From Showroom to Showcase for Austrian Architecture
Delugan Meissl Associated Architects
Zumtobel Showroom
44 West 18th Street
extended through July 26
Courtesy Zumtobel
There is a trend in New York showrooms to conceive spaces meant primarily for display and sales as art exhibition spaces. Paint it white, hang a few photographs on the wall, and Boom, the store is re-branded as a “gallery.” Next, a formal ‘opening’ is scheduled attended by the press, trade reps and assorted hangers on who come for a night to gorge on shrimp and swill Prosecco. But these “galleries” quickly revert to their real purpose in life, to sell the merch, be it is luxury textiles or plumbing fixtures.
But one New York showroom- the Austrian lighting company, Zumtobel- seems to be serious about wanting to stage important architecture and design exhibitions and has opened up the central part of their space as a real gallery. Currently, a beautifully-mounted architecture show introduces a significant young Austrian practice to the United States. The exhibit Intense Repose would be a success in any Chelsea gallery and exhibits the work of the Vienna based architecture firm Delugan Meissl Associated Architects. Founded in 1993, the firm is little known in New York but two significant projects in construction will certainly raise their profile here. The soon to open Porsche Museum (2007) just outside Stuttgart and the Film Museum in Amsterdam (2009) have had some exposure in the English-speaking design press. These projects will likely put them on the international stage but the firm is better known in Europe for their creative and experimental high-density residential projects. Several are on display in the current Zumtobel exhibit.
The Wienerberg City Lofts project (2005) in Vienna, for example, takes a traditional mixed use and live/work building and weaves it into a series of studio and duplex live-workspaces that answers brilliantly the demand for contemporary housing. In addition their Kallco Town House project (2002) with its flowing green roof and the Beam Residential Building, Donau-City, place them in the first rank of designers of urban residential housing blocks.
Finally, the Zumtobel exhibit features an exquisitely designed wood table with reflective acrylic serving as a large plinth for the beautifully fabricated models of the firm’s buildings. Designed by the Viennese architects, it has computer modules built right into the frame to allow visitors to navigate through video images of the projects on display.
William Menking