D.U.M.B.O

This weekend was the 12th annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The weekend-long event hosted various art projects, events, and performances.
I went on Sunday afternoon, and spent a few hours walking around the neighborhood.
My favorite part about the festival is the open artist's studios. Dumbo has a lot of great industrial studio spaces, and it is unusual to be able to just walk into someone's studio and see their work and talk to them.

One artist whose studio I walked into by chance is Ushio Shinohara. Shinohara is a really interesting artist, and I don't know if I would have found out about him if not for the Art Festival.
The festival also had numerous outdoor installations, like this one in Brooklyn Bridge Park:

A Manifesto for Architecture .

Architecture is the built environment that surrounds us.
Houses and skyscrapers beg for attention in the traditional notion of architecture.
These buildings, however, only constitute a part of what we can call "architecture."
Architecture is the process by which anything can be designed and physically constructed.
It is the mega-structures of bridges and tunnels, and it is the micro-structures of computer chips and nanotechnology.
On the grander of these scales, architecture can engulf us.
It has the ability, as a tangible and emotive force, to convey feeling, meaning, and awareness.
Architecture, like painting and music, is a tool for communication.
Yet, where painting stimulates our vision and music stimulates our hearing, architecture has the power to stimulate our sense of space and our overall 3-dimensional awareness.
We experience architecture with the senses that allow us to navigate the 3-dimensional world.
The stimuli we collect from these senses is converted to cognition and emotion.
An architectural space can evoke from us the same response as any good work of art.
It can make us feel happy, sad, relaxed, stressed, excited, nervous, powerful, or powerless.
As architecture grows increasingly reliant on efficiency, practicality, and finance,
I call for a return to focus on architecture's fundamental role as a stimulus for human response.

Currently at the Center for Architecture :

a geodesic dome

that I built with my Environmental Design Class

in conjunction with Joseph Clinton from the Dymaxion Study Center

Assignment 2 : Tag Something .

The " <-- DEFECT " sticker attempts to bring the passerby's attention to the anomalies of the built world.

Modern architecture promised us utopian lives in a sleek world of sterility and right angles, but we soon realized that human nature is not totally compatible with that vision. The urban environment today is a juxtaposition of ideals and reality. Walls are painted, streets are paved, and fences are installed with precision and perfection in mind. Through unplanned variables such as mistakes and interactions, these calculated fixtures develop the patina of reality - paint is scratched, metal gets dented, cement cracks. The flawless ideal is unattainable more often than not.

At a time when factory production is the norm and with an increasing desire for prefabricated housing, consumers and citizens have grown accustomed to the quality and aesthetic of manufactured goods. The environment that breeds these familiar products is under constant supervision and quality control. Defects at any point along the production line are hunted, labeled, and discarded.

Utilizing Helvetica, the typeface of modernism, these stickers extend the phobia of imperfection from the factory to the city. The label " <-- DEFECT " brings up questions but does not answer any. What if we scrutinized all built forms as closely as we do manufactured ones? What if we erased all traces of use from the city and it existed in a permanent state of brand-new?

Photo essay .

ASSIGNMENT: Merge with the city and create a photo essay with these 12 words :

TIME :


WASTE :


LOUD :


POWER :


FUTURISTIC :


GENTRIFICATION :


DENSITY :


DRAMA :


CLASS :


CRAFTSMANSHIP :


BOUNDARY :


CHAOS :

Starting with the Universe .

I have come across the work of Buckminster Fuller in the past, in various readings & exhibitions. So, before I visited Starting With The Universe at the Whitney, I was superficially familiar with his overall body of work. But my Fuller knowledge prior to this exhibit was still lacking some general understanding of his life & eccentricity; I craved something, a movie, a course, to fill this gap.

Visiting the Whitney gave me a much clearer picture of Fuller as a man - his motivations, his vision, his personality. The exhibit portrays his multi-disciplinary approach towards architecture, science, & environmentalism. It illustrates Fuller's oeuvre as a total vision: the idea of a greener, happier, more efficient world. This vision was the motivating force behind his comprehensive efforts in design & technology - he believed he had a debt to God.

This exhibit left me torn about Fuller's career. Was he a success or a failure? Was he born in the wrong decade? After realizing how much of a visionary he was, it is disconcerting to learn that many of his projects were commercial failures & that some people consider his projects to be too utopian & unrealistic. Nonetheless, Fuller did eventually achieve a cult-like following towards the end of his career & the geodesic dome, his most popular idea, has had a notable impact in architecture.

Despite being dead for 25 years, Fuller & his ideas have not lost their relevance. Current environmental issues beg for a more economical use of resources, the "more with less" of Fuller-like thinking. I am grateful that the Whitney has decided to hold this retrospective to remind its visitors of Fuller's work. It is also great that there are educational events to promote Fuller's ideas in conjunction with the exhibit, such as the Dymaxion Study Center at the Center for Architecture.

Some of my work .

CURRENT PROJECTS:
- working with eyebeam to create a reflective suit
- putting together a fashion / culture / nightlife magazine focusing on people in their early 20s
- creating merchandise & branding for new york rock band the postelles

ONGOING:
- creating men's accessories with a partner under the label nikolai rose
- photography blog / travelogue

ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS:
- soho loft ( 10.7mb pdf )
- contral park information center ( 6mb pdf )
- red hook ferry terminal ( 3.3mb pdf )