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In a season of discontent, 41 Cooper Square reminds us Yanks what we're capable of. The icon broke ground in '06, before "The Great Recession" was uttered, and welcomed students this fall.   MORE >>

In a season of discontent, 41 Cooper Square reminds us Yanks what we're capable of. The icon broke ground in '06, before "The Great Recession" was uttered, and welcomed students this fall.
 
Likely to achieve LEED platinum status (the first for an academic space in New York), the full-block building by bicoastal firm Morphosis has replaced more than 40 percent of the college's teaching spaces, merging previously divided departments. The building's glass and stainless-steel double skin boosts energy efficiency, while the roof harnesses rainwater and cools the eight levels below. Furthermore, symbolizing the architecture and engineering school's ethos of an accessible education (all students get a full scholarship) are the building's sweeping atrium, flexible labs and transparencies that expose its frantic East Village surroundings. "The design is about intellectual, not material capital," says Morphosis' Thom Mayne. "To influence what students will build 30 years from now…I couldn't ask for anything more."
 
Here, finalist Zachary Bako twists the Cooper into something otherworldly, further pushing the architecture into a work of art. Looking into 2010, let’s keep this spirit of openness alive. The alternative isn’t nearly as interesting. morphosis.com   << LESS

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"I've always considered myself a designer rather than an artist," explains Kenzo Minami. "Each time I am given creative freedom, I tend to impose restrictions and logic, because without it, there is no backbone to what I create."   MORE >>

"I've always considered myself a designer rather than an artist," explains Kenzo Minami. "Each time I am given creative freedom, I tend to impose restrictions and logic, because without it, there is no backbone to what I create."
 
Moving to New York to study industrial design at Parsons in 1994, Minami began his career building sets for film and television before turning to graphic design. "I realized everything I was making in 3-D was being seen two-dimensionally on a TV screen anyway," Minami says. Since then, he's designed limited-edition sneakers for Reebok and Vans, invitations for Raf Simons and a toy for Kidrobot, which MoMA adopted into its Architecture and Design collection. Perhaps most indicative of Minami's sphere of influence, Mercedes-Benz chose him to represent the present day in its 2007 Famous Cars Famous People show. His intricate "Synchronization" print melded automotive and musical imagery and was exhibited alongside pieces by Robert Longo, David Hockney and Andy Warhol.
 
Minami’s garment line—that features the same meticulous graphics and ideological allusions peppered through his work—is now in its 13th season, and this fall saw the launch of his design for Microsoft's Zune HD media player, compositions for Dell's laptop Design Studio and "Remakes," a solo show at Manhattan's Soho Grand Hotel.
As the title suggests, the new pieces explore the notion that history repeats itself. "Humanity’s cultural function is all about narrative," argues Minami. "We've been telling the same stories since the Greek tragedies, so we can't ignore the inevitability of remaking things." Printed canvases such as "Elemental" and "5 to Midnight" show Minami repeating motifs—some lifted from earlier works—to create patterns that shy away from compositional focal points.
 
However, Minami's work isn’t simply ornamental. He flits between references to Kierkegaard, Camus and Reality Bites and believes that "with graphics, nothing has to be anything, so elements have nothing but a metaphysical function." His aesthetic finds its center in a fascination with logic, an obsession that has its foundation in Minami's upbringing. Raised in Hyogo, Japan, around die-cast metal factories where his family still works, he questioned utility from a young age. "I was surrounded by industrial components rather than finished products so, although the objects were purely functional, you couldn’t always tell what that function was." This year's show is yet another example of Minami's philosophical approach to making work. Neither championing nor contesting the worth of remaking, "Remakes" suggests originality may not be as pioneering as we think. "When you’re young, you're obsessed with being original, but as you get older, you realize that everything has already been done," says Minami. "There's a truth in old-fashioned clichés, and I'm okay to admit that now." kenzominami.com   << LESS

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Romanesque. Georgian Revival. Collegiate Gothic. Mention any style that swept across America’s built landscape in the last 200 years, and you will probably elicit emotional responses. But the glass boxes that have come to define modern architecture? Not so much. "Over the past century, architecture has become exceedingly intellectualized, sometimes eclipsing emotion and a range of aesthetic sensations," says Mark Foster Gage. "Our work is trying to reinvigorate the way architecture resonates with people."   MORE >>

Romanesque. Georgian Revival. Collegiate Gothic. Mention any style that swept across America's built landscape in the last 200 years, and you will probably elicit emotional responses. But the glass boxes that have come to define modern architecture? Not so much. "Over the past century, architecture has become exceedingly intellectualized, sometimes eclipsing emotion and a range of aesthetic sensations," says Mark Foster Gage. "Our work is trying to reinvigorate the way architecture resonates with people."
 
Before founding the firm in 2002, Gage worked for New York-based Robert AM Stern and Takenaka in Osaka, while his partner Marc Clemenceau Bailly did stints with Ferguson & Shamamian and Peter Pennoyer, both in New York. Together, they run Gage/Clemenceau Architects from a muscular storefront in Manhattan's Lower East Side. It's a long way from Notre Dame, where the friends earned their bachelor's degrees in architecture and where they accumulated the historical knowledge that informs their work today.
 
However, building a bridge between old and new architecture does not mean replicating the past. Rather, Gage/Clemenceau's complex plans, intricate forms and undulating surfaces are largely unprecedented, and the principals achieve these jaw-dropping geometries with digital programming and fabrication. The pair frequently works with software maker Autodesk to ensure programs like Maya and Mudbox—both originally used for Hollywood special effects and computer-generated imagery—and the automotive-design tool AliasStudio are suitable for architectural design.
 
The results of Gage/Clemenceau's mission include installations such as this year's Valentine to Times Square, a giant heart constructed of laser-cut stainless steel, translucent Corian and computerized LEDs that stood temporarily in Duffy Square. "The heart project was an unabashedly cheerful exercise for our office, allowing us to use the newest design technologies, advanced materials and robotic fabrication techniques for the express purpose of producing, well, a little bit of love," Gage says. In the pipeline for 2010, the firm's first freestanding house and a line of jewelry should stoke emotions further.
 
Yet, Gage also notes that the studio creates products and spaces not merely as aesthetic exercises. The curving, lace-like facades submitted to the February 2008 competition for the Estonian Academy of Arts were intended to forge visual links between occupants of the building’s elevated public courtyard and passers-by. And for a recently completed three-bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park, Gage/Clemenceau differentiated rooms with various undulating walls and patterned three-dimensional surfaces. As Bailly puts it, "We’re trying to inject a little more beauty and emotion into the form-versus-function equation." gageclemenceau.com   << LESS

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Before opening Voos in March, the Turkish-born Serap Demirag had been yearning for a change. After working at the modular furniture company Techline for 10 years and giving birth to her son, Maxime, the borough-centric furniture shop and gallery provided just that. Her new mission became clear when she spotted a table by Palo Samko, who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "Sometimes you see an object, and it just gives you some emotion," Demirag says. "It’s like art, going to see a painting. This was the kind of reaction I felt."   MORE >>

Before opening Voos in March, the Turkish-born Serap Demirag had been yearning for a change. After working at the modular furniture company Techline for 10 years and giving birth to her son, Maxime, the borough-centric furniture shop and gallery provided just that. Her new mission became clear when she spotted a table by Palo Samko, who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "Sometimes you see an object, and it just gives you some emotion," Demirag says. “It’s like art, going to see a painting. This was the kind of reaction I felt."
 
After networking with designers, scouring the web and going to trade shows such as the annual Bklyn Designs, "one-by-one I learned that there are so many designers making everything locally. I felt I could be the person to introduce them to the city of New York." So Demirag established Voos in Williamsburg, her neighborhood for the past decade. She then partnered with Deger Cengiz, who as an architect and furniture-maker has masterminded an array of modular, prefab houses and the sleek penthouse of NYC's Marmara-Manhattan Hotel. Their narrow but packed shop, boasting rough-hewn wooden columns and a polished concrete floor, is located in a century-old tobacco and spice warehouse that the pair remodeled themselves.
 
Voos initially featured work by 29 Brooklyn designers—with Cengiz being the only contributing Manhattanite—but the store now represents an additional 30, including three from Queens and two from Staten Island. Among them are Takeshi Miyakawa, whose plywood, fiberglass and resin pieces would look at home in a Kubrick film; Avram Rusu, who turns planes of colored glass and aluminum into lighting; and Uhuru, fellow Surface Avant Guardians.
 
The "locally grown produce" rotates six times a year, says Demirag, and she and Cengiz host meet-the-designer events once a month. And if you’re wondering what Voos means, "I made it up," Demirag says. "I wanted it to sound very ambiguous, like it could be any language—Spanish, Dutch, Turkish." Appropriate for one of most polyglot towns on earth. voosfurniture.com   << LESS