February 16, 2021

Wayne Thom photographed the power of 1970s architecture. He’s finally getting his due

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AC Martin & Associates, Architecture, Art, Articles, Emily Bills, John Portman, Julius Shulman, Ladd & Kelsey, Marvin Rand, Wayne Thom, William L. Pereira

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Architecture photographer Wayne Thom lived at the Bonaventure hotel for a week in 1977 as preparation for taking one of his most iconic images. To shoot the sculptural elegance of John Portman’s building, Thom woke at 4 a.m., positioned himself on the offramp of the 110 Freeway and readied to catch the sunrise. In the resulting photograph, the hotel’s cylindrical forms rise Oz-like from downtown Los Angeles, the curved facades reflecting the colors of dawn.

“I light the building with sun behind it, which illuminates the clouds,” Thom said when asked how to capture the dazzle of mirror glass. Retired and living with his wife, Aesook Jee, in the San Gabriel Valley community of Rowland Heights, 87-year-old Thom still approaches his craft with well-honed technique and poetry in equal measure. “You are photographing the reflection, not the building. The building is just a frame for the reflection of the sky.”

On Futures: Maite Borjabad López-Pastor and Emmet Byrne

SCI-Arc Channel

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Architecture, Art, Articles, Design, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor

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Emmet Byrne, Design Director and Associate Curator of Design, Walker Art Center and Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, are two of the team curators behind the exhibition Designs for Different Futures. Organized by the Walker Art Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Designs for Different Futures brings together some 80 dynamic works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may encounter in the years, decades, and centuries ahead. Among the questions raised by the designers in the show: What role can technology play in augmenting or replacing a broad range of human activities? How can we negotiate privacy in a world in which the sharing and use of personal information has blurred traditional boundaries? How might we use design to help heal or transform ourselves, bodily and psychologically? Ultimately, the exhibition asks: Who shapes future?

On Futures: Future Firm

SCI-Arc Channel

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Ann Lui, Architecture, Articles, Craig Reschke, Future Firm

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Ann Lui and Craig Reschke founded Chicago-based Future Firm in 2015. The practice combines their expertise—Lui co-curated the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennial and Reschke is trained as a landscape architect—in order to envision what is on the cultural horizon and to deal directly with critical issues facing neighborhoods and communities in Chicago. Their work spans diverse scales: from events to residential and commercial buildings to urban and territorial speculations, and helps develop unorthodox approaches towards community, belonging, and public engagement in contexts where multiple stakeholders come to the table. Future Firm also currently operates The Night Gallery, a nocturnal exhibition space on Chicago’s South side, which features video and film works by artists and architects from sunset to sunrise. Their work has been exhibited at Storefront for Art & Architecture, New Museum’s Ideas City, and the Chicago Architecture Foundation and published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Chicago Architect, Mas Context and Newcity. They are a 2020-2021 recipient of Exhibit Columbus’ J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize.

Experimental Jetset – Superstructures

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Architecture, Art, Books, Dirk van den Heuvel, Experimental Jetset, Leontine Coelewij, Linda van Deursen

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Superstructures (Notes on Experimental Jetset / Volume 2) is an inquiry into the role of the city as an infrastructure for language (and simultaneously, into the role of language as an infrastructure for the city), as seen through the lens of four historical movements: Constructivism, the Situationist International, Provo, and the Post-Punk explosion. Based on a research project (and accompanying exhibition) by Experimental Jetset, the publication features footnotes written by Vasyl Cherepanyn, Leontine Coelewij, Linda van Deursen, Experimental Jetset, Owen Hatherley, Brad Haylock, Dirk van den Heuvel, Lieven Lahaye, Samata Masato, Tom McDonough, Kateryna Mishchenko, Other Forms, Mark Owens, Megan Patty, Adam Pendleton, Simon Reynolds, Ian F. Svenonius, McKenzie Wark, Lori Waxman, and Mimi Zeiger. The 420-page paperback comes with a 24-page zine, zooming in on the design typology of the original exhibition.