On February 14, London’s Architectural Association announced its short list of three finalists to be considered for its director position. This short list, the AA claims, came from an initial response of 73 submitted applications that was then winnowed down to a “longlist of 26 candidates, of which 15 were selected for a first round of interviews.”  In this first round, there were candidates from Australia, North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. In the second round, there were just eight candidates; four men and four women. The final shortlist of three includes: Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura in Rome, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and Robert Mull, Head of Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton. All three also list themselves as architects and educators, but Ciorra and Eva Franch i Gilabert are also curators working in exhibition venues, and Mull calls himself an” urbanist and activist.” Now the AA has released statements from the three candidates and their responses to a set of questions. Starting on February 19, the three will make formal presentations to the AA community, who will vote for the new director. We are taking this opportunity to highlight a few of the differences and, as it turns out, similarities between the candidates' positions, with a link to the full statements. What makes the AA process so compelling is its openness and transparency. In this, it is unlike any other architecture institution in the world when it chooses a leader. Robert Mull, the only Brit on the list, is positioning himself as the clear favorite for those who demand that architecture foreground itself firstly as ‘social’ practice. He wants architecture “to look outwards and to judge ourselves not by the internal logic of the international architectural community but by our impact on others and on society more generally.” Mull pointedly says, “I do not like needless hierarchy and I favor plain speaking and direct action over jargon and obscuration," and is the only candidate who also asks that the AA become more engaged with London as its extended campus. He also talks about engaging with the current refugee crisis as a site for interventions. The other two candidates, Ciorra and Franch i Gilabert, would of course deny they do not support social engagement, but they clearly emphasize the need to re-engage with the avant-garde legacy of the AA. They both, in nearly similar statements, believe that architecture arrived at its present “crises” as a result of “the acceleration of hyper-capitalism on one hand and the expansion of the so-called culture industry on the other" (Ciorra) and “over the last decade and as a result of new forms of communication, omnipresent market forces and increased global mobility, cultural and educational institutions around the globe have undergone a process of homogenization" (Franch i Gilabert). They both celebrate the AA’s history of experimentation, which they want to continue, and would also both ask outside professionals and academics to the AA to establish challenges for the institution. All three thankfully recognize the need to continue supporting the AA’s publishing ventures and exhibition programs as well as upgraded PhD and research programs. It seems clear from these three statements that they each recognize the AA’s current economic distress, what that means for its future student enrollment, and the need to establish a more stable economic model and platform. But none of the three really have definitive ideas of what this new model would look like. Perhaps they will not know this until they are seated in the directors chair and facing this challenge head-on.

Where else would cartons of milk, Alice in Wonderland, and Courtney Love come together except at HOLES, this year's Critical Halloween event thrown by the Storefront for Art and Architecture? The theme invited reflections on the voids in our material and political landscapes, and, of course, a fair range of NSFW puns. After all, holes "question our perceptions of matter and space, constructing, revealing, and inviting us to reflect upon what is real…and what is not." This year, the party's setting at the Museum of Sex provided a more than apt environment for play and disguise, with plenty of room for all the Andy Warhols and Yayoi Kusamas to gallavant alongside the Rhino Booleans and other missing, absent and broken sequences. But, as always, the question that remains after the candy showers is: who did it best? Scroll through the candidates, click any thumbnail for a closer look, and select an option from the survey below. Then, click “Done” to cast your vote for the “People’s Choice” costume! Voting runs until Friday, November 10th, 11:59 pm EST. (All images are courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture; they appear in the chronological order that guests registered.)

At The Architect’s Newspaper, we’re plain addicted to Instagram. Sure, we love seeing Brutalist concrete through “Inkwell” or “Ludwig” filters, but there’s also no better place to see where architects are getting their inspiration, how they’re documenting the built environment, and where they’ve traveled of late. Below, we bring you some of the best Instagrams of this past week! (Also, don’t forget to check out our Instagram account here.) It was a busy weekend in New York. In Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Saturday morning, the New Museum's latest iteration of IdeasCity kicked off with a host of temporary wooden structures hosting keynotes by speakers like Trevor Paglen, who lectured on visual recognition technologies. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZG5fWFhG4W/?taken-by=ideascity Later, on Saturday night, Storefront for Art and Architecture opened their new exhibit Souvenirs: New York Icons. More than 59 artists, architects, and designers were asked to create souvenirs for each of the city's community districts. It was so crowded we had to escape through the Holl in the wall. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZTw_02nC1c/?taken-by=oma.eu Across the pond, OMA posted renderings of their designs for Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, clutch the pearls. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZQy_0sHBIt/?taken-by=3xn_gxn Danish firm 3XN demonstrated how their new children's hospital design was inspired by the movement of two hands opening. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZTYEh-AjFr/?taken-by=ekeneijeoma Artist Ekene Ijeoma announced he had created a new sculpture focusing on New York's immigrant community while reposting another sculpture we wrote about a while back that mapped out where low-wage workers can afford the rent, essentially forming islands of affordability. Still very relevant. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZNkVlflw7v/?taken-by=adjaye_visual_sketchbook We don't have favorites, but our perennial fave Sir David Adjaye has the best feed of all. He recently posted from the Aalto University in Finland—a beautiful little chapel by Hiekki and Kaija Siren from 1957. Take that, Louisiana Museum (1958). https://www.instagram.com/p/BZOy-16HlJf/?taken-by=exhibitcolumbus Jetting seamlessly back to rural Indiana, Exhibit Columbus highlighted a contemporary wigwam made of copper scales by Chris Cornelius of studio:indigenous. That's it for today, hashtag archilovers and quote-on-quote gallerinas. See you next week for more drama.

On Saturday, September 23, Storefront for Art and Architecture will launch the New York Architecture Book Fair with a day-long conference, Architecture Books / Yet to be Written / 1982-2017-2052. The event will ask architects to think about the past and future of architectural publication, enlisting critical voices in the field, including: Diana Agrest, Stan Allen, Amale Andraos, Harry Cobb, Beatriz Colomina, Reinier de Graaf, Peggy Deamer, Elizabeth Diller, Steven Holl, Sanford Kwinter, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne, Enrique Norten, Toshiko Mori, Joan Ockman, Spyridon Papapetros, Brett Steele, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Rafael Viñoly, Mark Wigley, James Wines, and others. This conference is presented in partnership with The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. Each participant has been asked to present a book published in the past 35 years that they consider to be essential reading on contemporary architecture, as well as to imagine a publication for the future, a “book yet to be written.” Due to the waning number of architecture bookstores across New York, this Storefront event and attendant book fair intends to fill the gap for enthusiasts of architecture and urban speculation in print. At the conference, Storefront will also present BOOKS-NOW, a selection of signed architecture books published over the last year at a discounted rate. The New York Architecture Book Fair will open in June 2018 at Storefront's gallery space as well as at bookstores and homes across New York. Architecture Books / Yet to be Written / 1982-2017-2052 Time: Saturday, September 23 1:00 – 6:00 p.m. Location: The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 30 Cooper Square RSVP here for the event.

For their annual Spring Benefit, Storefront for Art and Architecture has commissioned a series of limited edition "artifacts" that they will have available for purchase on May 23rd at Federal Hall in Manhattan. It is the first in a series of planned collaborations. Artist Adam McEwan, design aficionado Murray Moss, and architects LOT-EK were the first group to design for the program. See the artifacts below, and get your tickets to the benefit here. Adam McEwan's  L-Ruler From the artist: "L-ruler is an edition consisting of a representation of a 12-inch L-ruler machined in graphite, a signature material of McEwen's practice. The ruler exists at the intersection of drawing, art, and architecture. The context of Storefront's role and position, grounded in architecture and experimentation, suggests the right angle of an L-ruler, as opposed to a plain straight edge. In theory, the edition is a technically accurate ruler and could be used as such. But, the soft materiality of graphite and its willingness to roll off of itself means that with use, the ruler would soon grow distorted—dented, imperceptibly curved, worn down, made out-of-true—rendering it increasingly unreliable, deceptive, and ultimately useless." LO-TEK'S LITE-SCAPES SF From the artist: "LITE-SCAPES SF is an edition of lighting fixtures. One liter of clear colorized latex rubber is cast and threaded through with a 20" tube of LED flexible neon. The topology of each fixture derives from the packaging insert that mediates between an electric toothbrush and its shipping box. These inserts are transferred mold castings of fibrous recycled paper slurry, sprayed from a pulp pool against a metal mesh mold, to which it is adhered by a vacuum. "This recycling of recycling, a casting of a casting, represents LOT-EK's interest in upstream/downstream vectors of material culture, and in the radically adaptive reuse or upcycling of our manufactured second nature. Castings of latex, a material beloved by both epidemiologists and fetishists, have some of the resilience and warmth of flesh." Murray Moss + Lobmeyr's Marilyn From the artist: "Marilyn is a boxed set of four crystal water/wine tumblers produced by the renowned Viennese crystal maker Lobmeyr, established 1823. Each glass in the set is hand engraved by Lobmeyr's master engraver with a different pattern of a 'crack.'" "These faux fractures illustrate the extreme fragility of the glass—they are the thinnest possible barrier between the liquid and our lips. Lobmeyr's "muslin" glasses are so thin that they have the ability to modify our behavior when using them, requiring us to be more delicate in order to avoid the very "cracks" which are in this case celebrated on each glass. "Far from rendering the objects damaged, these engraved flaws make the objects even more precious, much like a beauty mark. Marilyn gracefully demonstrates our fears and trepidation concerning vulnerability. Any fear of damage is pre-empted; the crack is an embellishment that becomes the decoration. 'Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.' -Marilyn Monroe"

As an architect or urban designer, how do you represent "smart city" technology? Something that deals with environmental conditions, government bureaucracies, and endless data streams as well as public space, human movement, and architecture? Governments and businesses are rushing to develop and implement these technologies, making this a pressing challenge for any designer seeking to represent contemporary cities. Control Syntax Rio at the Storefront for Art and Architecture offers its own evocative approach by avoiding the all-too-familiar format of wall-mounted photos, diagrams, and timelines. Instead, Control Syntax Rio uses an enormous streetscape model whose detailed tableaus—animated by sound effects, film, and vibrations—immerse visitors in a complex and unique piece of smart city command-and-control infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro. Control Syntax Rio was designed and curated by two Columbia GSAPP faculty members: Farzin Lotfi-Jam, principal at multidisciplinary studio farzinfarzin, and Mark Wasiuta, co-director of the GSAPP's CCCP program. The pair were tasked with creating an exhibition on Rio de Janerio's Centro de Operações Rio (The Center of Operations Rio, abbreviated to "COR") by the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The institute had been organizing a series of exhibits and events around the theme of the Olympics and the COR was developed to prepare Rio de Janeiro for hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic games. As Wasiuta told The Architect's Newspaper (AN), the city's "topography, infrastructure, population distribution, disparities between the formalized and informalized parts" make it difficult to manage. "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) wanted Rio to develop something like the center of operations, in order to demonstrate... that they were capable of managing the metabolism of the city." At the heart of the COR are a series of "if, then" statements—an algorithm that originated from IBM—that govern how the city responds to escalating levels of crises. The system first detects and categorizes a disruption (which range from quotidian "incident" and "event" to "emergency" and "crisis") then coordinates a response. Along this spectrum falls everything from traffic jams and peaceful gatherings to police actions, earthquakes, and landslides. Complicating Farzin and Wasiuta's task was that this system isn't hidden from the public eye: in addition to serving as a management device, the COR is a public relations tool aimed at Rio's residents and the IOC. The COR is how this smart city "sees itself, how it portrays that image of ongoing information extraction and control, how it portrays that image back to its residents and an international audience.... A representation producing device and mechanism for the city," said Wasiuta. Farzin and Wasiuta grappled with how to represent the COR in its dual functions. To tackle both challenges, Farzin said they created two intertwined "paths" to follow in the exhibition's model. One is physical: a single street leads the visitor through a series of events, emergencies, etc., that are frozen in time. Placed at eye-level (some may have to go on their tippy-toes), the model immerses you in each scene. Opposite the model is twenty monitors that depict the second "path," the algorithm itself. Half the monitors show a live feed streamed by small surveillance cameras trained on the model.

At @storefrontnyc for the preview of "Control Syntax Rio," a new exhibit on Rio de Janeiro's smart city control center. Review coming tmrw! pic.twitter.com/hN6CTOPjlI

— Zachary Edelson (@ZacharyEdelson) March 27, 2017

The other ten monitors display a pre-recorded film of the model that moves from tableau to tableau. The film is supplemented by a monotone computer voice that narrates the COR algorithm at work: which sensors detected the event, current environmental conditions, the nature of the event, the coordinated response, etc. "We forced ourselves to put these multiple fragments and inputs into a singular whole... a continuous narrative" that depicts this "emerging computational urbanism," said Farzin. You feel almost as though you're the algorithm itself: hearing your own thought processes as your cameras—not penetrating beyond facades and hardtop—scan the streetscape. Meanwhile, it also feels like a performance: faced with scenes of perpetual crises, the COR is always there to respond. "We don't really want it to read like a model," Farzin added. "It's not such much a model as it is a movement path, a decision path through the city, and it's a film set. We wanted it to read that way more than an object." The end result is a fascinating depiction of the COR and how the COR depicts itself, all rolled into one. Thankfully, the exhibition is not a fetishistic enterprise of documenting the actual COR in all its high-tech, "situation room" glory. Instead, it takes us inside how the COR thinks and evokes how it would like to be seen—methodical, calm, and efficient in reacting to disruption. (It did make me wonder, however: What happens when technology enables cities to be proactive, even aggressive, in preventing disaster? When algorithms and controls shape how we use the cities, subtly or otherwise, to either prevent disasters or increase efficiencies?) Ultimately, the definition and practice of "smart cities" are still up in the air. Farzin and Wasiuta are currently looking at a project in South Korea that's built from the ground-up with smart city tech; it's a very different exercise as compared to retrofitting an old city like Rio de Janeiro. But faced with this specific urban condition in Rio de Janeiro, one where narrative and self-representation are critical, the pair eschewed a standard exhibition format. "We made a conscious decision not to be didactic or documentary in the sense that one might be," said Wasiuta. "Which isn't to say those projects can be amazing. But it was a conscious experiment to position the research within that space of representation and ask, 'What's still legible within that?'" Control Syntax Rio runs from March 28th to May 20th, 2017 at the Storefront for Art and Architecture (97 Kenmare St, New York, NY). It was originally commissioned by the Rotterdam-based organization Het Nieuwe Instituut, where it was on view from June 2016 to January 2017.  

Storefront for Art and Architecture, along with Preeti Sriratana of MN Architects, yesterday announced a one-year Program and Strategy Fellowship that will build to a new project, Architecture Conflicts, which seeks to explore the role of design and architecture in addressing global inequalities and conflicts. "At a time when national and global political trends threaten the stability of our cities and communities, how can architecture serve as a driver of change around the world? The Architecture Conflicts project, along with this fellowship, seeks to create understandings of (and opportunities for) places and people who have been absent from historical and contemporary structures of power,” states a letter by Eva Franch i Gilabert of Storefront for Art and Architecture and Preeti Sriratana of MN Architects. The project and the fellowship aims to provide a way for researchers and aspiring professionals from underrepresented backgrounds and communities to contribute to the resolution of global conflict through design. Candidates from those backgrounds will have the opportunity to work with a team from Storefront for Art and Architecture, to investigate the ways art, architecture, and design aid in the solution of local and global struggles. Strorefront’s curatorial team and its administrative and strategic development staff will mentor the fellow. To receive the chance to be part of this team working for global change, applicants must meet various requirements including a Master’s Degree in Architecture, Design, Urban Planning or other affiliated fields along with a proven record of excellence in research and curatorial methods, and excellent ability to use Adobe Creative Suite. The candidate who receives the fellowship and begins the Architecture Conflicts project will be responsible for curation and research, project management, and development and communications. If interested in applying, email a PDF document (maximum 5 MB) with a cover letter, resume, writing samples, and past design work to apply[at]storefrontnews.org, with the subject line “Program and Strategy Fellow.” More information about the program, including application criteria can be found here. Storefront works toward the advancement of contributions to the design of cities, territories, and public life, providing platforms for discussion about issues such as homelessness, gender identity, and public housing. The organization looks at global movements like the Gulf War and the Occupy Wall Street movement from a design perspective. The Architecture Conflicts, Program and Strategy Fellowship is also the beginning of a global biennial event, World Wide Storefront. World Wide Storefront will be a new platform to further these endeavors, exposing global conflicts, and create an understanding of how art and architecture can be used as tools for resolution.

It seems only fitting that on this November 8, The Architect's Newspaper and the Storefront for Art and Architecture have our own election results to announce. From October 31st to November 7th, we asked you to pick the best costume from this year's Storefront for Art and Architecture Critical Halloween party. Storefront had asked attendees to critique old ideas of excess in art, architecture, and design, reimagining what luxury means in the process. Hosted within the ornate United Palace, the party offered up an excess of excellent costumes: a shimmering Frank Gehry-inspired dress (complete with headgear), money guarded by LLCs, and even a riff on artist Yayoi Kusama and her polka dot pumpkins. We're pleased to announce this year's winner: "The Duck and the Decorated Shed" by Katherina, Katie, and Betty. Thanks for voting! And we hope to see you at next year's party.

As a gold toilet-owning billionaire vies for the Presidency, a development corporation builds its own $150 million sculpture at Hudson Yards, and a $1.25 billion man-made pleasure island rises off China, the theme of this year's Storefront for Art and Architecture Critical Halloween party—Luxury—couldn't be more on the money. Storefront asked attendees to critique old ideas of excess in art, architecture, and design, reimagining what luxury means in the process. Hosted within the ornate United Palace, the party offered up an excess of excellent costumes: a shimmering Frank Gehry-inspired dress (complete with headgear), money guarded by LLCs, and even a riff on artist Yayoi Kusama and her polka dot pumpkins. Who did it best? Scroll through the candidates, click any thumbnail for a closer look, and select an option from the survey below. Then, click "Done" to cast your vote for the “People’s Choice” costume! Voting runs until Monday, November 7th, 11:59 pm EDT. (All images are courtesy Storefront and photographer Yuko Torihara; they appear in the chronological order that guests registered.) This survey has concluded, stay tuned for results!

It is almost time for the annual Storefront for Art and Architecture spring benefit and auction. This year’s event is taking place at the Eero Saarinen*-designed Trans World (TWA) Flight Center, soon to close this year, and slated to reopen as a hotel in 2018. But first, to make sure you’re up to speed, a little bit about the Saarinen space at the JFK airport: a New York City landmark, the 1962 terminal head house has been closed since 2001, the same year American Airlines acquired Trans World Airlines (the original terminal airline). The Saarinen head house underwent a renovation, while portions of the surrounding terminal were demolished to make way for the Gensler-designed terminal that opened in 2008. The Storefront auction on May 8 will be the last public event in the terminal before redevelopment. The theme this year is BEYOND BORDERS, which the Storefront defines as: “In the space of the border, architecture intersects with dilemmas of flow, control, identity, and belonging. The scale of such dilemmas ranges from geopolitical to liminal. Borders, as lines of division between political, social, ecological, and moral issues, are subtle and ubiquitous protagonists in the poetics of daily life. They absorb the desires that exist on the margins of the legal and the possible”. In addition to the Denise Scott Brown photograph above, here is a sampling of the diverse pieces in the silent auction.       *For those on the west coast and want to check out an Eero Saarinen project, there is one in the Pacific Northwest. Saarinen designed an Oregon monastery library at Mount Angel Abbey in 1970. You can see a crossover between his light filled architecture and practical industrial design sensibilities carried through from the site placement down to the arrangement of study spaces.

The ubiquitous white box gallery is an attempt to construct a valueless neutral space that has become an internalized universal cliché that says “art.” The Storefront for Art and Architecture was designed by Steven Holl and Vito Acconci to be a space physically open to the city and the street that would fight back against to the usual sealed and closed world of the art gallery. But a new exhibition at The Storefront, titled Closed Worlds, takes on the architectural, design, and engineering of closed systems. It creates an exhibit that is itself a closed world of multiple closed worlds. One enters directly off the Kenmare Street sidewalk and enters a space that is expansive and claustrophobic at the same time. Its creator and curator Lydia Kallipoliti, along with an impressive research group that includes exhibit designer Natasha Jen from Pentagram, have created an exhibition that highlights 41 historical prototypes of closed worlds and weaves their integration into the reality of today’s daily life. In fact, despite the open façade of the Storefront, the exhibition is almost claustrophobic. Take, for example, the 1976 New Alchemy Institute's “Ark for Cape Cod.” Fearing an imminent ecological collapse and famine due to run away capitalism, the group designed an interior environment to support a small colony of people. Its design, once only seen in journals like the Whole Earth catalogue, can now be found in quiet, rural Northern California, Vermont, and the survivalist compounds in Eastern Oregon. The exhibition also features Some World Games, a virtual reality ecosystem by Farzin Farzin that serves as a contemporary 42nd prototype. The project was selected as the winner of Storefront’s Closed Worlds Competition. Closed Worlds is one of the most thoughtful and challenging exhibitions in recent memory of the Storefront and worth leaving the sidewalk. It closes on April 9.          

Besides the overcrowded L and the overabundance of Starbucks/Chase Banks, one of New York's favorite things to kvetch about is the rent: it's too damn high. Now, through Wage Island, an installation created by a New York–based interaction and information designer, it's possible to see in 3D how much housing really costs in this city. https://vimeo.com/138549946 Ekene Ijeoma's Wage Islands sprang from the designer's conversations with Fast Food Forward, a labor advocacy organization that's pushing for a higher minimum wage for fast food workers. Compelled by the group's commentary on how difficult it is for minimum wage workers to pay for housing, Ijeoma put his designer's training to work, correlating median monthly housing costs of each neighborhood with the amount one would have to earn to afford to live there. "This created a poetic way of creating empathy between minimum wage workers and citizens they serve; making the issue about everyone," Ijeoma mused. He collaborated with a team of six to execute the GIS modeling of New York City, design and build the model, and program the Arduino board that controls the islands' topography. Wage Islands was commissioned for Measure, the Storefront for Art and Architecture’s exhibition that ran from August 14 through September 19, 2015. The map's elevations are comprised of over 500 pieces of laser-cut acrylic. Elevations are derived from median monthly housing costs in different neighborhoods, with $271 on the low end and $4,001 at the top. The islands are situated in a tray filled with blue-black water. The user can adjust the amount of water in the box by scaling wages up from the city minimum of $8.75 per hour to a high of $77 per hour. The tallest peaks represent the most affordable neighborhoods; those who make at least $77 per hour have the luxury to choose Manhattan's tony Tribeca or Brooklyn's Brownsville, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Precision, and reflection on the real world factors that go into determining affordability, is scuttled in favor of highly evocative representation. New York is a renter's city: Less than a third of residents own their own homes. When asked what data was used to gauge median rents, Ijeoma explained that "this was more about looking at New York City together and not separating the different neighborhoods and people from the larger issue." He used the American Community Survey's (ACS) median monthly housing costs as a stand-in for median rents, although ACS data covers both housing costs incurred by homeowners and renters. 69 percent of New Yorkers rent, not own, so the choice to rely on this ACS dataset is unclear. The American Housing Survey, however, has fine-grained data on renters for major metro areas.)