Tree Hugger features Higher Power.
Crucifix Power Strip
Boing Boing features my Higher Power surge protector.
Ecco Eco
Our designs for Ecco Eco’s flagship buildings are featured in Monitor Magazine #59.
In the Ring
SuckerPUNCH editors Abigail Coover and Nathan Hume interviewed Peter Zuspan and I for an article entitled In the Ring for Pratt’s spring issue of TARP. The spread features our drawing Everything Ornament.
Atlantic Yachting in Intersection Magazine
Atlantic Yachting, the sailing company I own with my brother, is featured in the latest issue of Intersection Magazine.
Centerfold
We are featured in issue 7 of Pin-Up Magazine, twice. The first article is about young architects in New York and the second is a story about our large scale drawings, centerfold included.
Baby's On Fire
A mock up of a bench we are designing at Bureau V turned up in Radar magazine along with the band Amazing Baby.
SSWTR on Opening Ceremony
Still Life, the installation we designed for Mary Ping’s Fall 2010
Collection of Slow and Steady Wins the Race is covered by Opening
Ceremony.
Bureau V: The AntiPopUp
Via The Architect's Newspaper, written by Matt Chaban:
There has been so much talk in recent years over the confluence of fashion and architecture, we won’t attempt to add to the “discourse” accept to note that Fashion Week is ending today and with it a number of cool and interesting installations around town. One of particular note was created by our friends at Bureau V—two Asymptote alums and a former DSRer—who have now made their third installation for designer Mary Ping and her Slow and Steady Wins the Race brand.
We’re not exactly sure what’s going on here, as one of the principals sent over this nice photo in reference to a separate email, but Style.com puts it thusly: “[It] uses the idea of the still life to, as Ping puts it, ‘react to the temporality of the pop-up, and go back to an older tradition of talking about objects.’” If you hurry, you can still catch the installation and the objects thereon—some designed by Ping—some merely selected by her, through tomorrow at Saatchi & Saatchi’s ground floor events space at 275 Hudson Street.
Everything Ornament
Our drawing, Everything Ornament, appears in this month's Nylon magazine.
Peter Zuspan in Interview Magazine
My business partner, Peter Zuspan, is featured in Interview discussing art, performance, and our upcoming projects.
Stella Lee in New York Magazine
My business partner, Stella Lee, is featured in New York Magazine discussing the opening of our Berlin office.
Slow And Steady Wins The Race: Department Store Installation at Saatchi & Saatchi
Via PAPER, written by Kat Clements:
What better way to ease into Fashion Week (I spent the majority of it traipsing around glorious desert dunes at one haute hippy New Mexican wedding) than with Mary Ping and her collaborators at Art/Architecture collective Bureau V. Their project, which debuted at the Saatchi & Saatchi Gallery on Monday, deconstructs our perception of the Department Store, reconstructs the concept of fashion presentations and features a flowy and fabulous addition to the growing collection of offbeat classics by Ping's label Slow and Steady Wins the Race: a $100 wedding dress.
Après-lecture yesterday, in which the architects and designer explored and explained their inspiration for the refreshingly cerebral retail re-creation (Japanese shopping centers, suburban layout à la Levittown, and the pervasion of purchases in our public and private lives) I had a chance to ogle both SSWTR's new perfumes as well as items from all previous collections. Newly found favorites include an amazing white poncho hoodie, and a zippered cummerbund which doubles as a fanny pack! Old favorites remain the four-sided Birkin which I reported on from Paris last season, and a pair of cashmere leggings that continue to haunt me.
The presentation wraps today, so hustle down to Saatchi & Saatchi and experience the pseudo-shop in all of its Slow and Steady glory.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
The Department Store
Saatchi & Saatchi
375 Hudson St.
September 9-12
11 a.m.-8 p.m.
New York Fashion Week: Thom Browne & Slow and Steady Wins the Race
New York Fashion Week: Thom Browne & Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Suleman Anaya
The day after Roger Federer won the U.S. Open, it seemed tennis had been on the mind of Thom Browne all along. For his spring collection, a grassy mini-court was planted in the Exit Art space on Tenth Avenue, and the Grand Slam theme was everywhere, from the racquet prints seen throughout to the overgrown ball-boy looks that opened the show. About that show: It's hard to wrap one's head around a Browne collection. Is it entertaining? Endlessly. You chuckle, gasp and oooh. Is it the future of menswear? That's trickier and a little disturbing to answer. While it's hard to imagine anyone other than a handful of fashion-obsessed gay men showing up to work in any of Thom's getups, it's refreshing to see a designer live out his outlandish fantasies when nearly everyone else plays it safe. And that subversive undercurrent we have come to appreciate from the designer prevailed again this season, in touches like white-painted toenails and trousers worn hip-hop style with perky boxer-clad bums. The pièce de résistance? Well, there were a couple. A peplumed silver suit with a tutu-esque petticoat made from oodles of tulle certainly qualifies, a kind of descendant of Nicolas Ghesquière's fall '06 collection for Balenciaga. And of course the finale wedding dress that by now everyone's heard about. Bizarrely, this finale was set to Richard Strauss' bombastic Zarathustra, which then faded into the title song from the Sound of Music. Okay, so the hills are alive, but why is it that you always leave a Thom Browne show feeling horny and confused?
On the other end of the spectrum, stimulating minds rather than loins, was yesterday's Slow and Steady Wins the Race presentation at Saatchi & Saatchi gallery. In a week where, for half of the shows, you might as well have checked your brains at the door, you can count on S&SWTR founder and designer Mary Ping to deliver something cerebral. This time, she collaborated with young local architecture firm Bureau V to create an installation called Perfume Counter / Department Store / Wedding Dress. The result, sort of a stripped down proto-Barneys, is worth the trek to Hudson Street near Houston—the opening reception was a high-point way to end my fashion week. The installation's booths showcase a summary of the label's seven years with highlights from all the collections to date, including sunglasses, tuxedo jackets, shoes and even housewares, all priced—as always with Slow & Steady—at a symbolic $100. I fell in love with the perfume counter, filled with 100 exquisite and rare vintage perfume bottles that Mary has collected, some of them found on eBay. I got a personal tour of the "store" from the designer, cute as ever in a cream Margiela blazer that made my mouth water (the two share a penchant for de- and re-constructing garments). She told me about the exhaustive research that went into the creation of a wedding dress on display, also—unbelievably—priced at $100 and stunning in its simplicity. She also lamented the New York Public Library's limited holdings when it comes to the anthropological history of bridalwear (Martha Stewart-type tomes, on the other hand, are plentiful) and how, in medieval times, brides wore blue because it was the color of purity. Who knew? I left the gallery enlightened, and it was hard not to think that Thom's man-bride had been a mere tease compared to Mary's intellectual hand-job.
SSWTR Display Design on Style.com
Style.com features our display design for Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Atlantic Yachting
Via Cool Hunting, written by Kyle Small:
Last week Atlantic Yachting generously invited us out for an unforgettable four hour sail around Manhattan. Accompanied by Captain Miles and Alexander Pincus—both extremely friendly and knowledgeable about Manhattan and the water that surrounds it—the sail started on Manhattan's Upper West side as we traveled down the Hudson, breathtakingly close to Lady Liberty, past a few of Olafur Eliasson's waterfall installations and found ourselves parked front and center for a fireworks show.
We brought, food, drink and tunes for a little private sail that proved to be surprising, exciting, but most of all, refreshing—no pun intended. We tend to forget that we are surrounded by water being in the office sometimes, but getting out offers a new look at the city and skyline you can't get from any of the boroughs or bridges.
If you are thinking of getting offshore for a moment, now is the perfect time. It's summer, it's hot and these sails present a breezy and relaxing alternative to sitting in an air-conditioned building all day (it's several degrees cooler out on the water). And, believe it or not, the Hudson is at its least polluted state right now as currents pull in water from the Atlantic.
Another reason to go now are Eliasson's waterfall installations (also reminders of NYC's ignored geography) which will only be up until 13 October 2008. For those of you that don't know, in collaboration with the Public Art Fund, Eliasson built four man-made waterfalls around New York City. You can see them from various points around the city, but getting up close on the water is simply awesome.
If that's not enough, every so often in the summer, the city puts on a fireworks show that looks absolutely spectacular from the river. We were fortunate enough to be surprised by one of these showings.
While such an experience will cost you, the friendly people at AYA are offering Cool Hunting readers a discount. Just use the super secret password "Cool Hunting" to get 10% off any service provided by the Atlantic Yachting Association or $100 off the Waterfall charter, which can range from $799 to $899 (depending on when you schedule, weekend or during the week respectively). Undoubtedly popular for engagements and a no-brainer for team building and parties, more info is available at AYA. They also offer sailing classes for both adults and kids along with a summer camp. We highly recommend you check it out, I for one can't wait to get back out there.
Bureau V in K48
Bureau V's latest work is included in the new K48.
Under God: Interview with Mark C. Taylor
This morning I was lucky enough to spend some time with Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. I remember having some questions as I stepped into his office, maybe something about Obama or China, but those quickly evaporated. Taylor is one of those wild and brilliant thinkers whose conversations effortlessly cover time and space and everything in between. And once he gets going, it’s hard to keep up and impossible to stop him. The following is a little morsel of the awesome urgency he brought to religion, just enough to whet the appetite.
ME: How did religion get to be where it is today politically? It’s so prevalent in one sense, but it doesn’t seem any deeper than the word itself.
MT: As somebody who’s spent his life reading and thinking about all this stuff, it’s interesting that you have religion back as such a preoccupation in the minds of everybody and yet the understandings of religion are simplistic.
Under God: Interview with Peter Eisenman
Originally published in the Washington Post’s series Under God
I went to speak with Eisenman last week mostly because I wanted to hear from one of the brilliant architects of our time. But I also wanted to learn if and how he felt architecture could negotiate competing political, religious, and historical forces in a way that enriches our world rather than dividing us. Eisenman wrestled one of the great works of contemporary architecture from the Holocaust, so I assumed that perhaps he had ideas on how to transcend our current cultural and political dramas.
ME: How do you approach the Holocaust as something that can be in any way represented, or is that even something you were after? How do you tackle such a loaded topic via architecture?
PE: Well, it’s not an easy question because I had to tackle it architecturally. I think most attempts at architecture have not been, for me, successful. They tend to be nostalgic for this awful event. You cannot memorialize this action. And so the field of silence, basically, doesn’t say anything. It has no direction, it has no meaning, it has no, no nothing, it’s just a field of pillars that stands mute in the Berlin context.
I think when one considers the Holocaust, as far as I’m concerned, silence is more appropriate than speaking. And when architecture tries to speak it becomes mock-ish, sentimental, and banal.
Everybody says, well, what does this mean? It doesn’t mean anything; it is. And it is there to experience its being, and being of being there. But basically that is it.
Strata Tower
Taschen has just published AE Architecture in the Emirates featuring the Strata Tower, a project I led the design for while working at Asymptote Architecture. The survey covers built work as well as projects under development and includes some phenomenal as well as phenomenally terrible projects. Also of note, my business partner (and friend) Stella Lee’s design for the Guggenheim Pavilions on Saddiyat Island are also included.
PROJECT CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture