On May 23, 2011, the New York Public Library celebrated the 100th anniversary of its landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. To mark the occasion, Pentagram was commissioned to create Celebrating 100 Years, the library’s centennial exhibition, a presentation of 250 artifacts that highlight the collections and history of this remarkable institution.
Located just north of Times Square, The Official NYC Information Center integrates architecture and media into a seamless experience. The centerpiece of the experience is a bank of three large interactive map tables. By placing a “You are here” disc on the table, visitors can explore the city and create custom guidebooks that can be emailed, sent via SMS, or printed. Visitors can also see their saved places on a large-scale, Google Earth fly-through.
Local Projects (media design), WXY Architecture (architecture)
Where am I? What can I do here? Where can I go from here? Consciously or not, we ask such questions every day as we navigate the places and spaces of our lives. Whether we find ourselves in a museum, hospital, train station, park, or street in an unfamiliar city, we depend on systems of visual, audible, and tactile cues not only to lead the way, but also to keep us safe. They are the fundamental questions of wayfinding—a process that encompasses both the experience of choosing a path within a built environment and the set of design elements that aid in such a decision.
Hundreds of thousands of people visit Times Square every day, taking photos of themselves in one of the greatest landmarks in the world. And countless numbers of people come to New York to become famous and leave their mark. With those insights, American Eagle Outfitters created a one-of-a-kind experience for customers at their flagship store in Times Square. They asked R/GA to create an engaging retail experience that would be unique in the Times Square environment and specific to their audience.
Times Square is viewed as the most dynamic urban place in the world, but fundamentally it is a collection of individual buildings with sign “spectaculars” applied to their surfaces. The design of the American Eagle Outfitters Times Square project turns this traditional notion of a "spectacular" on its head.
While Christian Dior readied its 57th Street, Manhattan, store for renovation, a temporary store was opened slightly further uptown to serve its customers while the flagship was under construction. The Gensler design team was given two months to create a unique space that Christian Dior wanted to celebrate its fashion heritage, but in a very contemporary way.
The design approach retained existing signature elements with a modern twist, leveraging the fashion house’s rich history and archive of images while reinterpreting the space’s existing architectural elements in a fresh way.
A creative company needs an innovative workspace. For Grey Group, one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world, a move to new, state-of-the-art headquarters in the former International Toy Center in the Flatiron District, a New York design hub, symbolized a renewed commitment to creativity.
WNYC New York Public Radio is America’s most listened-to public radio station, reaching more than a million listeners each week. WNYC FM and AM are New York’s premier public radio stations, broadcasting programs ranging from National Public Radio and Public Radio International to award-winning local programming.
Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics is a group show of modern porcelain design and artwork. The 200 pieces of inventive, highly varied objects are items of everyday use that have been artistically re-thought and manipulated.
Garbage cans are often the center of pollution on an individual level. By implementing unexpected display approaches in particular public contexts, this set of three installations sought to heighten viewer awareness of this often-overlooked functional object and draw attention to issues of both individual and society-wide consumption and pollution.
Sarah M. Kirchoff (MFA candidate, project manager)
