Wave-Themed 2019 Beaux Arts Ball Makes a Splash at Brooklyn Navy Yard
The Architectural League of New York’s Annual Beaux Arts Ball Wowed Guests with “Ceiling Unlimited” Installation
By Zoë Zellers
Dubbed by industry insiders as “the Met Ball for architects,” the Architectural League of New York’s 2019 Beaux Arts Ball transformed a former shipbuilding facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard into a lively dance floor complete with a captivating site-specific design installation. Architects, designers, editors and architectural products manufacturers, mixed and mingled over cocktails, a seated family-style dinner, and later, on the dance floor at the annual Ball which took place Friday, September 27. The evening offered a unique chance for architects and designers from top firms to network with each other and with manufacturers, and bond over support of the Architectural League of New York. All proceeds will benefit the organization’s programming throughout the year. Hunter Douglas Architectural is proud to be an ongoing supporter of the League, and team members from New York and Los Angeles met in Brooklyn to celebrate the event together. Hunter Douglas Architectural guests included Patrick LeClair, northeast regional sales manager, Nick Inman, manager of specialty projects, architectural window coverings, Katherine Mills, architectural window coverings marketing supervisor, and Zoë Zellers, architectural content marketing manager.
“Ceiling Unlimited” installation at Beaux Arts Ball “Ceiling Unlimited” installation at Beaux Arts Ball
designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso. designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso.
“Ceiling Unlimited” installation at Beaux Arts Ball “Ceiling Unlimited” installation at Beaux Arts Ball
designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso. designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso.
Each year, a benefit committee selects a theme, tasking architects with creating an intriguing, conversation-starting installation for the Beaux Arts Ball. The 2019 edition was centered around a site-specific “Wave” installation inside Shed 269, a former submarine assembly building in Brooklyn Navy Yard. An abstract black-and-white graphic designed by longtime League collaborators Michael Bierut and Britt Cobb, of Pentagram, boldly announced the “Wave” agenda. The event’s program noted, “First Wave, Nouvelle Vague, Third Wave, Next Wave, New Wave, No Wave. Waves have long been used as metaphors for movements and cohorts that mark moments in culture. The Architectural League’s Beaux Arts Ball 2019: Wave celebrates these generative and transformative forces of waves.”
Molly Hunker and Greg Corso, of the award-winning multidisciplinary architecture and design collaborative, SPORTS, created “Ceiling Unlimited,” an immersive installation that hung high above partygoers on the ground floor of the expansive Shed 269 building. SPORTS is a past recipient of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, which Hunter Douglas Architectural is proud to support, as well as The Architect’s Newspaper’s Young Architect Award. As guests networked, “waves” of canopy fabric were activated through movement and stunning lighting effects designed by Ken Farmer, of Wild Dogs International. In the industrial space, Hunker and Corso used existing gantry cranes, which guided the canopy as it compressed and expanded overhead, creating spatial variation throughout the night’s activities.
Architect Bjarke Ingels on Artists Speaking on Behalf of the Future + His Design for a Resilient Manhattan
Humanhattan 2050: A Vision for a Resilient Manhattan, Presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale
By Zoë Zellers
Coverage of the Venice Architecture Biennale Presented in Partnership with Architectural Record
"As an artist you actually have to be able to speak on behalf of the future, because there are so many reasons to not do a project," says the Danish-born architect Bjarke Ingels. He notes that from the very onset of developing architectural and urban planning projects, "there are so many no's" from planning to legal to economic issues, "that a project can die in its infancy."
"Therefore, as artists we have to be very precise and brave in terms of being champions of the future that hasn’t been born yet," says the founder and creative partner of the Bjarke Ingels Group aka BIG. Ingels, who was previously named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, is behind a lengthy list of high-profile, sustainability-driven projects, and also serves as the chief architect of WeWork.
Steered by Ingels, BIG’s headline-grabbing projects include Google's redesigned Mountain View headquarters, 2 World Trade Center, the last of the set of towers at Ground Zero, VIA 57 West, a 35-floor residential skyscraper overlooking the Hudson River, and Denmark's LEGO House, which is constructed from colorful glazed terracotta designed to evoke oversized LEGO blocks.
https://youtu.be/2fMsoRsYsB0
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