galerie kreo ] is dedicated to artistic exploration in design, and has exclusive international rights to remarkable limited edition pieces by such luminaries as ronan & erwan bouroullec, pierre charpin, hella jongerius, konstantin grcic, jasper morrison, and martin szekely. galerie kreo founder, didier krzentowski, is instrumental in creating the design gallery concept for design miami.

charlotte perriand and jean prouvé | galerie downtown

london/paris-based [ carpenters workshop gallery ] is here to show sebastian brajkovic, vincent dubourg, lonneke grodjijn & ralph nauta, mathieu lehanneur, nendo, pablo reinoso, frederik molenschot, robert stadler, studio job and johanna grawunder.

forthcoming ‘crack of dawn’ interview at satai with johanna grawunder

italy’s [ galleria nilufar ] seems always novel and unexpected. michelangelo pistoletto and juan e. sandoval and using existing laleggera chairs designed by riccardo blumer for alias conceive ‘i mediterranei – love difference’. the 45 seats exclusive for design miami reproduce the profile of the carribean sea. the effort supports ‘love difference’ a non-profit promoting cultural differences in the mediterranean.

forthcoming ‘mid-crack of dawn’ interview at satai with henry munoz

Henry R. Muñoz III, a San Antonio-based designer and social activist creates Mestizo City, a 6,700 square-foot site-specific installation. A playful interactive public space, created to represent the vibrant and varied Latino culture and its growing influence in the United States. Created for the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach 2012, Mestizo City will be on view and open to the public.

‘lost time’ by tim simpson and sarah van gameren of glithero for perrier-jouët

The construction is made with weighted, beaded strings that hang to form curves. The technique used is an ode to Spanish Art Nouveau architect Antoni Gaudi in designing his Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. The concept embodies five characteristics of Art Nouveau: The Perfect Curve, Reflection, Timelessness, Organic forms and Craftsmanship. [ perrier-jouët ] is a first-time exhibitor and exclusive champagne partner.

the ‘architecture for dogs’ installation offers an interesting opportunity to explore architecture in a different way. the audi ‘r18 ultra chair’ project offers an ultra interesting opportunity to explore chairs in a ultra different way. audi uses technology from their le mans winning r18 racecar, 25 iterations of computer and cardboard models, public beta testing at milan 2012 (we tested it), a borrowed industrial robot from their production line, and incorporates folded sheet aluminum with the latest carbon composite materials used directly from the r18 racecar to make an ultra light and extremely durable [ r18 ultra chair ]. both examples remind us that innovation from concept thru execution can be so different yet so similar and mutually inspirational.

official (edited) release just in > The eighth edition of Design Miami/ saw record attendance and robust sales throughout its six-day run in Miami from December 4-9, 2012. Thirty-six of the world’s leading galleries presented contemporary and historic design, which sold well among the 31,000 design collectors and enthusiasts who attended the fair.

There was a notable increase in the number of collectors, personalities and designers visiting the fair, including Peter Brant, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, Maxine and Stuart Frankel, Pharrell Williams, Wendi Murdoch, Will Farrell, Todd Eberle, Patrick McMullan, Leonard and Jane Abess, Kanye West, Don Soffer, Silvia Fendi, Donna Karan, Lady Victoria Harvey, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Joshua Rechnitz, George Lindemann, Terry Richardson, Joseph Altuzarra, Ricardo Tisci, Wendell Castle, Martha Stewart, David Adjaye, Cecilia Dean, Juan Montoya, Kelly Wearstler, Jamie Drake, Waldo Fernandez, Steven Volpe, Alex Gorlin and George Yabu.

Museum representatives attended from the Metropolitain Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Victoria+Albert, the MAK Vienna, the Vitra Design Museum, MCA Denver, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Museum and the Guggenheim among many others.

Design Miami/ welcomed thirteen new galleries to the fair this year including, Galerie BSL and Galerie Jacques Lacoste from Paris, Jason Jacques from New York, Galerie Rossella Colombari from Milan, Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery from Cologne and Moderne from Philadelphia.

“Design Miami/ 2012 has been our most important fair in Miami to date in terms of program, exposure and attendance,” says Marianne Goebl, director of Design Miami/. “With a 25% increase in the number of participating galleries, exceptional site-specific design collaborations and a strong educational program of talks, tours and online presence, we continue to expand our cross-disciplinary approach to design at the intersection of culture and commerce.”

This year, visitors to Design Miami/ were welcomed by Drift, a pavilion created by New Yorkbased collaborative studio Snarkitecture at the entrance to the fair tent located next to the Miami Convention Center. A floating environment comprised of massive inflatable tubes was visible from a distance of several blocks.

Once again, Design Miami’ partners actively contributed to the fair by commissioning sitespecific design installations from emerging design talents: Audi presented the “R18 Ultra Chair” designed by Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram. Asif Khan designed “Parhelia” for Swarovski Crystal Palace, the Design Performance “Transformations” by Maarten de Ceulaer was supported by Fendi, and the installation “Lost Time” by Glithero was commissioned by Perrier-Jouët.

The Miami Design District played host to several of the Design Miami/ Design Satellites, unique exhibitions with strong curatorial and educational perspectives, including Architecture for Dogs, curated by Kenya Hara, and an exhibition by Acconci Studio, Design Miami’s Designer of the Year 2012.

The fair enhanced its educational offering with an engaging Design Talks series featuring the Design Pioneers Diane von Furstenberg, Vito Acconci and Wendell Castle. The BE OPEN Forum series of profile talks featured conversations with designers practicing outside the boundaries of traditional product design, utilizing food, scent, biochemistry and haptic technology to make research accessible to the global community and showcasing design through sensory exploration.

Design Miami/ enjoyed its strongest online presence to date with record social media activation. Thousands of people followed the show unfold on Design Log, Design Miami’s blog while Art.sy, the digital partner of the fair, created for the first time a digital experience to discover the work from the participating galleries online. Design Miami/ 2012 on Art.sy will be on view for the next week for those who missed attending the fair.

Tours by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, an ARTBOOK – Cooper Hewitt shop featuring collectible books and objects related to the exhibition program of Design Miami/, a bespoke scent by 12.29 New York I Paris, the Collectors Lounge hosted by Regalia and designed by Cassina and a Pop-Up Café by Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink rounded out
this year’s visitor experience.

[ main gallery program ]
Caroline Van Hoek/ Brussels
Carpenters Workshop Gallery/ London & Paris
Cristina Grajales Gallery/ New York
Demisch Danant/ New York
Didier Ltd / London
Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery/ Cologne
Galerie BSL / Paris
Galerie Downtown-François Laffanour / Paris
Galerie Jacques Lacoste/ Paris
Galerie kreo / Paris
Galerie Patrick Seguin / Paris
Galerie VIVID / Rotterdam
Galleria Rossella Colombari / Milan
Gallery SEOMI / Seoul
Hostler Burrows / New York
Industry Gallery / Washington DC & Los Angeles
Jason Jacques Inc. / New York
Johnson Trading Gallery / New York
Jousse Entreprise / Paris
Magen H Gallery / New York
Moderne Gallery / Philadelphia
Mark McDonald / Hudson
Nilufar Gallery / Milan
Ornamentum / Hudson
Pierre Marie Giraud / Brussels
Priveekollektie Contemporary Art|Design / Heusden
R 20th Century / New York
Venice Projects / Venice

[ design on/site ]
Antonella Villnova / Florence presenting Delfina Delettrez
Booo / Eindhoven presenting Front
Carwan Gallery / Beirut presenting India Mahdavi
Design Space / Tel Aviv presenting Michal Cederbaum and Noam Dover
Erastudio Apartment- Gallery / Milan presenting
Victor Hunt Designart Dealer / Brussels presenting Slyvain Willenz + CIRVA
Volume Gallery / Chicago presenting Snarkitecture

[ schedule of events ]
public show | 5 > 9 december 2012
preview day | 4 december | collectors preview 12 > 6p | vernissage 6 > 9p
Design Miami’s cultural programme, including Design Talks, Design Performances, and Design Satellites, as well as the 2012 Designer of the Year, will be announced in the coming weeks.

[ about design miami/ ]
Design Miami/ is the global forum for design. Each fair brings together the most influential collectors, gallerists, designers, curators and critics from around the world in celebration of design culture and commerce. Occurring alongside the Art Basel fairs in Miami, USA each December and Basel, Switzerland each June, Design Miami/ has become the premier venue for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating collectible design. [ design miami/ ] [ design log ]

Volume gallery presents snarkitecture. Design miami 2012.

Nov 30, 2012

Volume Gallery is in this year’s edition of Design Miami/. After strolling through the tent pavilion entrance (Drift) and sitting on the outdoor seating element (Bend) – both designed by Snarkitecture – Volume would like you to stop by Booth 001 and to view the work from their collection Funiture presented by Volume Gallery.

[ Snarkitecture ] is a collaborative practice, established by Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham that operates in territories between the disciplines of art and architecture. Working within existing spaces or in collaboration with other artists and designers, the practice focuses on the investigation of structure, material, and program and how these elements can be manipulated to serve new and imaginative purposes. Searching for sites within architecture with the possibility for confusion or misuse, Snarkitecture aims to make architecture perform the unexpected.

drift | snarkitecture | 2012 | volume gallery | click > enlarge

[ Volume Gallery ] is an event-based gallery with a specific focus on American design, particularly emerging contemporary designers. Founded by design specialists, Claire Warner and Sam Vinz, formerly of Wright Auction, Volume Gallery releases editions, publications and exhibits that showcase the work of American designers to regional, national and international audiences.

Design miami 2012. Preview 2.

Nov 29, 2012

unique black painted wood with gold necklace | louise nevelson | c 1960s | didier ltd.

“One of my favorite pictures of Louise Nevelson is the Richard Avedon photograph of her from 1970s wearing a black festooned hat and cape and layers upon layers of handmade necklaces. I love the idea that she made and wore her own jewelry and that it went hand-in-hand with her sculpture making process. The photograph of her is fearless, and her necklaces act as both her shield and badge of honor.

The Nevelson necklace offered at Didier has this same kind of resonance. It is a unique necklace composed of separate painted wooden parts contained in a gold framework. The necklace mixes unorthodox materials in the refined vocabulary of a fine jewelry setting. It is both elegant and bohemian, and when I tried it on I felt fearless and privileged to walk for a moment in the artist’s shoes.”

Sharon Coplan Hurowitz, Curator & Collector

mutation lounge | maarten de ceulaer | 2012 | industry gallery

“I like the mutation lounge by marteen de ceulaer, because of its pleasant organic forms, its function and its material: rubber. As a mother of three kids ages 4,6 and 8, this kind of child friendly but design driven furniture speaks to me – at the moment.”

Nadja Swarovski, Creative Director, Founder of Swarovski Crystal Palace and Member of the Swarovski Executive Board

linelight | johanna grawunder | 2012 | carpenters workshop gallery

“Johanna’s work always confounds expectation. She delights in upturning convention and creating work that prompts a response from the user. Linelight is no exception. At once poetic, I love the atmospheric play of light created between the panels, which both reveal and conceal the light source behind.”

Zoë Ryan, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago

bookshelves | charlotte perriand | 1963 | galerie downtown – françois laffanour

“The upcoming Design Miami Fair will present a lot of fascinating pieces of furniture, that being said I guess my taste is somewhat dated. I choose the book shelves by Charlotte Perriand as my favorite work, for the simplicity of the design and it’s place in history as a design classic.”

Richard Meier, Architect

desk | giò ponti | 1955 | galleria rossella colombari

“I’m always attracted to functionality so I can appreciate this desk. The use of different materials such as the red plastic laminate and brushed brass on steel worked really well for me as well”

Pharrell Williams, Artist

red and blue chair | g.t. rietvelds | 1918 | this is a reproduction | galerie vivid

“The Red and Blue chair is perhaps one of the most iconic design object of the twentieth century. They way the wooden members appear to ‘slip’ past one another while floating effortlessly in space, the way the primary colors suggest a spatial extension into a larger environment, the way it single-handedly embody the idealism of the De Stijl movement, is as refreshing and current today as almost a century ago since its inception.

What makes this particular Red and Blue chair especially intriguing is seeing it alongside its original crate; an object reminiscent of another furniture series by Gerrit Rietveld, designed slighter later, slightly less well known, but equally revolutionary: the Crate system furniture. Made from the recycled packaging material crate wood; Rietveld responded to economic crisis of the 1930’s with the Crate series that could be sold as a kit, easily shipped, affordable, and of utmost simplicity and beauty.

Together, the Red and Blue chair and it’s crate turns into an art object of its own; one that encompasses two ends within spectrum of design – one abstract and ideal, paradigmatic and heroic; the other concrete and everyday, pragmatic and anonymous – ethos that were important at the dawn of twentieth century design as they are today.”

Mark Lee, Architect and Collector

coffee table | wendell castle | 1966 | r 20th century

“I’m really drawn to this Wendell Castle stack-laminated coffee table. Beyond it being one of his pioneering simultaneously functional and sculptural works, the beautiful biomorphic lines remind me of a favorite piece of furniture from my childhood home in Argentina: an almost-sculptural squat wrought-iron tractor seat bench from an unknown designer from San Antonio de Areco, a small town in the Argentine pampas, who created beautiful organic furniture objects from parts of discarded farm machinery he found in that rural farmland region of Argentina. I can’t help but think of the similarity between that region of Argentina and the rural farmlands of Castle’s native Kansas, and how growing up in that region must have been a source of inspiration for the timeless organic forms in Castle’s work.”

Sebastian Cwilich, President and COO Art.sy

kangourou lounge chair | pierre jeanneret | 1960 | galerie patrick seguin

“Even though this Jeanneret chair is a work of clasical modernism, it is still atemporal…”

Fernando Romero, Architect

swan chair | datyendra pakhalé | 2012 | gabrielle ammann gallery

“We love the Swan chair and stool in marble from Gabrielle Ammann gallery – simply sublime and very poetic. One of our favorite things about the “Swan”chair is its simultaneously contradicting and complementary features. The seat flows and curves organically, appearing supple and soft, yet is of unyielding marble. Those same organic lines are themselves complemented by the regularity of the rectangular back, which forms a natural contour of one’s back.”

Robert Couturier, Interior Architect

rough sea | taher chermirik | 2012 | galerie bsl

“I love it. Architectural like Lapidus. Sculptural like Bertoia. Precision of a jeweler.”

Al Eiber, Collector

float | snarkitecture | 2012 | volume gallery

“Snarkitecture is a New York-based firm by architect Alex Mustonen and artist Daniel Arsham. Together they explore, push, and challenge the boundaries of material, scale, and space. Not only are they designing this year’s entry pavilion for Design Miami/ but Volume Gallery is also showing one of my favorite pieces by them: “Float”, a 450 lbs., 1 1/2 x 5 ft. bench-like construct made of cast marble dust.”

Felix Burrichter, Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director, PIN-UP

Meet brooklyn's snarkitects.

Mar 15, 2012

click > enlarge

Brooklyn-based art and architecture studio Snarkitecture has received a lot of press in recent years for their experimental exhibition design as well as for their installations for public art and retail spaces, but as a practice that’s interested in exploring spatial relationships on both a large and small scale, their design objects shouldn’t be overshadowed by their larger work.

For starters there’s “Slab Table,” which riffs on the form of an iceberg, a motif Snarkitecture used to great effect in 2010 in their storefront Richard Chai in New York. The play on topographical mapping is also a major part of “Excavated Mirror,” the mirror’s edge mimicking the squiggly line of a cartographer’s water edge.

My personal favorites are their prototypes, especially “Ghost Chair,” (above) a simple black chair with a ‘ghostly’ white resin sheet frozen in place around it, whipped across its front as if by a fierce wind. “Erosion Table” is a big, white slab that looks as if its been eaten away by acid, and “Break Light” is a long, bent fluorescent tube hanging precariously from a single cord.

All their pieces are for sale. Email info@snarkitecture.com for inquiries.