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Arts and Sciences

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 8/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Stephen Hawking has admitted being wrong. In case you were on summer vacation when the news broke, it seems that black holes aren't so black after all, and that gives me hope for the future. If we can now trust information to escape the intergalactic void, then maybe—one fine day—we might even witness the free exchange of dialogue between artists and designers.

For now, in my admittedly biased opinion, our industry carries most of the burden of this thorny relationship, designing brilliantly seamless spaces for artistic expression as well as mere living and working. What could symbolize these connections better than the catwalks and bridges Bromley Caldari Architects built to transform separate New York town houses into a business incubator and residence, both dedicated to the display of folk art? Or consider the Paris headquarters of LVMH, where an environment by Wilmotte & Associés recasts a Richard Serra sculpture or a Michal Rovner video as the ultimate luxury goods. And then there's artist Bernar Venet's Paris house, Llamata + Berthier's minimal envelope for minimalist art. (Come to think of it, if Venet can happily split his time between Paris and New York, perhaps there's hope for French-American dialogue, too.)

In case you might still be missing the cues in my copy, I submit to you that it's time for artists to leave behind the 19th century and admit that Romantic individualism is nothing more than glorified elitism. Designers, meanwhile, should shelve the Howard Roark myth.

What really matters is universality—in other words: all the rest of us.