Reference Page: June 2005

Motion and Change
Janet Echelman, www.echelman.com, enlisted the services of wind-engineering firm Peter Heppel Associates, www.peterheppel.com, and structural engineer Rui Furtado of AFAssociados, www.afaconsultores.pt, for her sculpture on the Porto and Matosinhos waterfront. Research other fabrics by W. L. Gore & Associates, maker of Gore Tenara and Gore-Tex—the fabric memorably touted by the George Costanza character on Seinfeld—at www.gore.com. Echelman’s collaboration with Jeanne Gang, Peter Heppel, and Domingo Gonzalez for the Hoboken 9/11 Memorial was recently selected for a site on a nearer waterfront, in New Jersey. This September her work will be exhibited at the Florence Lynch Gallery, www.florencelynchgallery.com, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

Couture You Can Sweat In
Stella McCartney’s sportswear line for Adidas has a new home: on May 7, the company opened a Sport Performance store in Manhattan. The Soho shop (610 Broadway at Houston Street) carries the designer’s apparel and also offers Adidas items exclusive to New York City. There is no soothing music at this sports emporium. Prepare to be immersed in recordings of balls hitting the court, shoes striking the pavement, and crowds cheering your purchases.

Who’s the New Guy?
The bureaucratic title borne by the 1974 Department of Transportation icons (some of which were updated by Dresser Johnson, www.dresserjohnson.com, for the renovated MoMA) belies their rich history and prestigious design lineage. The 34 icons were the result of an initiative spearheaded by graphic designer Thomas Geismar, along with a multiconstituent group that included bus operators, Amtrak, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts, to create a standard system of symbols for public use. Designers scoured the world for symbols already in place, and then sorted through them to decide which to keep, discard, or redesign. Geis-mar recalls of the final collection, “Some were identical [to the found signs], and some were definitely changed.” For more background on the project, go to www.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=symbolsigns, where the copyright-free symbols can be downloaded. Geismar also recommends the book Symbol Signs (Hastings House, 1981) as a more in-depth guide to the signs’ development.

How to Renovate a Totalitarian Building
Bucharest’s National Museum of Contemporary Art, www.mnac.ro, is currently showing socialist-realist works from the Ceausescu era in the Painting Museum exhibition curated by Florin Tudor. Stills from his video project for the museum’s inaugural exhibition and other studies of architectural sociology can be viewed at www.exapes.org. Easily navigable slide shows of photographer Iosif Király’s work are available at www.iokira.com. For information about Vlad Nanca? , the home gallery exhibitions, graffiti stencils by renowned Romanian graphic designers, and the rad Incepem zines—containing rare work by local artists, produced in limited editions of ten, and selling for €100—go to www.2020.ro. An online exhibition of projects by a who’s who of contemporary Romanian artists is posted at offset.underconstruct.com.

Personal Landscapes
To purchase Maija Louekari’s Ystävät fabric, try www.finnstyle.com, which carries one version of the pattern, along with other Marimekko products. Personal accounts of life inside the legendary Finnish company can be found in the treatise Marimekko: Spirit & Life (2001) by Tommy Tabermann and Tuija Wuori-Tabermann; president Kirsti Paakkanen and other key players at Marimekko relate anecdotes and give some insight into the daily workings and philosophy of the fabric manufacturer.

The Manchurian Main Street
Love or hate developments like Rancho Cucamonga’s Victoria Gardens, www.victoriagardensie.com, one has to admire New Urbanists’ organization. The New Urban Timeline, at www.nutimeline.net, presents a searchable database of events, places, people, and publications reaching back to the 1800s. The site is prefaced with an essay by no less an eminence than Andrés Duany.

The Ethics of Brick
Watch a video of Wangari Maathai’s Nobel acceptance speech at www.nobelprize.org. She also has an official Web site, www.wangarimaathai.com, with a detailed biography and links to donate to the Green Belt Movement, www.greenbeltmovement.org. Maathai’s foundation can be found at www.wangari-maathai.org. A part of the National Geographic story on 21st-century slavery is online, magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1, with links to nearly two dozen advocacy organizations. You won’t, unfortunately, find much useful information about this issue at the site of the AFL-CIO’s Building & Construction Trades Department, www.bctd.org. But its research arm, the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, www.cpwr.com, and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, www.osha.gov, provide tools—albeit from a somewhat narrow national perspective. The Fair Trade Federation, www.fairtradefederation.com, rather predictably seems to be subscribed to mostly by local potters and organic farmers.

Eye of the Storm
Patricia Urquiola doesn’t need her own Web site—most of her work is prominently featured on the sites of her huge roster of clients. These include heavyweights such as: B&B Italia, www.bebitalia.it; Moroso, www.moroso.it; Molteni, www.molteni.it; Paola Lenti, www.paolalenti.it; Foscarini, www.foscarini.it; Kartell, www.kartell.it; Alessi, www.alessi.com; Knoll, www.knoll.com; and Gandia Blasco, www.gandiablasco.com.

I’m Sorry, Excuse Me
Anteeksi members didn’t have the cash to visit Milan for the Salone del Mobile, and, really, how many of us are flush enough to fly to Finland? No matter: on the Web, we can spend as much time with Anteeksi as we like. At www.anteeksi.org you can view slide shows of the collective’s work. At www.M41LH2.com, notice the playfully abstract interactive chart of that firm’s projects. Have no fear—both sites are in English.

Takeout 2025
For more information on Studio Gaia, www.studiogaia.com features a portfolio of the firm’s extensive hospitality work, as well as thumbnails of a handful of works in progress.

A Flock of Winkas
Download product info for Ivalo Lighting’s Aliante and Rotare lamps at www.ivalolighting.com, or check out the company’s new products, including Winka Dubbeldam’s Inflection TW751, in booth number 1032 at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, www.icff.com.

Modern Mediation
Those hoping to sort out the when and who of MoMA’s architectural history can turn to a helpful timeline at www.moma.org/about_moma/building/chronology.html. Anyone curious to see what the Modern restaurant might have looked like—had Bentel & Bentel, www.bentelandbentel.com, chosen to adopt board member Ronald Lauder’s artistic vision—can check out www.theautomat.com. It includes a potted history of the first Automats, run by Horn & Hardart, complete with recipes. Baked beans with your Van Gogh?

Urban Triage
A special online exhibition of Groundswell: Constructing
the Contemporary Landscape at www.moma.org includes brief descriptions and images of all 32 projects and detailed descriptions of a half-dozen. If you missed our extensive coverage of the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park (Metropolis, October 2000, p. 126), it’s well worth a backward glance. Philip Nobel’s critique of the Fresh Kills landscape competition (Metropolis, March 2002, p. 52) describes the winning Field Operations plan as “a remote fantasia that trades in obfuscatory ‘threads,’ ‘islands,’ and ‘mats.’” There’s also a new book on Garden of Forgiveness codesigner Kathryn Gustafson, Moving Horizons: The Landscape Architecture of Kathryn Gustafson and Partners (Birkhauser, 2005).

Mediashelf
For more information or to purchase videos on VHS or DVD: A Constructive Madness, www.aconstructivemadness.com; My Architect, www.myarchitectfilm.com; Regular or Super, www.amazon.ca. The Venetian Dilemma is not yet available for purchase, but it will be showing on WNET, www.wnet.org, in July. Look for further info on the documentary’s distribution at www.parnassusworks.org.