events

Somehow tangentially related to the last post, because it's more architecture-for-art's sake, the budding starchitect Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA has chosen the theme for this fall's Venice Architecture Biennale: "People Meet Architecture." Sejima, you'll perhaps recall, was given the guest director title for this year's event back in November. The theme, she explains, will try to help people make connections to architecture and likewise how architecture can relate to people. Here's a bit more:

"There will be independent spaces for each architect or each theme, which means that the participants will be their own curators. In this way contributors will design their own space and make presentations that consider the experience of the visitor both physically and conceptually. It will be a series of spaces rather than a series of objects."

(From left to right) George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames, and Jens Risom play musical chairs in the July 1961 issue of Playboy.

Cancel your plans for tomorrow evening and adopt a pensive-yet-naive Mad Men pose, because the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) has assembled a stellar crew of design minds to discuss one of our favorite topics: midcentury modern furniture. The delightful Cindy Allen, editor-of-chief of Interior Design (which we have been known to purchase in lieu of groceries), will be joined by MCNY curator Donald Albrecht, design historian Phyllis Ross (who you'll recall as the author of the splendid Gilbert Rohde: Modern Design for Modern Living), architect and designer Gunnar Birkerts, and Lin/Weinberg Gallery founders Andy Lin and Larry Weinberg. The panel discussion begins at 6:30 p.m. (buy tickets here), but we suggest arriving early to take in the two related exhibitions: "The Future at Home: American Furniture, 1940-1955" and "Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future," co-curated by Albrecht and Ross.

Gallery hopping in Manhattan is a treat on most any Saturday, but The New Yorker's annual Passport to the Arts event adds a scavenger hunt twist, challenging participants to fill the creamy cardstock of their specially issued booklets with stamped versions of artworks (like the one at right, by Asuka Ohsawa) from each of the 28 participating galleries. While we were busy over at Sotheby's enumerating the ways that a Cecily Brown canvas is a (much) wiser investment than a new boat, we dispatched UnBeige designer correspondent Prescott Perez-Fox to take a walk on the fine art side. Here's his Passport report.

Last Saturday, I stepped out for the fifth annual Passport to the Arts, an open-house tour of galleries in SoHo and Chelsea. The day-long event and evening reception was sponsored chiefly by The New Yorker promotion department. Proceeds from ticket sales and the silent auction benefitted Friends of the High Line, the "non-profit conservancy that provides over 70 percent of the High Line's annual operating budget," so the endeavor offered an element of community outreach, and not simply another chance for the art community to do its thing.

It seems to be an appropriate symbiosis: the art community, now based in the post-industrial area of West Chelsea, benefits from new foot traffic brought by the High Line, while the High Line, of course, needs money to continue renovations and maintain the park for public use. With the chance to pick up some art at auction prices, patrons also may find this a winning scenario.

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Here's your chance to get the scoop on the graduate program that we can't stop talking about. This Saturday, November 7, the School of Visual Arts' Design Criticism department will host an afternoon of presentations and informal discussion about its MFA in Design Criticism, better known by its rapper name, D-Crit. Students will talk about their experiences so far, D-Crit chairperson Alice Twemlow will provide a program overview, and faculty members Akiko Busch, Andrea Codrington, Steven Heller, and Phil Patton will discuss the courses they teach. We hear that there will be drinks (mimosas!) and snacks (doughnuts!), and if you ask nicely, we suspect they'll let you peruse the twelve-volume reprint set of Domus that we spied in one of the D-Crit classrooms on a recent visit. Get all of the details here. Can't make the open house? Click "continued..." for a look at the remaining events in the department's stellar fall lecture series.

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Like Christmas and National Candy Corn Day (which happens to be today), the Moss and Moroso Warehouse Sale happens just once a year, or just about. Dear UnBeige readers, it is almost upon us. Next Saturday, November 7, design-minded bargain shoppers will make their way to Soho (25 Greene Street, to be precise), just down the street from Moss' perpetually full-priced design emporium. At the stroke of 11 a.m., usually calm, placid, black-garbed urbanites wearing all manner of interesting eyewear will jostle their peers for selected items from the Moss warehouse (which we always picture like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, complete with Comme des Garçons-clad Oompa Loompas) priced at up to 80% off. We've been told to expect chairs, sofas, tables, lights, assorted small goods, and "many special items of particular note." The sale runs through Sunday, November 8 at 6 p.m., but note that it's a first-come-first-served situation (translation: get there early), and all sales are final. We're bringing along a Ted Muehling candlestick to fend off the hoards!

To end this writer's day on a fun/funny note, we ran across this press release from the North Shore Animal League America, who are gearing up for an upcoming benefit in New York next Thursday the 5th to raise money for their pet rescue/adoption/awareness efforts. The event is called the Fourth Annual DogCatemy Celebrity Gala and will feature an auction of pet collars created by famous designers, from Isaac Mizrahi to Betsey Johnson. Since we're animal lovers (proof of that here), we were happy about the whole thing while skimming the release, until we ran across this bit about the event itself:

Hosted by award-winning journalist, author and host of Fox News Channel's Geraldo at Large, Geraldo Rivera...

Geraldo? Really? That's who they got to host the event? Wasn't there someone else around New York somewhere who might be a better fit? The gala's website says Rivera got his golden retriever from their shelter, which is great, and he's certainly a personable guy, but don't 90% of Americans also find him pretty off-putting? And let's remember that John O'Hurley lives just up the coast, in Maine. He's the best part of the annual dog show at Thanksgiving. He wasn't free? Anyway, while we continue to struggle with our curiosity, here's a bit about all the designers involved with the auction:

...the gala features a truly unique auction. It showcases an array of one-of-a-kind pet collars created by some of the most illustrious names in the design, fashion and jewelry worlds. Bidders have the opportunity to dress their animals in collars created by designers including Betsey Johnson, Nicole Miller, Isaac Mizrahi, Byron Lars, Stephen Dweck, Lela Rose, Alexis Bittar, Carmen Marc Valvo, Yigal Azrouel, Anna Sui, Christie Brinkley, Marc Bouwer, Lela Rose, Colette Malouf and many more.

(Photos, left to right: Patrick McMullan Company and UnBeige)

David Stark has long been the go-to event designer for the Cooper-Hewitt's annual National Design Awards gala. In recent years, he and his team have transformed everyday objects—from cushions to cocktail napkins—into colorful tableaux that popped against the walls of the white tent pitched in the museum's courtyard. This year, with the museum in the throes of a massive renovation, the gala was moved to Cipriani 42nd Street, a York & Sawyer-designed bank turned cavernous, landmarked event space. Even with a 65-foot ceiling to contend with, Stark rose to the challenge, creating bold and graphic decor inspired by the awards program's tenth anniversary.

To make the designers the stars of the evening, Stark designed a series of graphic patterns from the names of past National Design Award winners. Set in white all-caps Futura on the NDA's signature cyan, the text patterns made for a striking contrast with Cipriani's Corinthian columns, inlaid floors, and soaring, Wedgewood-domed ceiling. "The important thing is always to create elements of scale that relate to the room you're in," Stark told us. "Much like we've done at the tented venue, we played with scale by creating entry and ceiling decor elements like the fourteen-foot '10' at the entrance and eight-foot drumshades suspended from the ceiling. On each, the pattern was exploded to various scales so the typography can be admired for its shape as well as its message, and provide interplay with the elaborate background of the space."

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(Photos: Susie Montagna)

Never underestimate the power of a Post-it. Event designer David Stark and his team used hundreds of the little yellow notes to ensure that the theme of the recent New Yorkers for Children fall gala stuck with guests. "Make It Happen" was spelled out in a sunny wall of yellow and black Post-its that welcomed attendees and flanked the dining space, while a "giving tree" in the cocktail area invited attendees to scribble their thoughts on Post-it "leaves." More Post-its covered the reverse of the entry wall, tweaking the message to ask "How do you make it happen?" Guests arrived to their tables to find personalized Post-it pads marking their places, along with napkins embroidered with a psuedo-Post-it designed by Stark. As for those eyelet table linens, they were custom made by Ankasa in—you guessed it—Post-it yellow.

Previously on UnBeige:

(Photos: Prada)

Multi-dimensional event spaces grow up so fast these days. It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming the Prada Transformer into the world, nestled beside a 16th-century palace in Seoul, and now it's time to bid the Rem Koolhaas/Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)-designed structure a fond farewell. Yesterday, the Transformer made its final flip, rotated by crains onto its circular base to host today's "Student Takeover." The program showcases and celebrates the transformation-themed design ideas and artwork of Korean students.

On the luxe leather heels of the fashion exhibition, film festival, and art installation hosted by the Transformer over the past five months, the student program is an effort to engage with the host city by making the structure "a place for debate and open-minded discussion; inviting innovative students to communicate ideas freely and contemplate the future of art, design, and the society in which it exists," according to a Prada spokesperson. The work exhibited was created by 130 Korean art, design, and architecture students. They spent two weeks in a workshop-style environment led by OMA's Alexander Reichert, design architect on the Transformer project, hatching the products of their takeover, from redesigned Prada Transformer flyers, pins, and t-shirts to plans for overhauling the architecture. By day's end, the structure is expected to have been painted on, wallpapered, covered in graffiti, and torn apart—just enough "to create a new spatiality that engages with the students' content" and serve as the venue for a final, blow-out party.

Previously on UnBeige:

If you're in New York and not doing anything on Thursday night (heck, even if you are), might we recommend that you spend it hanging out with our good pals over at the always terrific Remodelista? The site's editors are being hosted by Design Within Reach for a two hour special event wherein they'll each present a room in their home and "describe the signature Remodelista mix of modern and vintage, high and low." All the better: the event is free (and so is the wine and cheese). Outside of "My arm is on fire!" or "I just got invited to test out jet packs in the Nevada desert," if you're a fan of the site and you're in town, you really don't have any excuse not to attend. Here are the details:

WHO: Remodelista Editors Julie Carlson, Janet Hall, Sarah Lonsdale and Francesca Connolly. Drawing from their combined professional backgrounds as magazine editor, video producer, fabric designer and human resources director, the women have merged their similar design sensibilities with an entrepreneurial drive to form Remodelista.

WHEN: Thursday, September 24
7:00-9:00 pm

WHERE: Design Within Reach
110 Greene Street (between Prince and Spring)
New York, NY 10012