collaboration

The Serpentine Gallery, who have learned to master the art of generating buzz about one annual project nearly year round at this point, announcing their pick for who will design the next one just as the one before it is fading from memory, have decided to up the ante even more so this year. They’ve just announced that this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure set up in London’s Hyde Park, will be designed by a reunited Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. The two had previously collaborated on Beijing’s celebrated “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium ahead of the last Olympics in 2008. Weiwei’s gradual coming out against the project over labor and human rights issues was, for those not already in the art world, their first encounter with the artist Weiwei, whose outspoken views and clashes with the Chinese government have made him one of the most well-known and powerful artists today. With the Olympics coming to London in just a few months, and Weiwei now forced to work on projects from his virtual house arrest in Beijing, whatever the two parties come up with is sure to generate some nice press and an increased general interest for the Serpentine. Here’s a bit from the press release about what it’s going to look like:

This year’s Pavilion will take visitors beneath the Serpentine’s lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column will support a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

David Stark has made a name for himself with design that is simultaneously innovative and playful, monumentally scaled yet welcoming and thoughtfully customized. His Brooklyn-based firm’s events, for clients ranging from Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and New Yorkers for Children to West Elm and discerning brides often transform quotidian materials—Post-Its, paint chips, bundled newspapers—into one-night wonderlands. Guests have been known to marvel, look closer, and then ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Stark’s latest production is WOOD SHOP, a “surprise ambush” of Nina Freudenberger‘s Haus Interior in New York. “For about a month, all of the product that Haus usually carries will be removed and replaced with our limited-edition WOOD SHOP collection that is inspired by the iconic wood worker’s atelier,” explains Stark of the collaborative concept store-cum-art gallery, which opens to the public on Friday at 11:00 a.m. (sneak a peek at some of the goods and buy them online here). “We’re excited to take the pop-up store to the next level.” Stark took time away from last-minute preparations to answer our seven questions about wooden must-haves, his start in event design, and how he created a “garden of Versailles” out of shredded paper.

1. What are a few of your favorite products in WOOD SHOP?
Oh, I love so, so many of them that it is hard to name one or two, but I am particularly happy with the hand-crocheted paint can and brush pillows, the turned poplar vases, and I do love the “Pining for You” poster/valentine. It’s a fantastic card to send in the mail, and it is also cool to frame and put on a wall. This pieces is the newest in our company tradition of newsprint cards that we have sent to friends and clients over the last couple of years. Those cards have become so popular that they are commonly saved and framed as wall art.

2. You went to art school at RISD. How did you get your start in event design?
Totally by accident! I didn’t even know there was a career called, “event design”! Back in the day, I worked with flowers and a partner, making arrangements for parties to support my fledgling painting career. Over time, I did more and more floral work than painting and got better and better at it. One day we were invited to interview for the job of designing the décor for New York City Opera’s fundraising gala. Carolyn Roehm, a noted florist in her own right, was the chair lady of the evening, and she took one look at our book and said, “Well, there is no question that you make the most beautiful flower arrangements, but this evening is not about flowers at all.”

All of a sudden a light bulb went off! It was a real a-ha moment. The revelation that flowers were not the only decorative tool for a party was mind-blowing. It seems real obvious of course, but at the time, it was radical. Now flowers are just one of the tools in my tool box, and the rest of the world of options is readily at my fingertips.
Read more

Get ready for MOCA TV! The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles has teamed with YouTube to create a new video channel for fresh contemporary art and culture programming. The online programming venture, part of YouTube’s new original programming push, is expected to debut in July with an identity designed by L.A.-based Studio Number One. “Contemporary art is the new international language, unifying leading creators across art, music, fashion, film, and design,” said MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, who has always struck us as a natural VJ. “MOCA TV will be the ultimate digital extension of the museum, aggregating, curating, and generating the strongest artistic content from around the world for a new global audience of people who are engaged in visually oriented culture.” Slated for the MOCA TV line-up? Global art news briefs, programs focused on the latest collaborative projects (art and music, art and fashion), looks inside artists’ studios, the street art beat (natch), and an interactive education series called MOCA University. The musem has tapped social media company theAudience to help get the word out about MOCA TV as the launch approaches.

Prada has teamed with two of its favorite collaborators to present an ephemeral museum experience in Paris. Puckish Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli and AMO, the architectural think tank-cum-consulting arm of Rem Koolhaas‘s OMA, are the minds behind “24 h Museum,” which opens Tuesday, January 24—and closes 1,440 minutes later. The project will transiently commandeer the Palais d’Iéna. Designed by Auguste Perret between 1936 and 1946, it currently houses the French Conseil Économique, Social, et Environnemental. What Vezzoli and AMO have in store for the historic property remains anyone’s guess, but they’ve picked a fetching Pepto-Bismol pink for the identity of their pop-up “architectural intervention,” which now has official Facebook and Twitter accounts. According to Vezzoli, who has worked with everyone from Gore Vidal to Lady Gaga on a string of genre-straddling meta-spectacles, the art in 24 h Museum “will dangerously resemble advertising tools.” Meanwhile, AMO is fresh from another Prada project. The OMA offshoot designed the palatial-mod sets for the house’s fall 2012 menswear show, held Sunday in Milan. Audience members surrounded a grand expanse of carpeting, a woolly collage of red, white, and black piles dotted with geometric flower shapes. Above them hung a half dozen massive chandeliers, illuminated by 300 neon tubes.

It’s shaping up to be another eventful year for Tom Dixon and his addictive forms. On Friday, the self-taught designer-maker will debut his collection of everyday home accessories and design objects at Maison & Objet in Paris. “Eclectic by Tom Dixon” includes gift-ready goodies made of materials such as copper, marble, cast iron, and wood. But that’s nothing compared to what he’s got in store for Milan Design Week. Come April, Dixon and friends will transform the National Museum of Science and Technology Milan into MOST, a new cultural hub that will showcase the creations and wares of a handpicked group of designers, curators, and companies.

“In a fit of spontaneous madness we decided that the world’s most important meeting place for global design obsessives needed a new epicenter, a space for quiet contemplation or chaotic energy—a platform for the exchange of big ideas,” said Dixon in a statement announcing the project, which kicks off on April 17. “We have created a place where we can demonstrate the new democratization and hyperactive innovation of technology in art, food, fashion, manufacturing, and communication.” His creative partners on the project are Design Miami veteran Ambra Medda and Milan native Martina Mondadori, who is working with TAR Magazine to assemble a slate of lectures and seminars that will take place in the museum’s gorgeous auditorium (pictured). MOST will provide each exhibitor with an individual space within the approximately 400,000-square-foot museum, and there will be an overall exhibition theme. Exhibits of various sizes, positioned inside and outside of the museum, are expected to create a carnival-like environment. Interested in exhibiting? Contact Alice Foster (Alice.Foster@tomdixon.net) for more information and an application.

London continues to try and ramp up its coolness levels with the impending Olympics being held there this summer now just around the corner. For the latest effort, they’ve gone underground. Launched just yesterday in a number of Tube subway stations is a collaboration between poetry and motion graphics called “Word In Motion.” As part of the Smile for London campaign, the project blends the two, with writing from the likes of Ray Davies and Jarvis Cocker, and design by groups like Why Not Associates and Malcolm Garrett, the short pieces will play on 60 screens during rush hours. The project launched on the 16th and will only last for the next two weeks, so while Olympics visitors won’t be treated to them, they’ll perhaps provide a welcome bit of relief from the locals who have been overwhelmed by construction delays over these past couple of years. Here’s a sampling:

With dynamo conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the helm and the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall as a venue, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is a cultural force to be reckoned with. This year, the LA Phil kicks off a three-year project celebrating the operatic collaborations of librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with some impressive collaborations of its own. The upcoming production of Don Giovanni will feature sets by Gehry and costumes by Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte.

“This is a project very close to Gustavo Dudamel’s heart. He knows the music like the back of his hand, and has a unique vision that I find very exciting,” said Gehry in a statement issued by the LA Phil announcing the creative team and cast for Don Giovanni, which premieres on May 18. “Kate and Laura’s work reminds me of my early days—it is free and fearless and not precious.” This marks the Mulleavys first foray into operatic costume design, following their show-stopping tutus for the film Black Swan. “Opera has always been a part of us; our grandmother was from Rome and studied it as a young girl,” said the sisters, now at work on costumes that will create “a timeless context” for Mozart’s characters. “Working with Frank Gehry in the concert hall that he designed, alongside Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a dream.”

In the world of home decor, and thanks to his many collaborations between companies running the gamut from Barney’s to Starbucks, there are few things you wouldn’t be able to purchase that were designed by Jonathan Adler. Now that list has managed to get even smaller, as the Cottonelle brand of toilet paper has announced that Adler has created three designs for them. His work appears not on the tissue itself, but on the “roll covers” which wrap around extra unused rolls. This was not a home product this writer was aware of, nor does needing to artfully present toilet paper rolls make total sense to him, but to each their own. To those for whom it is perfectly clear, Adler’s covers will be available between now and the end of April. Here’s from his statement:

Part of my passion for design is taking everyday objects and turning them into eye-catching conversation pieces and, until now, toilet paper has been a relatively untouched canvas,” said designer Jonathan Adler. “So I was thrilled when Cottonelle approached me to design its spring collection of roll covers.

And here’s the quote wherein he really earned his check:

“When it comes to good design, I believe functionality is key,” Adler added. “These roll covers are a great solution for keeping that extra roll of Cottonelle Clean Care handy and makes it easy to respect the roll that respects you.”

Can’t make it to the Museum at FIT’s brilliant Daphne Guinness exhibition before it closes next Saturday? Peek into the style icon’s colorful imagination with her new limited-edition collection for MAC Cosmetics. Now available nationwide, the 24-piece line includes chilly-toned lipsticks, eye shadow, and nail polish named for some of Guinness’s earthy favorites (Japanese spring, azalea blossom, seasoned plum) and out-of-this-world fascinations (red dwarf, borealis, nebula).

After MAC approached Guinness about a collaboration, she hunkered down with art supplies in her room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I had parchment papers spread all over the floor and all sorts of different powders and watercolors that I was mixing together, and my finished pieces were drying on the balcony,” says Guinness, who points to Old Masters such as Titian and Francisco de Zurbarán as a perennial source of inspiration. “And I might say that I’m absolutely fascinated by butterflies and outer space. Blimey, I have pictures from the Hubble space telescope and some of those are just extraordinary, and if you look very closely at a butterfly’s wings or even perhaps a jellyfish, you’ll see there are similarities.” Among her favorite items from the MAC collection is Hyperion, a frosty blue-green nail polish. Explains Guinness, “It resembles this almost grey, steely light that is pure Whistler from the 1890s, when he still had fog in the paintings.”

Looking for even bolder makeup? Next up for MAC is a collection created with rara avis Iris Apfel. Stock up on Toco Toucan (fuschia) nail polish and Early Bird (bright coral) eyeshadow beginning Thursday.

John Galliano is a tough act to follow, but Lanvin creative director Alber Elbaz has proven himself up to the task of creating a showstopper of a Christmas tree for Claridge’s. His secret weapons? The “infusion of tradition and modernity” that he has made a signature of the fashion house, along with madcap marionettes (dressed in Lanvin-designed Claridge’s uniforms, bien sûr). The colorful tree, which will remain on view through January 2 in the London hotel’s art deco lobby, is topped by a figure of Elbaz, his trademark floppy bow tie and glasses accessorized for the season with fairy wings and a wand. For those can’t make it across the pond, there’s this whimsical—and mildly creepy—short film to get you in the Christmas spirit. You’ll come away craving both goatskin ballerina flats and scones. Pass the Marco Polo jelly and Cornish clotted cream.