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Wednesday Woman: Rachel Whiteread
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Apr 1

Wednesday Woman: Rachel Whiteread
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“Seeing a great piece of art can take you from one place to another—it can enhance daily life, reflect our times and, in that sense, change the way you think and are.”
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Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) is a British artist best known for her sculptural casts of architectural spaces and everyday objects. In her work, everyday settings, objects, and surfaces are transformed into ghostly replicas that are eerily familiar. Using materials such as concrete, resin, rubber, and plaster, she transforms negative space into solid form. Her work reveals the hidden structures of domestic and urban environments and turns the absence within rooms, furniture, and containers into physical monuments imbued with memory.
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Whiteread first rose to prominence with Ghost (1990), a solid concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian living room. She expanded on this working method with House (1993), cast from the entire interior of a condemned Victorian terrace house in London’s East End. Whiteread created this work after all the other terraces in the row had been demolished, and it stood alone as a reminder of the working-class homes that once spanned the street. The controversial project, demolished shortly after its completion, became a defining work of late twentieth-century public sculpture. That same year, she became the first woman to win the Turner Prize.
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Other significant public commissions include Water Tower (1998), a resin cast of the water towers ubiquitous to the New York City skyline, and the Holocaust Memorial (2000) in Vienna, an impenetrable library of books turned inwards in commemoration of the thousands of Austrian Jews who perished during World War II. These monumental works are distinguished by their poetic minimalism and their capacity to evoke stillness and contemplation.

@skidmoreowingsmerrill (SOM) may be one of the ...

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Mar 30

@skidmoreowingsmerrill (SOM) may be one of the best-known architecture and design firms in the world, but there is an entire body of work that is largely unknown. For decades - between 1950 and roughly 1990 - the firm designed dozens of furnishings and objects - each in its own right a part of SOM’s modern, rigorous aesthetic, with a carefully honed sense of ergonomics, material innovation, and environmental responsibility.
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Created as part of the firm’s philosophy of total design, where architecture, interiors, and furnishings formed a unified whole, these pieces were originally developed for specific commissions and were never commercially available. Despite being an integral part of some of the most important corporate interiors of the late 20th century, this archive has remained unavailable for purchase in the marketplace.
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That is about to change.
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This May, @teknion - through IKON Studio - is introducing the SOM Collection, a curated grouping drawn from this work, and making these designs available beyond their original projects for the first time ever. These are not reissues; each piece has undergone careful study to preserve its original design intent, while ensuring it performs meaningfully today. In many cases, these are invisible shifts, small but essential interventions that allow design
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See the full collection and read more about each piece in @metropolismag’s latest DESIGN THE FUTURE issue. Link in bio.
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📸 Teknion, Ezra Stoller, Matthew Gordon, Norman McGrath

Wednesday Woman: Karen Karnes
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Karen ...

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Mar 25

Wednesday Woman: Karen Karnes
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Karen Karnes was an American potter and towering figure of the postwar studio-pottery movement. Known for her refined, quietly expressive stoneware, she pioneered salt-glazing in the 1960s and wood-firing in the 1980s. “Her work opened undreamed of possibilities of expression for the handmade pot. For the many potters who knew her, she was a mentor whose work embodied the creative power and singular voice to which we all aspire—her life in complete harmony with her creative vision,” writes Mark Shapiro about Karnes.
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Born in New York City in 1925, she studied design at Brooklyn College before turning to ceramics at Alfred University after time spent in Italy. Her early development was shaped by her involvement at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s, where she worked alongside influential artists and helped catalyze a renewed interest in handmade pottery in postwar America.
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Karnes’ work is distinguished by its earthy palette, salt-glazed surfaces, and commitment to tactility and use. “After all these years as a potter, I am still conscious of the privilege of my life. There is still the deep pleasure of making pots on the wheel, the excitement of firing, and kiln opening, the challenge of new forms. It is a life of so much variety and one for which I am fully responsible — a rare quality in work today.”

The Sonoma Adobe House, located a block off of the...

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Mar 24

The Sonoma Adobe House, located a block off of the city’s downtown square, is the oldest Adobe house in California. It was built in 1847, the same year that its original owner, John Nash, was arrested on site for refusing to cede his position as town magistrate during the Bear Flag Revolt. The home was restored in the 1930s by Zolita Bates, the great-grand-daughter of a former owner, and in 1959, it was awarded landmark status by the state of California.
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Now owned by Andrew Mariani, co-founder of @scribewinery, the house was just transformed by Post Company into a comfortable living space, as well as a venue for entertaining.
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Taking extreme care to preserve the original structure’s integrity, @post_company introduced a discreet U-shaped addition that is invisible from the street. Although the extension is distinctly modern, its pared-down aesthetic echoes the unadorned simplicity of the original home’s design, and the muted shades of its timber facade offer a subtle contrast to the historic structure’s weathered adobe.
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The interiors have been designed with hospitality in mind. A 13-foot French antique table dominates the dining room, which retains the building’s original wood floors and adobe and brick hearth. Throughout the interior, Post Company opted for simple and elegant finishes in brass, wood, and alabaster that emphasize the home’s elementality.
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“In the end, the new wing doesn’t compete with the 1847 structure—it choreographs a return to it, framing the adobe as the project’s quiet center of gravity,” writes Leonora Epstein for @archdigest.
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📸@chrismottalini

@winterhouseprojects is pleased to present ...

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Mar 23

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

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