Get listed in Dezeen’s digital guide to 3 Days of Design 2024
CategoriesArchitecture

Get listed in Dezeen’s digital guide to 3 Days of Design 2024

If you’re hosting an exhibition or event during 3 Days of Design, you can feature in Dezeen Events Guide’s digital guide to the Danish festival.

Taking place in Copenhagen from 12 to 14 June 2024, the festival includes a programme of exhibitions, product launches, open showrooms, talks and other events.

This year, the 11th iteration of the festival focuses on the theme Dare to Dream and presents furniture, accessories, textiles, surfaces, workplace design, outdoor products and material innovations.

Dezeen’s digital guide will spotlight the key events and brands taking place across the festival’s 13 design districts.

Get listed in Dezeen’s digital guide to 3 Days of Design

Get in touch with the Dezeen Events Guide team at [email protected] to book your listing or to discuss a wider partnership with Dezeen.

There are three types of listings:

Standard listings cost £100 and include the event name, date and location details plus a website link. These listings will also feature up to 50 words of text about the event.

Enhanced listings cost £175 and include all of the above plus an image at the top of the listing’s page and an image in the listing preview on the Dezeen Events Guide homepage. These listings will also feature up to 100 words of text about the event.

Featured listings cost £350 and include all elements of an enhanced listing plus a post on Dezeen’s Threads channel, inclusion in the featured events carousel on the right hand of the homepage for up to two weeks and 150 words of text about the event. This text can include commercial information such as ticket prices and offers and can feature additional links to website pages such as ticket sales, newsletter signups etc.

For more information about partnering with us to help amplify your event, contact the team at [email protected].

About Dezeen Events Guide

Dezeen Events Guide is our guide to the best architecture and design events taking place across the world each year.

The guide is updated weekly and includes virtual events, conferences, trade fairs, major exhibitions and design weeks.

For more details on inclusion in Dezeen Events Guide, including in our guide to 3 Days of Design, email [email protected].

The illustration is by Justyna Green.

Reference

Five days left to book early-bird tickets to Dezeen Awards 2023 party
CategoriesInterior Design

Five days left to book early-bird tickets to Dezeen Awards 2023 party

There are just five days left to save on tickets for the Dezeen Awards 2023 party. Book now to secure your place at our reduced early-bird rate and see this year’s winners announced.

Early-bird tickets will be on sale until 23:59 London time on 31 October 2023. Save 20 per cent and book your ticket for the special early-bird price of £145 (excluding VAT) if you order before 23:59 on 31 October 2023.

You can also save a further 10 per cent if you book a package of 10 tickets or more.

Buy your early-bird tickets now!

Taking place at Shoreditch Electric Light Station in London on 28 November, we will celebrate the winners of Dezeen Awards 2023 with food, drink, live entertainment and music throughout the night.

The winners of all 39 Dezeen Awards project categories will be revealed, as well the overall architecture, interiors, design and sustainability projects of the year.

We will also be announcing the six Designers of the Year and revealing the winner of the inaugural Bentley Lighthouse Award.

Stay at One Hundred Shoreditch

If you are travelling to London for Dezeen Awards 2023 you can save further on your stay with our hotel partner, One Hundred Shoreditch. Located just under a 10 minute walk away from the venue in the heart of Shoreditch, it is the ideal spot for your stay in London.

Use the code Dezeen23 as a “rate access/corporate code” when booking to save an extra 20 per cent off the best available price.

Book your Dezeen Awards 2023 party ticket now via Eventbrite: dezeenawards2023.eventbrite.co.uk

Email [email protected] if you have any questions. Sign up to our Dezeen Awards newsletter to get updates on the winners party and future editions of Dezeen Awards.

Reference

&Tradition unveils apartment in 3 Days of Design exhibition
CategoriesInterior Design

&Tradition unveils apartment in 3 Days of Design exhibition

Danish furniture brand &Tradition has opened the doors to a four-storey showroom in Copenhagen, featuring a complete apartment and rooms designed by Jaime Hayon and Space Copenhagen.

Unveiled during 3 Days of Design in an exhibition titled Under One Roof, &Tradition‘s design team has transformed the interior of an 18th-century townhouse on 4 Kronprinsessegade.

Living room and office in The Apartment in Under One Roof by &Tradition
The Apartment takes over the top floor of the townhouse

The top floor has become The Apartment, an entire home interior that is described by Els Van Hoorebeeck, creative and brand director for &Tradition, as “the cherry on the cake”.

Despite being completely kitted out in the brand’s products, it was designed to have the feel of a lived-in space rather than a showroom.

The Apartment in Under One Roof by &Tradition
Designed by &Tradition’s in-house team, the spaces combine classic and contemporary

“When you enter, you feel this balance between colours and neutrals, between wood tones and glass or metal, and between classic and contemporary designs,” Van Hoorebeeck told Dezeen.

“There’s a lot of product in there, but you don’t notice it,” she said.

Bedroom for The Apartment in Under One Roof by &Tradition
The bedroom showcases a quilted bedspread by Swedish-Danish duo All the Way to Paris

Spanish designer Hayon has created two rooms on the first floor, which give an insight into the creative process behind products he has developed for &Tradition.

The first, called Cabinet of Curiosities, features a glass display case filled with objects and drawings, revealing the forms and images that inspire Hayon’s designs.

Jaime Hayon's Cabinet of Curiosities in Under One Roof by &Tradition
Jaime Hayon has created a room called Cabinet of Curiosities

The second presents new works by Hayon – including the Momento vessels and a limited edition of his Formakami pendant lamp – in a scenography framed by large silhouette characters. This room is called Teatro Surreal.

“We felt it was important to show the world that his products come out of,” said Van Hoorebeeck.

Jaime Hayon's Teatro Surreal in Under One Roof by &Tradition
Jaime Hayon’s Teatro Surreal creates a scenography for his new products

The two rooms by Danish interiors studio Space Copenhagen can be found on the second floor.

These spaces include a studio and, building on the studio’s experience in hotel and restaurant design, a dining room. Here, shades of green and brown combine with fresh herbs and plants to bring a sense of nature.

New products are peppered throughout these two rooms.

They include the Trace storage cabinets, which are filled with kitchen utensils and tableware, and the Collect rugs.

Space Copenhagen's dining room in Under One Roof by &Tradition
Space Copenhagen has created a dining room in shades of green and brown

Founded in 2010 by Martin Kornbek Hansen, &Tradition combines contemporary and classic design in its collections.

The brand has been based at 4 Kronprinsessegade since 2018, but the building primarily served as a headquarters, with offices located on the upper levels.

Verner Panton Lounge in Under One Roof by &Tradition
Verner Panton’s Flowerpot lamps feature in several rooms

The company has now moved its offices to another nearby location, which made it possible to open the entire townhouse up to the public for the first time during 3 Days of Design.

Other spaces revealed in Under One Roof include the Verner Panton Lounge, which is dedicated to mid-century pieces by the late Danish designer such as the 1968 Flowerpot lamps.

Archive in Under One Roof by &Tradition
An archive room is filled with original drawings and vintage samples

There are also rooms designed to appeal to the senses. These include the Listening Lounge, a relaxed space filled with music, and Mnemonic, which centres around a range of scents.

Other key spaces include a “workshop” showcasing the possibilities of the modular workspace furniture, an archive filled with original drawings and vintage samples, a cafe and a shop.

Shop in Under One Roof by &Tradition
A cafe and shop are located on the ground floor

Van Hoorebeeck hopes the spaces will help tell the stories behind the products.

“What we wanted to do here is to create a whole universe,” she said. “Every room is based on showing a different atmosphere between contemporary and classic designs.”

“Now the layout of the house is set and every year we’ll just adapt it,” she added.

The photography is courtesy of &Tradition.

3 Days of Design took place in venues around Copenhagen from 7 to 9 June 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for information, plus a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.

Reference

Christian + Jade explores the Weight of Wood at 3 Days of Design
CategoriesInterior Design

Christian + Jade explores the Weight of Wood at 3 Days of Design

Danish design studio Christian + Jade has created an exhibition in collaboration with wood flooring manufacturer Dinesen that explores the density of wood and its significance and history as a commodity.

The Weight of Wood exhibition, which takes place at the Dinesen showroom as part of Copenhagen festival 3 Days of Design, was the result of a year-long research project commissioned by the brand’s recently founded Dinesen Lab.

Photo of Weight of Wood exhibition
Weight of Wood is an exhibition by Christian + Jade

Dinesen Lab invited Christian Hammer Juhl and Jade Chan, founders of Christian + Jade, to take part in a residency in which local artists were asked to work with wood harvested by the company to produce a research project and explore the weight of wood.

The Weight of Wood installation is located within a large exhibition space at the brand’s showroom in Copenhagen. This was divided into a series of smaller rooms via sheets of textured paper hung vertically from a wooden pavilion.

Photo of an installation at the Weight of Wood exhibition
It takes place at the Dinesen showroom

Each of the smaller rooms separates the exhibition into three different parts titled Forest and Wood, Wood and Wood, and Human and Wood.

Throughout the exhibition space, wooden tables hold a number of experiments and interventions completed by Christian + Jade using different types of wood that were harvested by Dinesen.

“We were fascinated by the idea that no two pieces of wood weigh the same, not even if it comes from the same tree trunk,” the studio explained at a preview of the exhibition. “This was really what sparked our interest in this project.”

Photo of Weight of Wood
The exhibition explores the ways in which wood has been commodified

“Through this exhibition, we have tried to work with this idea in various scales,” the studio founders added. “It sort of presents a design methodology, combining different pieces of wood with different densities.”

“What we have created is not only a series of furniture but also a rocking horse, a rocking chair and lots of small experiments that visualise this intangible quality of wood, which is the weight of wood.”

A collection of different-sized cubic wooden volumes were presented in the exhibition, made from 11 different species of wood including beech, cherry, Douglas fir and elm. Each of the pieces of wood weighs 250 grams and conveys the different densities of wood through volume and size.

A seesaw placed at the rear of the exhibition space featured a base made from Douglas fir and topped by a seat constructed from equal parts Douglas fir and oak. As a result of oak having a higher density than Douglas fir, the seesaw will always lean towards its oak-constructed side.

Photo of a wooden scale at Weight of Wood exhibition
The designers used Dinesen’s wood for their experiments

“We chose three different furniture archetypes that require weight and balance in their function – the seesaw, the rocking chair and the rocking horse,” Chan said.

“So in designing or reimagining the furniture, we’ve worked with four of Dinesen’s main wood species; that is Douglas fir, oak, pine and ash.”

Photo of the exhibition
The exhibition was divided into three parts

“The seesaw is an example of one of the simple principles that we apply – the pivot point is made using Douglas and the seat is made using oak and Douglas,” Chan added.

The rocking horse was constructed from 87 per cent Douglas fir and 13 per cent ash. Because of its Douglas fir-heavy construction, the horse always tilts towards one side, which provides it with a unique movement.

Photo of the exhibition
The exhibition included a rocking horse, seesaw and rocking chair

Chan concluded the preview of the Weight of Wood exhibition with a poem by H P Dinesen, a relative of the company founders:

“To those who love the tree, those who may be fighting the tree, the one who plants the tree, the one who fells the tree, the poet who praises the tree, and the one who simply settles with enjoying the tree.”

Also at this year’s 3 Days of Design, Nemo Lighting unveiled a light designed by architect Le Corbusier and a lamp by architect Charlotte Perriand and Takt launched a fully disassemblable sofa that can be replaced and recycled.

The photography is by Claus Troelsgaard.

Weight of Wood is on show as part of 3 Days of Design 2023, from 7 June to 9 June 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the event, plus a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.

Reference

Cold Climate Heat Pumps Warm Homes on the Coldest Days
CategoriesSustainable News Zero Energy Homes

Cold Climate Heat Pumps Warm Homes on the Coldest Days

In the US, about 13% of total CO2 emissions come from heating residential and commercial buildings. Because so many buildings rely on natural gas and heating oil, significant opportunity for reducing heating emissions lies with electric heat pumps. Heat pumps have been popular in the South for decades, but there are a lot of questions about how well they work in colder climates.

“A huge portion of our global emissions come from heating buildings,” says Brian Stewart, co-founder of Electrify Now, a volunteer organization devoted to electrification. “Since our homes are a big part of that, it’s important for us to understand the options we have for zero-carbon heating.”

Recently, researchers from the University of California, Davis did the math on switching from a gas furnace to an electric heat pump. Even with the mix of fuels that currently powers the electrical grid, a heat pump will produce far fewer emissions than a gas furnace, no matter where in the US you live. As the grid gets cleaner, the difference between electric and gas heating emissions will only continue to grow.

“We know that electrification works from a decarbonization standpoint, and we know that these heat pumps work in many situations,” says Stewart. “But we still have so many people wondering: Will heat pumps work in cold temperatures?”

Heat pumps, not just for warm climates

“With a standard heat pump, you start to lose efficiency as temperatures dip below 40°F,” explained Shawn LeMons, Performance Construction Manager for Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US. “So, the system needs more electric power to extract heat from colder air.”

That’s where cold climate heat pumps come in.

Also known as high-efficiency heat pumps, these high-tech systems are specially designed to operate at a higher heating capacity in lower temperatures. “Cold climate heat pumps may look similar to standard heat pumps, but their internal technology and computer programming are far more advanced,” LeMons added. “They’re specifically built to function at subzero temperatures, all while operating as efficiently as possible.”

Location, location, location

Cold climate heat pumps are purpose-built for heating comfort and ease of use in inclement weather. You can use them in any “heating-dominated” region where HVAC systems spend most of the time heating instead of cooling. This includes climates with frequent snow and ice, as well as coastal climates with cold rain and fog. As long as your system is operating properly, it should be able to handle prolonged subzero temperatures, even at elevations thousands of feet above sea level, explained LeMons.

Households in milder temperature zones may also prefer a cold climate heat pump when the weather outside starts to get snowy or icy. You may not necessarily need a cold climate heat pump year-round, but having one will give you added benefits and comfort during the cold winter months.

Buying a cold climate heat pump

“Generally, because of the special features and programming, cold climate heat pumps can cost around 20% to 30% more than standard heat pumps,” said Jonathan Moscatello, Business Development Manager for Daikin North America. That’s because you’re paying for the system’s ability to pump heat in colder temperatures, and that’s where cold climate heat pumps shine.

“Compared to traditional heat pumps, they produce more heat per dollar spent, making them a better value in the long run,” said Moscatello. And that’s before you consider the potential tax incentives you’ll get when you make the switch!

Take note: Some manufacturers put all their premium technology into their cold climate models, so you’re also paying for features unrelated to the cold climate performance, Moscatello pointed out. So don’t be afraid to shop around for the best value.

What should you look for when picking out a cold climate heat pump? It depends on whom you ask. Start with the EnergyStar and Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) published standards for cold climate heat pumps. Most utility and government rebate programs also use these specifications.

“Manufacturers also have their own standards for what qualifies a heat pump for cold climate operation,” added Moscatello. “Examples of this include Mitsubishi’s Hyper-Heat line and Daikin’s Aurora line.”

Ratings and features to look for

LeMons and Moscatello recommend the following guidelines when shopping for a cold climate heat pump:

  1. Rated performance at 47°F.
  2. Maximum performance at 5°F.
  3. Capacity ratio at 5°F. This is the ratio of #1 and #2 above; the closer this number is to 100%, the better it can handle very low temperatures.
  4. Coefficient of performance at 5°F You want this number to be below 2. The lower the number, the better the system’s heat efficiency.
  5. Published performance at very cold temperatures, such as -13°F, -15°F, or -22°F. Keep in mind that these numbers give an idea of how the heat pump will perform on the coldest days. Many systems continue to work well at even lower temperatures.

Some typical features to look for:

  • Inverter compressors and advanced motors for greater energy efficiency
  • Advanced programming for cold climate operations, such as hot discharge air temperatures and “just right” airflow
  • Intelligent defrost cycles and drain pan de-icing
  • Optional wind baffles for an outdoor unit

At the end of the day, you’re buying a heating appliance, and you want to make sure it’s purpose-built for cold winter comfort. So, definitely read reviews and ask around before you buy!

Infographic showing advantages of heat pumps optimized for cold climates

The US Department of Energy’s Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge is working with manufacturers to develop next-generation electric heat pumps.

Busting heat pump myths

Myth #1: You need a backup system to handle the coldest winter temperatures.

“Dual fuel is a legitimate path, but it’s not really necessary with a cold climate heat pump,” explained Stewart. Sure, standard heat pumps may need an alternate heating source like a furnace or boiler to take over when temperatures drop below freezing. Cold climate heat pumps, on the other hand, are equipped to handle the most frigid winters.

Laura Martel, Research and Evaluation Manager for Efficiency Maine offered an example of cold climate heat pump performance. “Caribou is a town in northeast Maine that’s IECC zone 7, the coldest climate zone in the United States. Homes in Caribou need their heaters for 6,444 of the 8,760 hours in a year.”

According to data from Efficiency Maine, it’s cheaper and more efficient to heat a home in Caribou with a cold climate heat pump than with a dual fuel system, natural gas, propane, or oil. While natural gas or propane systems may become more efficient when outdoor temperatures drop below 0°F, that only accounts for around 500 total hours each year in Caribou. Therefore, natural gas is more efficient than heat pumps only 5% of the time. For propane, that number drops to 1%.

“When you look at annual operating costs for various systems, heat pumps save people between $1,000 and $3,000 or more per year. Even if you switch to natural gas or propane for the small fraction of time that they’re cheaper, you’d only save an additional $26 per year, max,” said Martel. So, even though cold climate heat pumps may cost around $2,500 more to install than boiler systems, the yearly cost savings can quickly add up to make up for that initial expense.

Myth #2: Turning down the heat at night saves energy.

“We’ve been told for decades that we should turn down our home heater systems when we’re sleeping to save energy. That works great for boilers and furnaces, but I wouldn’t recommend it with heat pumps,” says Martel.

While furnaces can quickly blast heat into your home, heat pumps take longer to raise the temperature. When you turn your heat down at night, you reduce the rate of heat output of your system, temporarily lowering your energy usage. But when you turn it back up in the morning, your heat pump has to work extra hard to get the temperature back up. It doesn’t help that it’s usually colder in the early morning.

“Turning the heat down or off at night just isn’t as efficient as picking a comfortable temperature, setting it, and leaving it alone,” she said.

Still have questions?

If you’re interested in learning more about heat pumps, check out Electrify Now’s electrification fact sheet. You can also use this savings calculator from Rewiring America to estimate the tax incentives you’d receive from installing a heat pump in your home. Note that this article springs from Electrify Now’s cold climate heat pumps webinar, so check out their YouTube channel for more eco-friendly tips and technologies.

By Catherine Poslusny

Reference

David Hammons’s “Day’s End” is a Masterpiece
CategoriesArchitecture

David Hammons’s “Day’s End” is a Masterpiece

 Send us a photo. Tell us a story. Win $2,500! Architizer’s 3rd Annual One Photo Challenge is underway with an Early Entry Deadline on May 27, 2022! Start your entry for architecture’s biggest photography competition here. 

Not everyone is happy with Day’s End, David Hammons’s massive but easy-to-miss sculpture on New York’s West Side waterfront, which stands squarely across the street from the Whitney Museum of American Art. In a diplomatic yet skeptical piece in ArtReview, critic Evan Moffitt writes that the sculpture raises “uncomfortable questions” about the legacy of New York’s piers, which were once a clandestine meeting point for the city’s queer community, and are now home to jogging paths and wine bars for the one percent. 

The implication is that this sculpture, an 18 million dollar Whitney commission, is just the latest example of “gentrifier art.” This fact is particularly irksome to Moffitt because Day’s End is being sold as a memorial to an earlier, grittier incarnation of the city. The Whitney’s official press materials prominently mention the LGBTQ history of the long-since demolished Pier 52, which Hammons’s sculpture resurrects in ghostly outline. For Moffitt, there is a stark contradiction between the marginalized social history that the Whitney is claiming to venerate, and the role the museum has played in transforming the Meatpacking District into a gilded playground.

The sculpture at sunset. Photo by Elvert Barnes.

 “The new Day’s End… is a product of immense physical and bureaucratic resources, a framework that is perfect and unchanging,” Moffitt writes, referring to the tremendous amount of legwork that went into ensuring that the sculpture’s slender beams could withstand the changing tides of the mighty Hudson. “This is less reflective of a flaw in Hammons’s design than of how impossible it is to incise a landscape so thoroughly policed and privatized.” 

This line of argument is taken further by Kathleen Langjhar in The Architect’s Newspaper, who writes that Hammons’s work “selectively engages” with history, and that much of the praise that greeted the sculpture’s 2021 opening, including from The New York Times, is rooted in “a general attitude that sees culture as an unmitigated good, a solvent for cleansing the wrongs of the past.” On this reading, Day’s End is not just another example of gentrification art, but a cunning attempt to disguise the violent process of displacement that gave rise to the sanitized Meatpacking District we know today. 

Like the sculpture itself, these critiques raise more questions than they answer. For one, what is Day’s End actually about? What is it claiming to memorialize, exactly, and on whose behalf? If the Whitney is discussing this work in a self-serving way – and of course they are – does this necessarily define what the work is in itself? 

There seems to be more going on here than meets the eye. For one thing, why did Hammons, who has spent almost six decades refusing to cooperate with major art institutions like the Whitney, suddenly make an exception in order to create this work? Given everything we know about Hammons, who has spent his career using the tactics of conceptual art to advocate for the Black community, it seems unlikely that he did it to advance the interests of art museums and property developers. And given the mercurial brilliance of his body of work, it is also hard to see him as a dupe. 

According to David Hammons and Whitney director Adam Weinberg, the initial inspiration for Day’s End was not gentrification, queer history, or any of the other topics that have dominated discussion of the work, but rather the previous artwork that once stood on the site: Gordon Matta-Clark’s  architectural intervention, which was also titled Day’s End. In 1975, the self-described “anarchitect” cut a large opening on the river-facing facade of the Pier 52 shed, transforming the abandoned pier into a kind of observatory or makeshift cathedral. (Matta-Clark was reportedly inspired by the shed’s resemblance to early Christian basilicas). At “day’s end,” golden light would pour into the gritty space, a glimpse of heaven in the midst of a postindustrial hell. It stood for just three years before the shed was demolished in 1978, the same year that Matta-Clark passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 35. 

The fact that Hammons had Matta-Clark in mind when he conceived the piece, and not the pier’s history as a nexus of queer culture, has troubled a number of commentators. It turns out that Matta-Clark resented the presence of the LGBTQ community on Pier 52. Although Matta-Clark had no more right to the space than they did – his installation was created without permits, under cover of night – he padlocked the entrances to the shed while he was working on his piece. He described the frequent visitors to the space as “menacing characters,” part of a “sadomasochistic fringe,” and complained that their presence detracted from the power of his work. While Matta-Clark was interested in reclaiming the dark, abandoned corners of New York for art, he had little time for the people who had already found a use for these spaces. Moffitt complains that Hammons’s piece, by memorializing Matta-Clark, “contributes to the hagiography of a homophobe.” 

Ironically, while Matta-Clark may not have liked the LGBTQ subculture that thrived alongside the original Day’s End, his work lives on in public memory in large part due to the work of photographer Alvin Baltrop, a gay, African-American artist who lovingly documented sunbathers on the piers in the 70s. The very community Matta-Clark resented is, it seems, responsible for the long afterlife his installation has enjoyed. 

This is the kind of irony that Hammons appreciates more than his critics do. Moffitt bristles at the fact that the plaque adjoining Day’s End mentions Matta-Clark and not Baltrop or the history of cruising at the piers, claiming that these omissions amounts to violent erasure. But as Jacques Derrida would note, every attempt to commemorate or conserve is simultaneously an act of erasure. If this is violence, it is a kind of violence that is inscribed in the essence of signification itself. It would be impossible to encompass the entire history of the piers in the space of a plaque.

Of the work, Hammons has said “a great tailor makes the fewest cuts.” Photo by Elvert Barnes

By leaving the form of the sculpture radically open, Hammons’s work speaks to the impossibility of his critics’ demand – that is, the impossibility of an objective monument. Every monument is a “cut” in the historical record, privileging some elements over others. The best one can do is create a space for discussion. And Hammons’s Day’s End, in echoing the architectural form of Pier 52, literally does this – that is, it creates space. That is all it does, really. Its form is an outline. As Hammons noted when discussing the piece, “a great tailor makes the fewest cuts.” Without speaking to it directly, Hammons’s Day’s End provoked a discussion about the queer history of the piers. That history – and other histories, yet unmentioned – is simply part of the work, regardless of the intentions of its patrons and creators. The work exceeds the Whitney, and exceeds Hammons.  

Throughout his career, David Hammons has explored the mystic power of objects and materials. He once said that he spends “85 percent” of his time on the streets, observing his environment and gathering inspiration. His most enduring works are made from discarded materials, from garbage. He has created art from liquor bottles, hair, felled telephone poles, garbage bags, and even snow.

While Hammons’s work is deeply political, it is never didactic.  Take his famous 1986 installation, Higher Goals. Working out in the open, on the streets of Brooklyn, Hammons decorated felled telephone poles with bottle caps. He then fixed basketball hoops to the top of the poles and placed them upright again. The hoops stood 20 to 30 feet in the air, far higher than any player could comfortably reach. “It takes five to play on a team, but there are thousands who want to play,” Hammons explained “Not everyone will make it, but even if they don’t, at least they tried.”

With brutal clarity, this piece illustrated the way fame is dangled in front of Black youth, a means of keeping marginalized communities complacent with false hope. And yet, there was more to it than that. The intricately decorated hoops also spoke to the resilience of the Black community, how the youth still dare to dream even in desperate circumstances. Looking up at the sculptures, one wonders what could happen if that energy could be channeled somewhere else. 

Another example of a work by Hammons that defies easy interpretation is his Bliz-aard Ball Sale in 1983. This performance piece was deceptively simple. Hammons literally sold snowballs on the side of the road. Perfect snowballs, made with expert care and available in different sizes. At one level, this whimsical performance was a commentary on capitalism’s ability to turn anything into a commodity. It was a joke. But in another sense, there was something beautiful about the snowballs, their delicacy and ephemerality. By selling them, he was offering customers a taste of their childhood, a tactic not unknown to marketers. There is an art in marketing, the work suggests. Perhaps it is a dark art, but it is an art all the same. 

“[ H ] David Hammons – Blizaard Ball Sale (1983)” by Cea. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Day’s End is another Hammons work that is mischievous in its undecidability. It certainly is an homage to Gordon Matta-Clark, an artist who Hammons never crossed paths with, but who shared Hammons’s interest in art’s power to transform forgotten spaces and materials. But it pointedly does not resemble Matta-Clark’s installation. There is no half-moon in the new Day’s End, no play of light and shadow. The sculpture simply points to its original context, and in doing so has provoked a lively debate over the legacy of a small part of the waterfront that, previously, no one thought about very much. 

If Hammons’s Day’s End is a monument at all, it is a very non-traditional one. In bolder moments, one could even call it an “anti-monument.” The work advances no specific narrative, presenting only a frame for contested histories. 

Cover photo by Elvert Barnes 

 Send us a photo. Tell us a story. Win $2,500! Architizer’s 3rd Annual One Photo Challenge is underway with an Early Entry Deadline on May 27, 2022! Start your entry for architecture’s biggest photography competition here. 

Reference