Exhibition: 12 January - 30 June 2011
Venue: The Skyscraper Museum, New York, USA
Hours: noon - 6 p.m., Wednesday - Sunday
The Skyscraper Museum in New York City presents Vertical Urban Factory, a
special exhibition guest-curated by Nina Rappaport, architectural historian,
critic, and author, in collaboration with designers Studio Tractor Architects,
MGMT Design, and filmmaker Eric Breitbart. Tracing the evolution of
mass-production technologies and related social issues, the exhibition examines
the architecture of city factories in sections: Modern, Contemporary, and New
York. The underlying theme is the verticality of urban manufacturing—both
historically and as a potential for renewed industrial uses.
Vertical Urban Factory surveys more than 30 projects, including canonic
examples of Modernism and new or recycled industrial architecture. The
installation features over 200 photographs, diagrams, and drawings. Nine
architectural models created for the exhibit using state-of the-art computer
fabrication highlight a progressive design and construction. A series of films
by documentary filmmaker Eric Breitbart use historical and contemporary footage to immerse the gallery visitor in the environment of conveyors systems and industrial processes. The exhibition's art direction is the work of MGMT Design, known for its innovative installations for New York's International Center of Photography and the Museum of Folk Art. For Vertical Urban Factory, the studio
has created an annotated timeline of industry and its architecture. Central to
the show are sections of refurbished roller conveyors repurposed by Studio
Tractor Architects, on which photographs, drawings and architectural models are displayed.
Modern Factories
From Henry Ford's Highland Park in Detroit (Albert Kahn, 1910) where the first automated assembly line was instituted, to the Lingotto Fiat factory in Turin, Italy (Giacomo Matte-Trucco, 1922) with its rooftop testing track, to the influential Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam (Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, 1929) which produced coffee, tea, and tobacco—the exhibition examines key projects of
Modern architecture, illustrating their functional structure and vertical
organization. Re-created for the exhibition is Buckminster Fuller's little-known scheme for a vertical cotton mill, designed with students from North Carolina State University in 1952.
Fiat Lingotto; Giacomo Matte-Trucco, Torino, 1913-26. Courtesy of Archivio e Centro Storico Fiat
Contemporary Factories
Organized around the themes Flexible, Sustainable, and Spectacle, this section
is devoted to contemporary projects that illustrate the broad spectrum of
factory design today. Flexible factories — usually housed in industrial loft
spaces such as those in Hong Kong of the 1960s and 70s, the area known today as
Little Addis in Johannesburg, or the American Apparel facility in Los Angeles — create the potential for reintegrating factories into urban centers. Featuring the Valdemingómez recycling plant in Madrid by Ábalos & Herreros, the TGE Plant in New York by Michael Singer, and a new scheme for an Eco-City in Hamburg, Germany, the Sustainable segment demonstrates the viability of ecological industrial systems. Finally, Spectacle exhibits iconic urban factories designed as marketing tools, such as the VW “Transparent Factory” in Dresden, Germany by
Henn Architects and the Four Films printing plant in Kuwait by L.E.FT Architects.
Four Films printing plant, L.E.F.T. Architects, Kuwait City, 2010. Courtesy of L.E.F.T. Architects
New York Factories
Once America's greatest manufacturing city, New York has been home to a wide range of factories, from masonry workshops to concrete warehouses, cast-iron
loft buildings to steel-framed skyscrapers. Examples include the Williamsburg
Domino Sugar refinery and Austin Nichols warehouse, the vertically-integrated skyscraper factories that published New York's major newspapers, the Times,
World, and Daily News, the monumental Starrett-Lehigh building in Chelsea, and more. The city even boasted high-rise manufacturing areas such as SoHo, TriBeCa, and the west Midtown Garment District, which developed in the 1920s as a result
of zoning laws that sought to regulate industrial land use. The section on New
York includes maps, infographics and 20 local examples of spaces of production.
Future Factories
As the impact of globalization reshapes cities around the world and physically
transforms former industrial centers such as New York, Vertical Urban Factory discusses the reintegration of industry into the urban fabric and the potential
for new niche markets, sustainable production, and smaller-scale processing to adapt to a changing industrial base.
As curator Nina Rappaport explains: “The exhibition demonstrates how urban manufacturing presents exciting design challenges for architects and urban designers who must tackle issues of integrated systems and programs, providing
solutions that garner environmental benefits and job opportunities. If
entrepreneurs and urban planners reconsider the potential for building
vertically in cities, this will in turn reinforce and reinvest in a natural
feedback loop leading to a new sustainable urban industrial paradigm.”
The exhibition will run through June 2011.
Related Programming and Events: In conjunction with the exhibit, the Museum will present a series of programs, including panel discussions, gallery tours, factory tours, and film screenings. Please visit the website for details: www.skyscraper.org
About the Skyscraper Museum
Located in Battery Park City at 39 Battery Place, The Skyscraper Museum celebrates tall buildings and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped New York's successive skylines. Through exhibitions, programs
and publications, the Museum explores skyscrapers as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence.
Further Information:
The Skyscraper Museum
39 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280 • USA
Tel.: +1 212 968-1961
eMail: info@skyscraper.org
web: www.skyscraper.org
web:
www.verticalurbanfactory.org
