Embedded Files
The South Street Seaport intervention in response to Hurricane Sandy, part of DESIGN/RELIEF, led to AIGA NY's occupation of a vacant storefront from June through December of 2015. The space, located at 192 Front Street, sat opposite Imagination Playground on a part of Front Street reserved for pedestrians only. The space, along with the exhibitions and programming that it contained, were part of a larger Seaport Cultural District project curated by James Sanders and sponsored by the area's largest developer, Howard Hughes Corporation. The giant real estate behemoth sought to raise the profile of the area prior to the opening of Pier 17, a 1.5 billion investment.
The South Street Seaport intervention in response to Hurricane Sandy, part of DESIGN/RELIEF, led to AIGA NY's occupation of a vacant storefront from June through December of 2015. The space, located at 192 Front Street, sat opposite Imagination Playground on a part of Front Street reserved for pedestrians only. The space, along with the exhibitions and programming that it contained, were part of a larger Seaport Cultural District project curated by James Sanders and sponsored by the area's largest developer, Howard Hughes Corporation. The giant real estate behemoth sought to raise the profile of the area prior to the opening of Pier 17, a 1.5 billion investment.
The Culture District was just as much a sign of the times in the mid-2010s as flophouses for longshoremen would have been a hundred years prior. While the real estate industry has always been one of New York's prime movers, economic and civic forces after 9/11 brought a new era where developers were visibly curating whole waterfront neighborhoods rather than smaller, contained building complexes. DUMBO was the first proof of concept, where the developer Two Trees almost single-handedly designed the neighborhood, building by building. The Hudson Yards redevelopment, Related's project ten years in the making, was just starting to become more visible by 2014.
Also in 2014, AIGA NY's parent organization, AIGA, sold their building at 164 5th Avenue to another developer, Thor Equities, for $23 million. This controversial move meant that AIGA no longer had a physical presence in the city. Since 1994, it had used the building as its main offices, but also hosted touring exhibitions on the ground level. AIGA NY had little to no oversight over these exhibitions, however, and rarely used the building for anything other than monthly board meetings. The seaport space presented itself as a way of prototyping a new kind of presence and engagement in the city.
Engagement
Howard Hughes approached AIGA NY requesting a proposal in Fall 2014, broadly outlining that they were looking for a year-long activation of Cannon's Walk. AIGA NY prepared an initial proposal asking for $250K. This was revised to focus on three exhibits, one creative placemaking project, and one projecting mapping project, and over the next few months Howard Hughes Corporation began to articulate a vision of a "district" with several creative disciplines participating, including architecture, art, and film. A revised proposal was prepared in February, with some back and forth about included services. AIGA NY and James Sanders Associates, the firm overseeing the Culture District project, finally settled on a shorter engagement, two exhibitions, and associated programming. A contract was signed on May 15, 2015 for $100K and occupancy of the space, and on May 28, James Sanders Associates convened a partner summit to kick off the district.
Concept
From beginning to end AIGA NY's occupancy of the space was driven by the desire to present a new vision for how design and designers engage with the city itself. New York is by several factors the largest market for design in the country, and designers make up one of its largest creative communities, with over 40,000 practitioners calling themselves graphic designers. The intent of the first exhibit, "Looking, Thinking, Making," was to give a view into what it means to practice as a designer in New York City. The second exhibit, "Making the City," functioned more as a showcase of urban design interventions that reshaped the city itself. "Looking, Thinking, Making" also reserved a part of the gallery to be curated and programmed by invited design studios. Both ultimately focused on process, since so many of the misconceptions about design arise from having contact only with the products of design themselves, such as advertisements, publications, and websites, and very little understanding of how or why decisions are made. While these exhibitions had static imagery and text as their content, the storefront space also presented the opportunity to exhibit designers themselves. The 40+ events and programs in the space attracted very different cross-sections of the practice, due to the small and focused nature of each gathering. Wrapped around the enterprise as a whole, the relationship with the developer loomed, a condition that AIGA NY felt a need to address. When planning the second exhibition, projects and panels were curated to include efforts that deliberately sought to resist (or ameliorate the effects of) gentrification and privatization.
Layered on top of this relationship with the city was the relationship to the parent organization, and AIGA NY's history. Like many cultural non-profits, AIGA NY suffers from a double bind, where the organization gets most of its recognition and most of its criticism for celebrating industry "heroes." And like many cultural non-profits, AIGA NY also makes a significant portion of its income by selling access at scale, mostly in the form of tickets for large events held in borrowed space. The seaport space, because it did not require advance reservation, presented an opportunity to deliver programming and engagement that didn't require ticket sales, and that didn't need to draw large audiences.
Execution
Contract negotiation took several months, pushing forward both construction in the space as well as exhibition design and programming. After the contract signing, AIGA NY retained an architect to reconfigure the space and build risers for seating so that the space could serve both exhibition and programming functions, and sought to hire both an assistant director of exhibitions as well as a gallery docent. The first exhibition, Looking, Thinking, Making, was pulled together in the space of a few weeks. AIGA NY invited five New York City-based studios—MTWTF, Ming, Nothing in Common, Doubleday & Cartwright, and MTV—to demonstrate their design process. For each, the permanent part of the exhibition was printed on a plotter and scrolled out across the ceiling, wall, and floor in the space; in addition, each was asked to occupy a space in the rear of the gallery for a period of time.
Looking, Thinking, Making in the City opening events.
The second exhibition, Making the City, benefited from the lead time required for gathering work from several agencies, partnerships, and studios that demonstrated how designers could actively engage in transforming the civic environment. The exhibition responded to the conditions of the time, where Bill de Blasio had just been elected Mayor on a platform that took aim at the growing inequality in New York fueled by real estate interests. It also sought to correct a view that the only way designers could demonstrate civic responsibility was through public service announcements and advertising. Most of the projects were selected because they showed how designers could design with, rather than for, the communities that they sought to make better. The board felt it was necessary, too, to respond to the condition of being in the space to begin with, a situation echoed across the city where many art and design organizations would come to rely on the marketing budgets of large-scale developers to secure needed (and often transient) space.
The exhibitions served as a kind of backdrop for dozens of small events in the space. Looking, Thinking, Making was accompanied by events programmed by the exhibit participants, while Making the City was anchored by three panels programmed by Beverly Liang. She brought people from government, the real estate industry, and community boards to discuss design's intersection with citizenship and finance, people who were not often found in the same room together in public. The existence of the space, as well as its small scale, also allowed the organization to experiment with member-led programming, as well as smaller educational series and one-off events hosted by board members.
Making the City exhibition. In the opening image at bottom right are David Heasty, Manuel Miranda, Juliette Cezzar, Laetitia Wolff, and James Sanders.
Credits
Credits
AIGA NY Annex
Creative and space direction: Alicia Cheng
Architect: Greg Yang
Assistant director of exhibitions, AIGA/NY: Ansley Whipple
Gallery docent and photographer: Candace Camuglia
Exhibition: Making the City
Exhibition committee: Juliette Cezzar, David Frisco, Sarah Lidgus, Manuel Miranda
Exhibition design: IntraCollaborative / Chantal Fischzang, David Frisco
Exhibition programming: Beverly Liang
Director of operations, AIGA NY: Stacey Panousoupolis
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