With a mission to support, empower, and grow the city's design sector, New York's annual design festival, the NYCxDESIGN presented a selection of architectural installations, talks, and events to celebrate global creative accomplishments, share new ideas, and inspire through design. This year, the festival returned for its tenth edition, running from May 10th - 20th. Having been a special anniversary, this year showcased New York's creative diversity and talent, putting on display its designers, makers, manufacturers, innovative design businesses, as well as world-class cultural and academic design institutions.
The Festival has attracted thousands of national and international design enthusiasts each year to "celebrate creative accomplishments, share new ideas, and inspire through design". Visitors were able to explore the 100+ events hosted across five boroughs, ranging from design talks and exhibitions to tours and installations.
Read on to discover a selection of the architectural installations that were on display at the 10-day long event.
FILTER by CLB Architects
The installation is designed as both a monumental object and an temporary experience, reorienting the man-made and engineered atmosphere of the city towards a natural one. Inspired by the rugged Wyoming landscape FILTER invites visitors into flowing folds of weathered steel and timber. At its center, a single tree, which embodies the ecological cycles, serves as a contrast to Manhattan’s urbanity, creating a serene atmosphere within the dynamic energy of Times Square. The structure’s design concept began as a folded sheet of paper, carefully sliced to be able to stand on its own. Eric Logan, Partner at CLB, translated this exercise into full-scale structure through a series of standard-sized, half-inch hot-rolled steel plates, arranged to form a 24-foot diameter, 20-foot-tall ellipsoid. Each element of the structure was designed with attention to its sustainability, portability, and longevity, beyond the NYCxDesign festival; following the closure of the festival, the tree was donated to the New York City non-profit The Battery Conservancy, and the pavilion was disassembled and transported back to Wyoming to continue its life as a public sculpture at EMIT’s headquarters.
Floral Installation by Vitra x Lutfi Janania
Inspired by Vitra’s Flower Guide, which offers a resource of inspirations, tips, and examples of floral designs, the Swiss furniture company has partnered with floral artist Lutfi Janania to create a series of innovative, sculptural, organic floral installations using a selection of Vitra's products. The aim of the collaboration was to showcase how flora can create seasonal style and flare to the spaces we inhabit, as well as celebrate Vitra’s recently released Flower Guide and a new introduction to the Vase Découpage collection by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.
Uptown: The City of Light by Foscarini
The global lighting manufacturer presented a display of new lighting concepts in celebration of NYCxDESIGN at the Foscarini Spazio Soho, the brand’s flagship showroom. The installation featured two new products by Rodolfo Dordoni and Alberto+ Francesco Meda, along with Uptown: The City of Light, by artist, photographer and video maker Gianluca Vassallo and Francesco Mannironi, a photography project that illustrates Ferruccio Laviani’s Uptown Floor Lamp within the skyline of New York City in various locations. Uptown is a composition of three volumes made with plates of tempered, colored, and screen-printed glass, in yellow, red, and blue, super-imposed to create intense chromatic effects. The project is inserted at some of the most recognizable locations in the city: Greenpoint, Wall Street, Broadway, and Midtown, to name a few.
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