Governors Island is a blank slate and Renny Ramakers has made it her own: 11 long-vacant officer’s houses transformed into one large exhibition/marketplace of dutch design. Pioneers of Change may be the synthesis of movements needed to define this era: slowness, provenance, craft, and DIY empowerment in everything from food to fashion to architecture. We’ve been following the trickle of info on this but, due to its site-specific and experiential nature, have had little info or image to offer. That’s now changed. We’ve gotten a preview tour, talked to the designers, and can give you a full appraisal.
House 5A: 100 dollars or less
Chairs line the walls to form the shelving of this design store with prices only under $100. We noticed many familiar Droog pieces and some of our favorite books and magazines. We also noticed some prices seemed favorable (Mark Magazine for $19 rather than $25). Good to know they have brilliant umbrellas in case you “forget” yours and it rains.
Designed by Marcel Schmalgemeijer filled with goods from Droog Design and Wabnitz Editions.
House 5B: The luxury of silence and care
Be prepared to be bold: this one requires semi-nakedness. A robot-driven soft sensor maps your upper body, following your contours, and randomly tickles your skin—a tireless caress. Meanwhile a cell-signal blocker makes sure your phone isn’t ringing (though AT&T’s very close tower still comes through, sorry iPhone users).
By Driessen & Verstappen, Arthur Elsenaar & Taconis Stolk
House 6A: Platform21 = Repairing
Fix woolen knitwear, seat-less chairs, and busted China the creative way. These beautiful solutions are easily DIY with limited means, but the results are often more beautiful than the original. These are interactive, you may actually break some plates or darn a sweater.
By Platform21
House 6B: Knitting
Simple and striking: inch-thick yarn knitted as performance with 6 foot-long needles. The balls of yarn are beautiful in their own right, and the final products are amazing.
Christien Meindertsma
House 7A: Urban Farming
LCD screens dot the house, showing films looking at the possibilities of urban farming.
By MVRDV and The Why Factory with Work Architecture Company
House 7B: Harvest map
Leftover building materials of NYC are stacked and ready for a workshop where the public can help build something with them.
By 2012Architecten
House 8A: Go Slow
Get tickets at the design shop for a meal served the slow way. Literally. To embody the slow and local food movements, Marije Vogelzang has designed an eating experienced prepared and served by two very nice elderly men. The food is arranged on platters with portions scaled by distanced: the sizable 5 mile portion will be beans from Brooklyn, the slightly smaller 100 mile portion will be yellow cheddar from Tennessee, 500 mile Hickory Ham from Kentucky, and so on. The space, service, and details should make this worth the wait.
By Droog with Marije Vogelzang, sloom.org (Rianne Makkink and Herman Verkerk) and Hansje van Halem
House 8B: Drawn from Clay
Clay from different soils are different colors depending on the produce grown in that spot. Exquisite clay pottery designed to contain the produce it originated under (a potato bowl made of clay from a potato farm) is marked with a catalog number that matches it to a location on a map, a photograph of the farmer at that plot, and color swatches of that clay. The thought may be mind-bending but the results are simple and stunning. This weekend the designers will be digging around for material to create new work on-site. We also got word Royal VKB will produce a line of goods based on this work. We can’t wait.
By Atelier NL
House 16: RealTime
Three clocks installed in separate rooms explore how time passes by showing people-powered clocks. Two men sweeping hands of dirt in a circle, and right on time. Three locations (one of them live and on-site) where people tick the minutes away at a work desk, 12 hours straight.
By Maarten Baas
House 17: (Untitled fashion collaboration)
A collision of cultural traditions in finely detailed handicraft will result in a dressed house and new respect for old traditions. Native American bead work and local lace is made and shared as students and masters toil away on doilies but the art may be the collaboration itself.
By Painted in collaboration with Pascale Gatzen and IDC fashion students of Parsons The New School for Design in New York, Native American bead masters Joyce, Juanita and Jessica Growing Thunder, and local lace makers.
Pioneers of Change opens today and runs through the next two weekends. The best time to visit will be this weekend as many any of the artists and designers will be present.