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Wednesday Woman: Jenny Holzer
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It feels...

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Mar 18

Wednesday Woman: Jenny Holzer
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It feels like my life in New York City has been defined by two Jenny Holzer projects.
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As a student at Columbia University, when I went home to my parents’ house, I used to take the bus from Summit, NJ to the Port Authority. I would then have to walk one very harrowing, extremely dangerous block along an as-yet-un-redeveloped 42nd Street to the 1/9 train uptown. The only highlight of that walk was Jenny Holzer’s work.
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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Holzer was part of Creative Time’s 42nd Street Art Project, for which she installed her Truisms on the marquees of vacant theaters. Instead of advertising performances, the illuminated signs displayed aphoristic statements that mimicked the authority of slogans, while questioning social norms and assumptions.
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After September 11, 2001, I spent much of the next 15 years working at the World Trade Center, on One World Trade, 7 World Trade, and the Memorial. SOM worked with Holzer to create “For 7 World Trade Center” (2006). A translucent screen integrated into the lobby’s 65-foot-wide, 14-foot-high fortified-glass security wall displays a continuous scrolling selection of New York-centric poetry and prose. Programmed on a long looping sequence, the glowing text transforms the security barrier into a luminous public artwork visible from the street. About the installation, Holzer said, “I was invited to make something for the lobby at 7 World Trade Center. After much stewing, I came up with the idea of doing text in the wall—not memorial text but text about the joy of being in New York City… I stopped writing my own text in 2001. I found that I couldn’t say enough adequately, and so it was with great pleasure that I went to the texts of others.”

Last week, @nelsonbyrdwoltz (NBW) and ...

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Mar 17

Last week, @nelsonbyrdwoltz (NBW) and @memorialparkconservancy broke ground for Memorial Groves. This 100-acre project is the latest of several transformative initiatives envisioned in the NBW-led 2015 Memorial Park Master Plan, which has guided the ongoing revitalization of Houston’s largest and most-beloved urban greenspaces.
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Memorial Groves, a tribute to Houston’s World War I history, represents a significant milestone in the efforts toward revitalization and remembrance. The design of Memorial Groves creates a living remembrance: a forest of nearly 3,000 bald cypress trees planted in a rigorous grid to symbolize soldiers standing in formation.
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A contemplative earthwork inspired by WWI trenches will be situated at the north end of the forest and framed on two sides by grassy, 12-foot-tall earthen mounds, with a reflective water feature centering the serene space.
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📸Renderings courtesy of NBW

The New York Times has featured Java Haus, a ...

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Mar 16

The New York Times has featured Java Haus, a Greenpoint townhouse renovation built to Passive House standards.
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Originally a 1910s two-story, timber-frame building divided into rental units, the home was reimagined by @rebuildworkshop as a light-filled, all-electric, single-family home. A vertical addition, double-height interiors, a landscaped roof terrace, and an 8.4 kW solar array are integrated into the bones of the century-old building.
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“This project is everything we believe renovation can be: deeply sustainable, beautifully crafted, and rooted in the neighborhood it calls home,” says Themis Haralabides, founder of reBuild.
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Thank you to @tmckeough and the @nytimes. Link in bio to read the full story.
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📸 @tycole

Wednesday Woman: Alison Berger
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Mar 11

Wednesday Woman: Alison Berger
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“Glass captures the process of remembering and, as the light fades, forgetting. Light is the medium, glass is the material and memory, elusive as it is, is my theme.”
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Alison Berger is an American glass designer and artist. Born in Dallas, Texas, she has been blowing glass since the age of fifteen. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and then continued her studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. After working as an architect for many years, she established Alison Berger Glassworks in 1994.
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Berger’s work is based on the visual vocabulary that societies create to manifest their beliefs, desires and rituals. Victorian fly traps, fireflies, apothecary jars, and devices of measure are examples of the objects that have inspired her work. Berger is drawn to these pieces because they are simultaneously enigmatic and revealing in what they say about the cultures that invented and utilized them. Rendered in glass, altered in scale, and stripped of decoration, their essence is exposed. These pieces represent a reinterpretation that makes them feel contemporary and old world. Like memory itself, these glass objects, sculptures, and furnishings transcend time and place.
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All of Berger’s work is based on the idea that glass is a rarefied and special medium that deserves exceptional attention. Her process is intense, physical, and time-consuming. Though she loves to experiment and push boundaries, her tools and techniques are essentially the same ones used thousands of years ago. “For me, there is no other way,” says Berger. “The history of glassblowing, that sense of the true touch of the hand, is the heart and soul of every object I make. I could use industrial processes and be more efficient, produce perfectly uniform pieces, but that has never been the point for me.”
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@alisonbergerglassworks

Landscape architect Thomas Woltz of ...

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Mar 5

Landscape architect Thomas Woltz of @nelsonbyrdwoltz bases his practice on a revelatory philosophy: that the land is always full. Sites are never blank slates, but rather whole systems with long histories. The job of the landscape architect is to identify, daylight, and respond to these stories.
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Howl Issue 13 by @wolfgordon features a deep dive into Nelson Byrd Woltz’s (NBW) guiding values and major projects. Two case studies, Memorial Park in Houston and the Georgia Tech EcoCommons, reflect the firm's rigorous engagement with the environments, communities, and histories in which its work is embedded.
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Read the article in Howl Issue 13 via the link in bio. 🍁
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📸 @nickhubbard_

Wednesday Woman: Niki de Saint Phalle
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Nov 19

Wednesday Woman: Niki de Saint Phalle
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Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) was a French artist known for her bold, imaginative sculptures, paintings, and large-scale public works. Self-taught and fiercely independent, she first gained attention in the early 1960s with her “Tirs” (shooting paintings), explosive performances in which she fired rifles at plaster reliefs filled with paint. This series challenged ideas of authorship, violence, and creation. She later became internationally celebrated for her vibrant, voluptuous “Nanas” — sculptural figures that embraced the female form with unapologetic exuberance.
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Working across sculpture, painting, film, and large-scale public environments, Saint Phalle fused myth, politics, and personal narrative into a singular visual language. Her most ambitious project, The Tarot Garden in Tuscany, stands as a monumental expression of her lifelong interest in symbolism and fantastical architecture. Throughout her career, she used art as a vehicle for healing, activism, and radical imagination, and left behind a legacy both playful and profoundly humane.

Thomas Woltz of @nelsonbyrdwoltz spoke with ...

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Nov 18

Thomas Woltz of @nelsonbyrdwoltz spoke with @lisa.g.gray for @houstonchron about his projects in Houston - the Ismaili Center Houston and Memorial Park.
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"You hear people talk about 'empty' or 'vacant' land. They’ll say it’s a 'tabula rasa,' a 'blank slate.' But that’s never true. There’s no such thing as 'empty' land. The land is always full of stories — of the geological forces that formed it, of the ecology that existed, of the ecology that still exists and could exist, of the human history, of the ways that people want to use it now."
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Read the full interview via the link in bio.
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📸 @melissaphillip713 @nickhubbard_

Visit Café Zaffri in New York with ...

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Nov 18

Visit Café Zaffri in New York with @wallpapermag 🍸
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@cafezaffri, or Zaf's, is the latest restaurant designed by @post_company. Located on the ground floor of the hotel @thetwentytwo, Zaf's celebrates the history of the 1891 building it occupies and its original use as the Margaret Louisa Home for ‘rebellious and ambitious’ women.
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"Prolific Brooklyn design firm Post Company imbued the restaurant with both implicit and explicit hints at the locale’s storied past, but with a fresh feel. Old New York dining rooms had this sense of permanence and personality. They were cultural rooms; places where people came to gather, to watch and to be seen. Post Company wanted to honour that lineage but reinterpret it for how people dine and socialise today. They leaned into warmth and subtle nostalgia – something familiar and romantic but without being stiff."
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Thanks to @adrian_madlener for this piece in Wallpaper. Link in bio to read to full article 🔗
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📸 @gentlandhyers @nicole_franzen

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