Newsbytes *

edited by Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 9/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Wide Open

Open House New York

A city known for its velvet-rope exclusivity, New York is instituting a two-day open-door policy for normally off-limits architecture during openhousenewyork (OHNY). From tunnels to towers, boardrooms to bedrooms, markets to mansions, substations to skyscrapers, some of the City’s most fascinating feats of architecture, engineering and design will open their doors to the public October 11-12 for a weekend-long celebration.

OHNY is the most extensive event of its kind to take place in the city and was inspired by the overwhelming success of similar events that have taken place over the past decade in London, Toronto and other cities around the world. Through an annual citywide event and other public programs throughout the year, OHNY underscores the scope and depth of the city’s architecture and design. By providing access to a diverse array of New York’s architectural, engineering and design achievements to the public, the locations chronicle its amazing architectural, urban and historical development.

Scott Lauer, executive director of OHNY said, “This event could not be more timely; with the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, plans on the table for the 2012 Olympics, and other major building projects, public awareness and interest in architecture and design in New York has never been greater.”

Launched as part of the city’s first Architecture Week, OHNY also includes the opening of the AIA NY Chapter’s Center for Architecture, 538 LaGuardia Place, which will serve as the welcome and information center for the event.

A guide and map highlighting all participating sites, designed by graphic designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast, will be available at of the sites and at the OHNY welcome center at the Center for Architecture. Complete event information will also be available on the OHNY website, www.ohny.org.

Photo Finish

The star of The Lord of the Rings, A Walk on the Moon, and 28 Days, Viggo Mortensen likes to get behind the camera, too. His new series of large-scale panoramic photographs, shot during the filming of his forthcoming Hidalgo, opens September 13 at Los Angeles’s Stephen Cohen Gallery.

“Miyelo” is a recreation of a Lakota Ghost Dance, originally performed by members of Chief Big Foot’s band over a hundred years ago near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The long exposures represent a hallucination by a veteran of the Wounded Knee Massacre, as shot in the California desert. The intent was to capture the event as a real trip; a remembrance of things passed out. Mortensen hopes to convey that regardless of the context of any specific time or place, “we communicate, at best, as outlines and silhouettes to each other; blurry vanishing tracings of what we really see, feel and mean.”

Can we get some of that?

Out of This World

Talk about one giant leap. Science wasn’t the only field invigorated by man’s first walk on the moon—the space age also had a far-reaching artistic and cultural impact. Roy Lichtenstein, Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, et al., prove the point in “Global Village: The 60’s” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Opening October 2, the far-out exhibition presents an overview of the imaginary forces at work during the sixties as manifested through works of art, design, photography, fashion and architecture. Its premise is that the sixties stand out in the last century as a distinct period, characterized by a fundamental change in the human condition; our catapult into space resulted in the new image of the earth as a Global Village. Traditional notions did the Time Warp. Thematic and multidisciplinary, the exhibition will be divided into four main sections: Space, Media, Disorder and Change. “Global Village: The 60’s” is comprised of 250 works, from private and public collections in Europe and the United States, as well as from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Walk of Fame

Vitra, Knoll and 13 other Los Angeles home-furnishings and design showrooms are keeping their doors open after hours for the first Santa Monica Design District Walk, sponsored by Interior Design . The October 2 event kicks of at Boffi on Fourth Street.

Well-heeled audiences will wear out a little shoe leather visiting the tony showrooms, which all belong to the newly formed Santa Monica Design District Association. A special map linking the participants will be available online on each of the participants’ websites or at the showrooms. An inaugural event will take place at the Boffi showroom during the hours of the Walk.

Pucci on Nine

Not only a byword for top-caliber contemporary furniture, Ralph Pucci International is also known for its fab New York penthouse. A second space, Gallery Nine, opened September 15 on the ninth floor of the building. The evening celebration honored Josef Astor and James Thomas and featured the debut exhibit of a still-life fashion show by Mr. Thomas.

Gallery Nine showcases art, sculpture, photography, as well as furnishings and lighting by a variety of spirited artists and designers including Christophe Delcourt, Trace Simple and Jerome Abel Seguin, all backed by a stunning view of the Empire State Building and the New York skyline.

Equally eye-catching is the photo collection entitled Displayed in the Penthouse, an exhibit of outtakes and classic photographs of Ralph Pucci mannequins taken by Josef Astor over the years; photographs of Christy Turlington, Aly Dunne, Veruschka, the mannequin collections of Andree Putman, Robert Currie, Ruben Toledo, Karl Lagerfeld round out Displayed.

Designs by Vladimir Kagan, Chris Lehrecke, Paul Mathieu, Patrick Naggar, Andree Putman, Kevin Walz, lighting by David Weeks and John Wigmore and the rug collections of Christopher Farr also continue to be shown in the Penthouse.

For more names, drop by www.ralphpucci.com .