Sharing Models: Manhattanisms

15. July 2016

Models by, L-R: Archi-Tectonics, nARCHITECTS, SO-IL (All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects)

Sharing Models: Manhattanisms, a new exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, presents 30 visions for the city by 30 international architects.

Five artists have been invited to produce stencils for the Storefront's iconic facade. Curtis Kulig's "We Love We Share" occupies the facade for the first two weeks of the exhibition.

Storefront members, participating architects, and press squeezed into the Storefront's narrow space for a preview of the exhibition before its public opening last night.

Each architect was given an east-west strip of Manhattan to "establish analytical, conceptual, and physical frameworks for inhabiting and constructing urban space," per Storefront chief curator Eva Franch i Gilabert.

The varied models, all to the same scale, fit together like a 21st-century version of the Surrealist "Exquisite Corpse" game.

Asymptote Architecture's contribution, "Deep_Future Manhattan Sky_Lattice," envisions "a new type of 'citygrid' as an elevated and seemingly floating architecture set far above Manhattan's existing ground plane."

Archi-Tectonics' "UN_CRAMMING: Re-Visiting the Midtown Rezoning" proposes moving much of the bulk of Midtown between 34th and 42nd Streets toward the East River into new "hypercubes."

SITU Studio's "Section 581" is a resin model whose undulating surface above the skyline "represents the relative magnitude of difference between a [co-op or condominium building's] sale price and assessment value."

Not just models: each contribution is accompanied by a panel hung on the Storefront's north wall. L-R: Future Firm, The Open Workshop, June-14 Meyer-Grohbrügge & Chermayeff

Some wall panels are model-like, such as "Magnetic Fields" by Tatiano Bilbao Estudio + Rodolfo Díaz Cervantes.