FORM Vol. XXIV

FORM A Space for Ideas, Culture, and Aesthetics

Editors’ Letter Every semester, FORM transforms a blank slate into a body of work that is more than just a magazine. FORM is an ethos embedded in each page, decision, and idea. The FORM perspective unearths beauty and brings order to the chaos.

For this volume’s theme, we chose to explore an epithet closely intertwined with our name, “Figure.” In the creation of this magazine, we held the ideation of “Figure” loosely, revisiting it and letting it guide us as a concept inherent in every piece. The distinctions among sections blurred, as the figures of style, art and design, travel and culture flowed fluidly among each other.

The impact of COVID-19 has additionally weighed heavily on this volume. We mourn with the graduating seniors whose time with the magazine, and on Duke’s campus, was cut unexpectedly short. As FORM has always strived to be a space for ideas, culture, and aesthetics, we also intend to present our work, our art, as a space for solace and enjoyment. It is our hope that this volume celebrates the life of local businesses, highlights the creators in our community, and expresses art as an avenue to understanding life.

We open Art and Design with an interview with the revolutionary artist Howardena Pindell, entitled Bits and Pieces, that highlights the interconnectedness of family, activism and art. From there, Upterior is a celebration of our collaboration with the materials company seeking to create a new paradigm through the innovation of glass. Finally, Furniture is Art profiles Jeremy Kamiya, a self-taught Modern Craft designer. Kamiya creates solid wooden pieces free of metal or stains at a slower pace in hopes of reaching an audience with the time to appreciate special things.

In Style, our discussion with textile artist Sofía Salazar tells the story of an artist that seeks to stitch faces and figures of every perspective onto a shared slate: black cloth. Next, The State of Matter is an ode to the capacity of clothing to move.

The natural movements of runners and dancers breathe air into the otherwise static pieces. Finally, Primavera Perla: An International Jewelry Renaissance is the visual culmination of STUDIO 6IX jewelry founder Park Eunkyung’s design ethos to combine vintage pieces with a modern twist.

In our Travel and Culture section, we first sit down with Victor Vines, the president and founder of Vines Architecture, the firm behind the new Durham Public Library. In Foundations, we spoke to Vines about his familiarity with architecture and design as a child, the philosophical pillars of his firm and his approach to understanding buildings, both old and new. Next, in The Sun Also Sets, we explore a modern speakeasy, The Green Light, that offers a reimagined ode to an earlier era - as well as a few delicious drinks. Finally, Barbican Estates underscores the capacity of a physical space to embody multiple realities and fulfill several functions depending on the perspective of the beholder. The prose, written during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 moment, calls on the reader to question their relation to the physical world, both when it is full and when it is seemingly empty.

We hope our readers find refuge in the stories we share here.

Sincerely, Stephanie Cutler & Claire Gibbs

EDITORS IN CHIEF CREATIVE DIRECTORS DIRECTORS OF LAYOUT EDITORIAL DIRECTOR DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTORS OF ART & DESIGN DIRECTORS OF STYLE DIRECTORS OF TRAVEL & CULTURE DIRECTORS OF COMMUNICATIONS LOGISTICS & FINANCE DIRECTOR ART & DESIGN CONTRIBUTORS Chaya Brennan Agarwal Tommaso Babucci Nicholas Chrapliwy Greta Cywinska Olalla Duato Anna Greenleaf Mary Howard Abby Shlesinger Austin Smith Alyssa Wilson TRAVEL & CULTURE CONTRIBUTORS Mason Berger Gillian Card Arabella Chen Maria Gieg Ayesham Khan Spencer LaFata Rebecca Schneid LAYOUT CONTRIBUTORS Paola Casado Nia El-Amin Sana Hairadin Annie Kornack Clare Downey Layne Vanatta

Stephanie Cutler Claire Gibbs Alex Ragh Irene Zhou Kelly McLaughlin Savannah Norman Blythe Davis Rae Hsu Clara Lyra Rafaela Rivero Alyssa Shin Dani Yan Advaitha Anne Mindy Wu Sonia Fillipow Sawyer Uzzell Tori Williams STYLE CONTRIBUTORS Mare Kozmar Lauren May Sydney Reede Ali Rothberg Elena Rivera Ellie Rothstein Jacqui Lerner Katherine Xiao Kira Upin EDITORAL CONTRIBUTORS Skylar Bloom Skyler Graham Samantha Littenberg Becca Schneid COMMUNICATIONS Falan Alpert Hannah Bogomilsky Whitney Elson Maggie McManus Nicole Pashalis Ginger del Real Claire Ryland Ananya Sadarangani Kennedy Sun Chloe Ward Cole Zaharris

Table of Contents ART & DESIGN Bits and Pieces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Upterior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Furniture is Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The Jungle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

STYLE Sofía Salazar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 The State of Matter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Primavera Perla. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

TRAVEL & CULTURE Foundations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 The Sun Also Sets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Barbican Estates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

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Howardena Pindell started working in art over 50 years ago.

She was a pioneer in the Black Arts Movement and the first black woman to curate at the MoMA, and continues to gain recognition and acclaim at 76. Her work spans media from painting to video and addresses issues from her own life to the AIDS crisis. Despite perpetual racism in the art world, a near-fatal car accident, and swindling dealers, Pindell is still going strong as both a professor and an artist. FORM spoke to Pindell about family, activism, and her latest work.

So a group of artists, including Valerie Simmons and myself, went to the gallery to Artists’ Space and they locked the doors and called the police. Eventually we returned, and they let us in this time.

And the director — who was white — had (what I assume was) an artist friend of hers who said, “How dare you come down here and tell us what to do? This is a white neighborhood.” I mean, it was unbelievable. And then the rumor was that I was censoring the artists.

Dani Yan: To me, you’re a legend in art and beyond. You’ve accomplished and created so much, yet at 76, you’re still teaching and making art. What motivates you to continue working?

So at that time, mainly white men were showing, maybe a tiny fraction of black men, barely any Asian men, and absolutely no Native American people. It was just so racist.

So the feeling was that if you criticized a white male’s work, you were censoring them. But really they were censoring women — of any color — and men of color. Isn’t that censorship instead of someone actively having an opinion and expressing that opinion? So I got a bad reputation for reopening old wounds and trying to change things.

Howardena Pindell: I think part of it is my father. He died at 98. My mother was ill and died when she was 87. But that’s still a long time. My father was a highly motivated person; in his 30s, he started a teachers’ union in Frederick, Maryland. He was a test case under Thurgood Marshall before he became a Supreme Court justice. He basically risked his life, you know, going up against the white school board — he was principal of a school there and they fired him to get him off the case.

He had to leave town, but he chose to be the the person in the spotlight because everyone else had a family. He felt that since he didn’t have anything to lose — in terms of taking care of a family — that he should be the one out front. So it was that kind of attitude that I saw when I was a child. That’s what he would do when he was in his 30s: just step out front.

Since I got to see how things were done behind the scenes, I felt that it was my duty to bring this information out to the public. Some of my work became political, but I found that writing at that point would reach more people than my visual practice, so I did both. I brought up some uncomfortable things. But I feel that people should be free to express their opinions, even though people thought that we were out of line.

“ I BROUGHT UP SOME UNCOMFORTABLE THINGS. BUT I FEEL THAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE FREE TO EXPRESS THEIR OPINIONS... ”

He was a hard worker. He was on the board of a black orphanage in Philadelphia where I grew up, and everyone loved him.

But then he just changed when he had to have a triple bypass heart surgery. I found out later that a lot of people’s personalities change after that kind of operation, and they become kind of the opposite of who they really are. So after that he became kind of a Republican, kind of unpleasant and hard to deal with. But he still had at least 10 more years of life in him.

D: You have held many roles in the art world, from curator, to gallerist, to artist, to educator. How has the variety of your experience influenced your outlook on art and the art world?

But I learned to keep your energy going and do what you like to do — I learned that from him.

H: Well, I can speak to people on a number of levels. When I’m with museum people, I can understand it from their point of view because I was in it for 12 years. When I’m with other artists, I know it from the inside of an institution in terms of the attitudes towards artists. You would hear things on the inside of the museum world about how it’s easier to deal with art by dead artists than art by the living because living artists have complex personalities — that’s something that most artists would not have heard. I can help people understand what processes go into being accepted within the art world.

D: You’ve always been an activist on issues from civil rights to HIV/AIDS. Artist-activists are more prominent than ever now, with both old and new issues being confronted. What do you think is the role of the artist-activist today? How has it changed?

H: Well, it’s changed a lot. I mean, the art world once looked down upon activists. Years ago, I was a curator at the Modern. I worked there for 12 years, and in March of 1979 there was a show by a white male artist under the name of Donald Newman. They were abstract drawings with black charcoal, and the show was called “N-gger Drawings.” If you call the gallery, and you ask, “Well why did you call it this?” They would say, “Oh, well charcoal is black and black is n-gger.”

I mean, really?

D: In your own work, you have explored many different styles and themes. What causes you to keep evolving?

H: I do the painting in the form that I think it needs.

Some pieces I’m doing are mainly text or text and image.

The video for my latest piece about lynching, for example,

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was much stronger because people can walk away from a painting, but with the video, you’re kind of in an immersive space. And then other times I know writing is the best thing for me to do in terms of handling a particular topic.

When I got to New York, I was painting out the window. So structures and architecture, and then the whole thing kind of fell together when I started buying templates and making circles and drawing. I would use crayon, and then I would use watercolor, which would resist — it had a really nice look to it. I started punching holes and making templates of my own and pinning those to the canvas and spraying through it with acrylic. I started experimenting and the dots moved into the third dimension where I scattered the dots and I used spray adhesive, knowing that it wouldn’t age in a bad way. I started sprinkling the dots and spraying them and making them flat against raw canvas. I would place a template and then spray acrylic using water tension breakers.

D: You have been asked a lot about your car accident in 1979, as it was clearly a very serious life-changing event. How do you think you and your work would be different if it hadn’t happened?

H: I may not have come so quickly to expressing my opinion visually. I have a little saying: you never know when you might wake up dead. I really felt very strongly about the pieces that I started working on. It was early September or October 1979, and I just felt that I had to express my opinion or else. I challenged myself, and I became aware of just how fragile society is.

D: Your recent retrospective has brought you a lot of attention. What was it like to leave then return to the art world’s spotlight?

D: You mentioned how your dad’s personality changed after his surgery. Did you find that your personality changed after the accident?

H: I was stunned, frankly. I am still stunned. I think I’d run into so much of the mean side of the art world, so I’m stunned that I would get this. But the thing is, I’m getting this for the same work that I did when I was so rigorously pushed aside. They didn’t want me as a woman, and they certainly didn’t want me as a person of color.

H: I think for a year or so I was short-tempered, but I slowly got better as I started healing. But I think it damaged me enough that my memory still isn’t right. As I get older, it gets less right. And my medicine for cholesterol and blood pressure and stuff don’t help. Thank God I have my gallery because they take care of the things that I can’t do anymore. And I’m a total dinosaur when it comes to technology. The guy who drives me around takes care of my computer as well as getting me from A to B — he’s a brother.

D: Your new solo exhibition, Rope/Fire/Water, was just announced to be opening in October 2020. What can you tell me about the show and your first video in 25 years?

H: Yeah, that’ll be at The Shed in October. It’s a piece about lynching and the Civil Rights Movement. I have two paintings that deal with the use of amputation during colonialism and slavery. And the other painting is about the burning black towns — Black Wall Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma — and the burning of black churches and then the bombing of four children at the church in Alabama. So right now, we need more space to get this finished because paintings are nine-by-nine feet.

D: There are many motifs throughout your work — from grids to circles to arrows. Which ones are most important to you and why?

H: I love drawing circles and I love numbering. But I remember — I think the most important memory — is when my family drove out to Ohio to be with my mother’s mother.

My mother was hanging out with her mother and her sisters, so my father and I drove down to Northern Kentucky. We stopped at a root beer stand, and they gave us the same glasses as the others, chilled with root beer. But on the bottom of the glass was a giant red circle. I asked my father what this was about and he basically said that the dishware was segregated — the circle represents the glass that we must use, as opposed to it not being there for the whites. And so that stuck in my head. And then when I was in graduate school, I was playing circles and it clicked, it was this kind of cathartic click.

D: What do you draw inspiration from now?

H: Right now I’m enjoying foam rubber. In fact, when you called, I had a pair of shears that you would use to trim your nails, and I was cutting out black foam circles that I will put on a painting. I’m cutting out different sizes, and we’re using very good glue. It’s archival glue, but we’re just using it to paint over and to seal so it doesn’t disintegrate.

D: What are you working on? What are you most excited about?

I was drawing at Yale because I was admitted as a figurative artist. I was struggling because my work became more abstract, and it actually had some activist stuff in it that I wasn’t aware of; I would go to New York for the anti-Vietnam War marches, then I started painting skeletons. And I started painting orange, like Agent Orange, so I was painting orange skeletons. And it was very abstract, in a sense — still figurative, but abstracted.

H: I’m excited about the video. I have a meeting with The Shed on Friday. And the two nine-by-nine paintings — we’re just waiting for the extra space to be able to finish them. At the same time, we’re continuing working on the abstract work here, so we can sort of spread it out.

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PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Howardena Pindell WRITING Dani Yan 25

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upterior

FORM sat down with Aga and Ania Zielinska, creators of Upterior, the innovative materials company behind Waken Glass. Upterior invents and invests into new materials that have the potential to enhance life. Together, FORM and Upterior created Augustine, a statement piece that combines material rediscovery and fresh creative perspective. Our piece coalesces earthen materials and their qualities -- metal with its strength and glass with its perceived fragility -- to reflect on womanhood and motherhood.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Upterior, Wolf Mike, & bitforms gallery WRITING Tommaso Babucci

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Tommaso Babucci: What is Upterior’s mission?

Upterior: At the core, we are interested in design and how spaces can impact people emotionally. We believe that good design can make somebody feel better. Materials play a crucial role in that. In our research of materials, we landed upon the concept of innovating glass, adding materials to it, creating a new paradigm.

T: Upterior has developed a new kind of material, Waken Glass. What is it and how does it work?

U: Waken Glass is a reinvention of traditional glass. It’s a new medium based on a new technology. We’ve developed it in-house, and it is patent pending. Briefly, Waken Glass is a method of combining metal and glass in a way that was not possible before. The technology and methodology open up many new applications in art and design, both in interior design and product design. For example, we are working on applications in lighting, watchmaking and jewelry. Having a material with such diverse applications really excites us.

T: I’ve never heard of glass mixed with solid materials. Why is it so special? And why is this so hard to do?

Creating any type of composite material is about marrying two differently behaving things.

That is very challenging in the physical world, because you have to convince the two materials to come together and behave in a similar enough way to actually coexist.

U: Every material has its own chemical and physical properties and behaves in a certain way, depending on the environment. Creating any type of composite material is about marrying two differently behaving things. That is very challenging in the physical world because you have to convince the two materials to come together and behave in a similar enough way to actually coexist.

T: You’re able to blend copper and gold with glass. What does that look like?

U: Copper and gold were our first launches of Waken Glass.

Copper is very dynamic — it responds to the surrounding environment, changes color based on temperature, and oxidizes with time. The way we work with copper embraces the dynamism of the colors and the aging of copper, which happens naturally. Once copper is inside glass, it doesn’t change anymore. Gold is also a metal, but it’s completely different. Gold is precious and fragile. We use 24 karat gold, which is especially fragile. But with glass we are able to “freeze” it, protecting its essence, enhancing its shine.

And because of the properties of our glass, that gold gets magnified: the high index of refraction, combined with the clarity of the glass, make it seem like the whole piece is golden.

T: How did you get this idea?

U: Honestly, from the natural human response to somebody telling you that you can’t do something: doing it. So, when this question came to us, can you mix glass and metals, and the answer was no, it fueled us to try. Our core interest was in the link between materials and design and emotions.

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T: I see how alive it feels, how organic it feels, how real it is.

How have you used this material or want it to be used?

U: I think the range is really limitless. We like to share this material with designers and artists, let them be influenced and inspired by our creation. We also like to showcase the beauty of what we created, especially in applications with interior design, jewelry and watchmaking. Combining art, design, and technology fascinates us. The idea of having an aesthetic material being backed by rigorous science is very interesting to the various industries.

T: Do you have some examples of the projects that you’ve been working on?

We like to share this material with designers and artists, let them be influenced and inspired by our creation.

We also like to showcase the beauty of what we created, especially in applications with interior design, jewelry and watchmaking.

Combining art, design, and technology fascinates us.

U: We had an enriching collaboration with artist Sara Ludy last year. Sara is a new media artist who works predominantly with digital art. But she was so fascinated with our material that she wanted to work with it. For the commercial side, an important property of this material is that, the technology allows for a limited edition series in which each piece is actually unique, because the interaction between metal and glass is wonderfully variable. We are using that property in two current projects, in lighting and in jewelry.

T: What is something you would love to see Waken Glass used for?

U: When you interact with this material on a daily basis, it comes in images while you sleep — it comes back to you. In those dreams, we imagine it in a big scale form — used in architecture with these large surfaces where you can actually almost be encompassed by this material and see its power.

T: And light changes this material, right?

U: What’s remarkable about Waken Glass is that it has a very high index of refraction. To the viewer, it looks like it glows on its own. Typically, with glass, we’re more used to looking through it like you look through a window, but this is completely different. We look inside the glass and at the glass, not through the glass.

T: Is there anything that you would want our readers to know that you have not had a chance to express yet?

U: We want to acknowledge that many minds have contributed to the success of this material, on both the scientific and artistic spectrums. It’s important to keep learning from people. It continues to be a conversation piece for us. We have developed a material; we have this amazing technology; now it’s about collaborations and conversations.

Even this conversation and the project that we will be working on with FORM Magazine are part of the process.

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On a breezy morning in High Point, North Carolina (“The Furniture Capital of the World”), Jeremy Kamiya offers me iced coffee. He stands at the entrance of his kitchen, clad in a soft gray beanie, a warm smile, and patterned socks. His kids scramble out to greet me. The little boy and girl stare at me in awe and tell me they’re going to the trampoline park. His wife follows close behind, touching my hand and welcoming me into their sunny, airy homs.

Without classical training, Kamiya had the opportunity to delve into design with a unique perspective—unburdened by conventions or prevailing styles. Guided by hours of “How-To” YouTube videos, Kamiya educated himself about the various types of saws, the art of cutting wood, and grain directionality. In Kamiya’s words, he feels much more “comfortable designing with [his] eyes closed” and coming up with his own creative shapes and forms rather than emulating popular aesthetic.

Jeremy Kamiya is a self-taught, independent artist—a thinker, a dreamer, and a father at the helm of a movement: Modern Craft Design.

He showed me the first piece of furniture he ever created.

He carried it into the living room—an end table that he designed for his wife as a holiday gift. He ran his fingers over a subtle inscription etched onto the wood. “Merry Christmas.”

For Kamiya, it all started with importing furniture from Bali, Indonesia, his wife’s hometown. It was a way of starting a business while keeping close to family roots. A North Carolina native himself, Kamiya displayed the furniture in a small showroom in Durham. Marveling at the pieces, guests would often ask if he had been the designer behind the furniture.

These questions sparked in Kamiya a flicker of possibility and the confidence to create. With imported tables as his source of wood, he began to break apart pieces of furniture and construct something new and refreshing out of them.

“All your pieces teach you something.”

Kamiya learned to embrace wood, with walnut, maple, and cherry being his woods of choice. By carefully considering the grain pattern, form, and functionality of each piece, he emphasizes the natural beauty of the medium. After all, each piece of wood tells a story. Drawn to wild and undulating grains, Kamiya loves the rings on wood that mark a tree’s growth through time. Building with the same wood species throughout an entire piece, he finds value in subtlety.

“That’s exactly how I got into it.”

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If you’ve got time in your life to appreciate special things, then that’s who I’m speaking to.

His design philosophy, Modern Craft, is central to his life and work. Modern Craft refers to the refined simplicity associated with contemporary creation that upholds a standard of craftsmanship. His process is not only driven by observation, but also by touch. Kamiya knows when he is done with a piece when he can run his fingers over it and feel a perfectly smooth surface. He prizes minimalism to preserve the beauty and functionality of objects. He hopes his furniture speaks for itself.

“My art represents my time on Earth, my labor, and I want someone else to have that.”

Kamiya sets himself apart by not using any metal, screws, or stains in his pieces. He is allured by the idea of a solid wooden piece—its elegance, simplicity, and rich history. He admires ancient Chinese and Japanese buildings that have stood for thousands of years and were built using nothing but wood, pegs, and a friction fit. Working without metal fasteners is similar to solving a puzzle—matching mortises and tenons together by glue.

Though the process is more difficult and time-intensive, Kamiya has followed this practice since his very first piece.

It tells an engaging story. When a customer buys Kamiya Furniture, it will likely be the only piece in their space that consists of purely wood material. Thinking critically in this way, Kamiya challenges himself and to look at each design with an original angle. The process emphasizes the level of artistry that it takes to get two pieces to fit just right.

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Because he focuses his time on building a portfolio of pieces he is passionate about, most of Kamiya’s work is not commissioned. A typical day in his life involves the fatherly duties of making sandwiches and working through math homework with his kids, freelance graphic design work, and constructing furniture at his backyard studio in High Point. The city’s history as a center for millwork and fabric has set the scene for a growing designer-maker space and the biannual High Point Market—the largest furniture trade show in the world. Kamiya exhibits his work at High Point Market each year through the Mill Collective, a platform for a group of twenty small, talented furniture workshops and design studios to showcase their work.

To Kamiya, his work represents much more than personal creation. It extends to a larger movement. His Instagram handle, @furnitureisart, encapsulates its central message. In a utilitarian society, Kamiya believes that it is hard for individuals to equate something as inherently useful as furniture to a form of expression. In his own words, he dreams of “elevat[ing] the opportunity for handmade, slow-crafted furniture to be considered art.” Kamiya’s aspiration is evident in his Modern Craft philosophy by emphasizing a sophisticated design approach combined with the time, energy, and technique to build furniture that is made to last.

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Modern Craft will emphasize a modern, sophisticated design approach that is combined with the true craftsmanship, the time, energy, and technique that it takes to build something that is made to last.

PHOTOGRAPHY Irene Zhou WRITING Olalla Duato

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THE JUNGLE

BLYTHE DAVIS CREATIVE WRITING

THE JUNGLE

I’m leading the way when the Jungle flashes. A wall of white light blinds me, and I stagger back, pushing both of us to the ground. In the instant that the blaze fills my entire field of vision, the inside of my head throbs, not exactly with pain, but a shooting, rhythmic sensation that erases any residual knowledge I might have had of which way is up and which way is down. The pulses of pressure are so strong that I lose all proprioception, and not just that, but control over my limbs, and I can’t tell what parts of me are touching the ground and what parts are in the air, and I writhe without regard to my surroundings, trying to find my feet and the ground, and my breath gets lost in my chest, and my heart is pumping from all corners of my body. It feels like my body has come to a sudden halt while my brain is still traveling forward—like tripping over a curb in slow motion: the surprise at the instantaneous change in environment, the awareness that you’re going to fall and it’s going to hurt, the instinctual shooting out of the hands and protection of the head, all in all, dread realized, but all stretched out, giving me plenty of time to contemplate my own inhabitation of a currently helpless body.

THE JUNGLE IS DARK. The mass of ropes swinging from the ceiling of limbs could be vines, or they could be snakes. Seems like the whole place is hissing, or that could just be the mist coiling around the greenery, the tree trunks, my legs. I haven’t been able to tell the time of day since I entered the Jungle; the branches are too thick and grow too high to let through more than a few wandering rays of light that might be from the sun or from the moon, or from the glowing eyes of some creature many feet up in the air. I too am wandering, have been wandering for some time, and have grown accustomed to the crack of twigs and moist leaves on the ground.

Later, we start digging. We start digging because we can’t think of a better way to leave. Neither of us can see a thing, so walking normally is out of the question, leaving us with up and down as the only possible directions, and up means the trees and the trees mean the dangling shadowy things.

So we dig.

The air is too saturated with oxygen. Breathing through my skin, I feel amphibian. My body is sapping up the heavy humidity, pulling my lungs down, slowing me. I am no longer walking, but I am not quite swimming either. Hung in this place between land and water, day and night, animal and plant, I am outside my body, I am drifting through the canopy, I am burrowing through the wet of the earth, I am weaving weightlessly through the rubber trees. I don’t know where I am, I am forgetting where I have been, and I have no sense of where I am going. Am I going anywhere?

The process goes quickly enough at first, but soon we hit the roots. The roots of the Jungle are knotted and thick and twist together to form one colossal mat running across the entire floor of the forest. Sweat runs down onto my palms, causing my hands to slip on the already wet roots. I just can’t seem to get a grip on anything below the first inch or two of dirt.

The sweat isn’t just on my palms. It’s on the back of my neck, in my hair, on the backs of my knees, even inside my ears, dripping down my face and getting in my mouth.

It’s not getting darker, but my eyes aren’t adjusting. The constant tripping and heavy breathing are disorienting and leave me nauseated. In the tenebrous hollow among the trees we walk, all sounds seem amplified, not so that the Jungle is loud, but so that each noise, although unidentifiable, is distinguishable. In a way, what is made invisible by the darkness is made visible again by the surrounding soundscape.

Eventually I give up yanking chunks of the roots away and instead stand up and turn to stomping, hoping to break them, but my feet only get tangled up. I cry a bit, maybe from the exhaustion or maybe just from the sting of sweat in my eyes.

Increasingly desperate, I begin to gnaw at the roots, which try to ensnare my tongue, but I yank at them with my teeth as the image of tearing at flesh and separating skin from muscle comes to mind. Before I think about spitting the root out, I’ve swallowed it, and my animal muscle memory is swallowing me, and I am becoming my teeth.

But this aural visibility also manages to magnify my sense of primal bump-in-the-night anxiety. I think I would rather see nothing and hear these noises less acutely than see silhouettes that seem to move almost imperceptibly accompanied by a detailed and analyzable spectrum of sounds.

Every step we take, crunching twigs, scattering insects, sinking into the muddy forest floor, is an orchestral movement. Every slip of a snake somewhere in the trees is so sharp that I feel I can hear the individual scales scraping across the bark. We hold hands in the murk of the Jungle and step synchronously, understanding without saying that the more steps we take separately, the more overwhelming the noises will become. We take turns walking in front.

In the moment that I center myself in my incisors, my entire body falls into line, anchored in itself, sending out a hand to rip out the roots and a knee to stay upright, and this time it works. As in a dance learned long ago, the psyche merges with the soma and the soma merges with the ground, and my thoughts and actions are indistinguishable and immediate.

My hand pierces the bottom of the mat. Below, a beam of sun is visible.

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sofía salazar.

A studio replete with art hung for every perspective. Faces and figures in textile, oil pastel, bright, blocky colors and thin white thread on black cloth. Faces and figures that express every bit of complex serenity, sensuality, confidence, and doubt as the humanity they imitate.

Sofía Salazar is a Latina textile designer and artist working in London. Her work is a unique expression of multiple modes of artistic expression. The aquiline noses and rounded chins of Classical Greek statuary seem to feel as at home in line-stitched embroidery as they have in marble; they sit next to and blend in with disarranged cubist faces that somehow express the same ancient elegance of their sisters. Individual, inexpressibly beautiful elements drawn from Fauvisme, Art Deco, Bauhaus, and Ancient Rome mingle together in brilliant primaries and stately black and whites.

Existing somewhere between couture, craft, and sculpture, Salazar’s work expresses an emotional complexity and comprehension of form that sets her apart as an individual creator, and has earned her upwards of 212 thousand followers on instagram (@_hiedra_).

I sat down and asked Sofía about her style, ideas, and identity, as well as her thoughts on the world of couture and what inspires her creations.

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Nicholas Chrapliwy: How would you describe your artistic style and what kind of categories or genres do you use to describe your own work to someone else?

I, however, really like the immediacy of things like architecture and textiles and fabric and couture because people use these things as points of reference, to make choices about who they are and how they want other people to perceive them.

Sofía Salazar: I think the primary thing is that I’m a designer and most of my work has a lot to do with design thinking, having a problem, or keeping an objective in mind. I like art history a lot. I like to see what comes out of me when I put myself through different filters. I like Art Deco, I like Bauhaus, I like Impressionism, Fauvisme, Cubism, and I like ancient things. If you know art history, I think you will be able to recognize different art themes in my work.

S: Those mediums are part of your life in a more accessible way. It’s not making it unimportant but it is making it a bit less serious so you can consider it closer to you. And I do this because I have to do this — it’s a niche that I have to fill.

I want the things that I make to surrround me, so that they can change, so that they can suffer life the same way we do.

N: One of the things that drew me to your Instagram page were the sets of faces that you often embroider, which either have the features of a Classical Greek sculpture or sometimes depict more-Cubist disarranged faces that you express through line drawings.

“ I WANT THE THINGS THAT I MAKE TO SURROUND ME, SO THAT THEY CAN CHANGE, SO THAT THEY CAN SUFFER LIFE THE SAME WAY WE DO. ”

S: I’m very obsessed with the idea of what’s beautiful and what’s not beautiful. What’s maybe broken or what’s maybe low quality. You know, exploring the bad versions can be amazing. I’m trying to find the unifying force — what’s the common theme when I’m going through different periods of time? What do I carry forward with me for my future explorations?

N: You spoke about which genres you draw from and what direction you push them in, but what is the driving and essential idea that you put into your work, or that drives a majority of your creative impulse?

S: I was thinking about this question, and I don’t know if you can actually see any of what I’m going to say but what I’m constantly working toward is trying to challenge the things that we’ve been taught, [like] Absolute Truth. To challenge what we think death is, what we think happiness is — should we be happy all the time, are we we ever happy? At the end of your life’s work, did you support your own objectives or support the ones that you were told? We’ve been taught that things like that are just natural in us and in our behavior. I like to challenge those patterns, and the way we see people who live different lifestyles. I like to often think, where does it come from, why do I have a problem with this, why is this making me feel uncomfortable, or am I feeling uncomfortable because I was taught that this is an issue? This is not how it should be. That’s the thought process behind the work, but I don’t know if you can see it or not. At the same time I’m always aiming for beauty. I’m trying not to be inclusive to minority groups. I’m trying to check myself. At the same time, I try not to preach.

N: When you ask yourself which direction to go in, or how to push the genres that you’re working with a little bit further, what is your thought process?

S: I think you can see that with my embroidery, I love it because it has a texture — it’s totally 3D. It’s not that I hate traditional embroidery, but I don’t like the things that it’s been associated with. I don’t like grandmotherly embroidery, not just because it’s been underestimated but because it’s been related to women only. So when I try to think about it in particular, I try to think about what I like about it despite what’s been associated with it. And for me, embroidery was a way to translate my drawings into 3D objects because I like to be surrounded by what I make. I want to be able to touch it, and there was a point where my drawings weren’t good enough to be just drawings. There was something missing, and for me, embroidery was a good technique to achieve that missing thing.

N: I appreciate how you challenge those who view your art. You ask that they embrace strangeness and the bridging of genres — and embrace innovation, of converting a more-classical form into art deco or an embroidered form.

It’s a whole different dimension when people wear my creations. They become part of their life and become lived-in — it’s not going to be pristine or protected as some art often is. It’s not going to be stuck on a wall and part of someone’s memories. Instead, you can just take my creations off the wall and bring them around with you.

S: And sometimes it’s like the people in the art world consider me too crafty, and for people in the craft world my art is too snobby, so I am in a very uncomfortable position as a maker because I’m playing into different categories.

N: I agree — sometimes I have conversations with other Duke students about art and we have this point of conflict where they focus on art that’s very removed, almost intentionally.

N: And do you think it’s hard for the established art world to understand more than just one kind of artist?

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Part of my job is to consider that I have an audience that I have to provide for. Sometimes I have to find the balance between giving the audience what they are expecting from me and giving the audience what I want to make right now.

I think you have to work with the two versions of yourself because at the end of the day I do depend on an audience who responds to my work.

S: I think that many are not very comfortable with what I make. I think many are bound to an old idea of art, of art that is purely visual. But I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about being able to create, being able to wake up and make whatever I feel like making.

N: You’re not just trying to make art for a gallery necessarily but rather are making art because you enjoy the freedom of being able to get up and make whatever you want. So what drives and inspires you to make the things that you make?

N: And speaking of your person and styles, especially in terms of how you have to respond to the need to feed an audience, and also maintain what you want to do yourself — what parts of your identity do you put into your art, and how much of yourself do you put into your art? Do you reserve some things and hold back, or are you an open book?

S: I’ve been thinking about that. I use my practice as a way to express things that I can’t express any other way.

I make because I have to make, because I have a need to make — I have an itch that is only solved when I sit down to make. It’s like an exercise in that it has a very practical side to it. The satisfaction that I get when I make something that I like — it’s the rush that I look forward to, the reward.

There are different reasons. It could be that I have an idea and think of something, or I’m watching a film and come up with something that I can express and want to express. I’ll design the project around these ideas an inspirations.

S: I think it’s very easy to know what I’m thinking about in my work. There’s a lot of my work that revolves around beauty and gender, but also art history, second hand books — the things inspire me. I’m not the most optimistic person, but I try not to get dark. I think the past two years of my work have to do a lot with me taking my art seriously and also not too seriously at all, and jumping between one and the other.

When I’m working, I am the most serious that I can be — this is my work, this is what I want to do with my life. But once it’s over, I think I don’t care too much about it. I’m not changing the world. This doesn’t matter too much. Where we are as a people worries me more than what I just made.

Of course there’s a lot of me in my work.

There are many times as a designer that I sit down and sketch, not designing solely for the purpose of selling my creations.

I try to consider whether I can reproduce my design, or if it’s going to be something unique. I think of my buyers and think of the quantity I need to create also. Of course these questions play into my world because I need to make my living. In a way, because I need to make, I’ll also use that energy to try and make some money as well.

The same questions I’ve been asking myself are there in my work. And whether I go back or not, again, I try not to get too deeply into what frustrates me about the world and what really brings me down. I have issues with how life is not fair and ask questions like “can I be happy when someone is suffering, or when I have so many privileges that not everyone has?” If I get too deep into these, I can’t make art because it doesn’t matter as much as those questions. In that sense it’s very hedonistic, it brings me pleasure, and I try to enjoy it as much as possible. At the same time, I’d rather work with issues like beauty standards than with how unfair the world is, or what we’re doing wrong. In that sense I do think I hold back because it upsets me too much, and then I can’t work if I’m too upset. I’m more serious about my work ethic. In a way, I like that I can joke about my work. It is important in the sense that it’s what brings me joy.

“ I MAKE BECAUSE I HAVE TO MAKE, BECAUSE I HAVE A NEED TO MAKE — I HAVE AN ITCH THAT IS ONLY SOLVED WHEN I SIT DOWN TO MAKE. ” About the admiration of my peers, I think that was my main motivation when I started. Trying to impress someone was a great motivation too, to try to get someone to see my work, whether it was a painter or a designer or someone I went to school with. It was a nice motivation to impress someone who I considered much higher than me. At the same time, if you’re trying to impress them it’s like saying “I feel that I can reach your level.” So right now, that is the motivating force I use the least. It can be too much pressure, or it makes me go in a direction that does not really represent me. It’s not working for me right now, but it used to be a source of motivation.

And also what I don’t want to consider is that it matters more than it does. I don’t want to be pretentious. It’s what makes me happy, and it’s what makes my living, and it’s what I need to do. It’s absolutely honest and sincere, but it’s not changing the world.

And you can also consider that I have to make because I have an audience that is waiting for me. Out of all the recent motivations, this is the one that I hate the most.

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N: Who inspires you in? In couture, for example, do you have designers that you really admire or ones that you take a really strong position against?

For me it expresses the state of having many emotions at the same time. While feeling like I’m getting pretty good, I also feel doubt, feel like I could lose everything, or feel imposter syndrome. I work on characters that can express that doubt.

S: I don’t find this question easy, and I’m not too proud of the answer. Even though I love clothing as an object, I don’t feel like I’m part of the fashion industry. The fashion industry for me is always very toxic. It made me feel very observed as an individual, constantly asking myself what I looked like, what I was offering — it was very tough for me. I struggle the waste associated with the industry as well as the conditions of the workers and how they are being treated. While I very much admire some pieces of clothing, I’m not looking to be part of the fashion industry. I have a favorite film by Bin Benders, and it’s about his musings about cities, clothing and Yashimi Namoto Yamamoto. I loved it, and I identify with the way he made it, and I also admire everyone right now in the fashion world who is trying to make a change and overcome an obstacle and trying to be fairer or trying to be more ethical.

N: What would you say to Duke students who are interested in textiles, in craftsmanship and making, and in the fashion industry? What kind of advice or information would you want to give to a student who’s interested in this area?

Well, I think my answer may be obvious. I would say persistence. I would suggest working on reading and looking at some films. Further, I think my work lives with me all the time. I know this sounds obsessive, but I think it is good to give up a lot of time to make it work. Sometimes it can be very hard to compare yourself to others, so this is an exercise in making myself. I think about what I’m being shown by others. And I think it’s very easy to feel inferior when you compare yourself. But it’s really a lot of hard work and doing things all the time and giving everything. There is a lot of balance in my life — I find that my work is my life and my life is my work.

Otherwise I admire other makers like Margiela, but I’m not looking at fashion designers because, in my practice, I don’t want to be influenced by them. If I look at them too much, for example, I tend to make my work the same. Even if I’m aware that I’m doing it. So I try to get inspiration from someplace else. I’m embarrassed about that, but I know myself.

“ THERE IS A LOT OF BALANCE IN MY LIFE — I FIND THAT MY WORK IS MY LIFE AND MY LIFE IS MY WORK. ” And I don’t know if that’s good or not, but that’s how I feel.

And about advising people who want to [go into design], it is important to see yourself as doing something good. And about the textiles, I don’t feel like there is one thing in particular that I represent. Even though it’s what I studied and like knowing about, I also like knowing about sculpture and metalwork. In a way it’s about being passionate about what you’re making, or it’s not worth it. I think if you don’t take care of your mental health, then you can’t do anything. For me it is about pleasure. I go to museums because I like to feel inspired by them. Other than maybe posting regularly and replying (those things I do because I have to), I’m using my life to make, and I enjoy that. I think it’s important to enjoy whatever you’re making or you should be doing something else.

N: What kind of emotions are you trying to express in your work? When you think about the sort of emotional provocation that your work has for your audience, how would you talk about it and what sort of intentions do you put into the work for what you want it to evoke emotionally?

S: That’s very hard for me to know. Of course I’m aiming for something based on the observation of trying to be at least a bit kind to one another. And at the same time, there’s a sensuality or a provocation or strength from my characters.

Many of them are very secure in their position. They feel like they own the place but at the same time, there’s doubt in some of them. Anyone can recognize the depiction of how you can be weak, and feel like the owner of everything, and at the same time not feel so great at night and be very anxious in some cases like. I think there’s that duality in that note of how everyone has doubt. There’s no right answer.

There isn’t a lot of security in our lives. I like to express how we all feel up and down.

You know the question of money used to be more important for me, but I’m not aiming for a life of luxury. My luxuries are being able to travel and to buy what I need in an art store.

My luxury is to be able to decide my inspirations and ultimately pursue them.

On a lighter note, you know my characters are doubting but are also always flirting. They are a bit violent sometimes, and are very strong women, very seductive. I think they are great characters. When you take away all the ugliness and all the patriarchy, many of them are very strong, and at the same time very sensual.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Sofía Salazar WRITING Nicholas Chrapliwy

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PHOTOGRAPHY Jack Muraika WRITING Stephanie Cutler MODELS Izzy Bank, Erin Marsh, Alex Miley, Alex Ragh & Nicole Presley

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Linen floats, catching wind as pockets of light refract.

Velvet folds thick, resolute and unmoved.

Cotton resides in - between, waving in the gusts or clinging tight to its figure. beneath.

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Balancing form and function, designers pay close attention to the movement of fabrics,

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their interaction with the body, and the sum of labor, design, and time that results in an article of clothing.

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Clothing is often relegated

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to two positions: a practical state of being or heralded as a work of art, consigned to a museum’s glass display.

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Both are restrictive, inhibiting the potential of clothing.

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Through this piece, FORM explores a m e t

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as clothing moves from static to dynamic, from its intended context to transcending it.

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Primavera Perla

an international jewelry renaissance

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Most people may only dream of selling their local products abroad, but I was lucky enough to have my start on the reverse: I started selling in Hong Kong before making grounds in Korea.

A thick gold military chain, woven together in a strong metallic braid. An additional tag, fully adorned with crystals, hangs off one of its links, and next to it, a topaz charm.

On another necklace, pins and cross-shaped charms in a bright neon yellow alternate with large pearls, bisecting their smooth softness at every link on the base chain that strings them together. The jewelry, cold and hot against the table, is a constellation of pale jewels, gold chains, pearls, and hollowed onyx cubes. Each familiar piece or part comes with an inevitable turning point of unexpected color or arrangement, inhibiting any one label of classic or offbeat.

STUDIO 6IX’s collections are a constant movement along this two-point spectrum, melding characteristics between a simple timelessness and a restive need to experiment.

The classicality in STUDIO 6IX’s jewelry perhaps comes from founder Park Eunkyung’s design roots in working with her parents’ old jewelry: in redesigning their vintage pieces with a modern twist, Park reckoned with her interest in jewelry design and absorbed elements that now render her pieces perennial today. A Fine Arts Painting major originally, she realized that she had always harbored a latent interest in fashion, and felt dissatisfied with the styles of jewelry that she was seeing in stores, which she thought were still falling short in terms of their purpose to finalize and complete one’s outfit. Thus, with the help of her friends who were already working in the fashion industry, she started Studio 6ix.

Though STUDIO 6IX is based in South Korea, its first market was actually in Hong Kong. During Seoul Fashion Week 2013, Park came into contact with a buyer from Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong, who gave her the opportunity to fully launch her brand and sell her pieces through a substantial, moderated channel.

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A combination of colors and contrasts pops into my head, and I don’t know how to explain it, but the silhouette comes naturally after.

From there, I focus on the materials that would go along with the colors and the silhouette in my head.

“Most people may only dream of selling their local products abroad, but I was lucky enough to have my start on the reverse: I started selling in Hong Kong before making grounds in Korea.” Park says of her surprising start.

When asked about how she furnishes the unlikely combinations of neon pins and pearls, Park returns to her Fine Arts background and her natural sensitivity to colors, “Usually, a combination of colors/contrast pops into my head and, I don't know how to explain it, but the silhouette comes naturally after. From there, I focus on the materials that would go along with the colors and the silhouette in my head,” Park sees the improbability of the combinations she uses as a core ethos to her brand, “One of the defining characteristics of STUDIO 6IX is the combination of flamboyant colors and distinct shapes/materials, and that's not by accident.

The result is a design marque that fluidly glides between old elegance and newfangled edge. Between the sharp finishes of her crystal-encrusted charms and the dulcet lyricality of an effortless pearl and gold chain, Park dances between languid aesthetic norms that have long been prescribed to jewelry. Rather than suppressing the voice of each individual piece for the sake of fulfilling their complementary role as a complement to an outfit, Park isn’t afraid for each to own their silhouettes and carve out distinctive identities.

PHOTOGRAPHPHPHOY Stephanie Cut PHOTOGRAPHY Stephanie Cutler WRITING Irene Zhou & Alyssa Shin MODELS Angie Anaeme, Bryant Lewis, Muazzam Khan, Ben Schiff & Kira Upin

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foundations Today, we find ourselves amidst an environment saturated with visual stimulation. Evermore connected and challenged by what we observe both consciously and subconsciously, design becomes a form of heightened thought and responsibility. The buildings we spend our lives in present opportunities to influence not only the way we interact with structures, but also the way we connect with one another. As president and founder of Vines Architecture, a Raleigh-based firm, Victor Vines shares his philosophies and insights on what makes design appealing, effective, and most importantly, timelessly impactful.

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Mindy Wu: Could you give us a little bit about your background, and how it led to where you are now?

M: What led you to pick architecture out of all the different possibilities of design?

Victor Vines: I’m from a small town called Pinetops, North Carolina. It was a rural town—very small. I did not have, at a young age, exposure to architecture, not as much as some others in more urban areas. I stayed outside, tinkering and putting things together.

V: As an architect, you still have interests and passions for other aspects of design. We’re an architectural firm, but I spend most of my day preparing reports that are basically graphic design. A lot of architects will tell you that they have a love and a passion for furniture design or product design. The reason for that is that architecture, out of all of the design disciplines, usually takes the longest to get to the final product. Our average project takes about four or five years from conception to someone walking into the building. That’s a pretty long time. These other design disciplines have a shorter window.

That’s why some architects migrate more to residential architecture versus commercial, because the house doesn’t take as long. I’ve always liked to do these other types of design, but I’ve always enjoyed bigger projects too, bigger impacts on an environment. It forces you to take it pretty seriously.

I first learned what an architect was when I was about six years old, watching The Brady Bunch. The father was an architect. Later, in high school, there weren’t a lot of art classes at my high school. I would go to the community college at night and take classes like photography, drafting, sewing.

I wasn’t taking them for credits, but just to learn things.

When I was in high school, in the guidance counselor’s office, I was looking at a manual, at engineers—chemical, mechanical—and this person came in and bumped into me, and I dropped the book. When I picked the book back up, the pages flipped to D, and that was design. That’s how I discovered design was a natural study. Then within design, architecture follows. I applied to the College of Design at NC State. I applied to the School of Architecture at Rhode Island and one other I can’t remember. I got accepted into all three, but the year I was going off to college, I lost my father to leukemia. So I decided that I probably should stay a little closer, at least in-state. That’s why I chose to go to College of Design.

Ayesham Khan: How would you say you craft your vision, your project, given that it does take so long, with different challenges and frustrations?

V: Time is usually not the issue—it’s the clients. We have to be hired by someone to do something. It’s a very personal thing that you’re creating, but you’re creating it for someone else. You have to remind yourself of that, and hopefully remind them that you’re doing that for them. You have to have a flexible process.

M: What was the start of your firm like?

“IT’S A VERY PERSONAL THING THAT YOU’RE CREATING... ”

V: I had basically been running another firm, as a partner there. At the time, I felt very strongly that I knew all the things not to do. One of the challenges was that the firm grew pretty fast. All of a sudden, I felt like what we had started—which was probably what Vines is now, about a 20 person design firm—tripled. I started spending all my time at board meetings, talking about all these problems and not doing architecture. They’ve grown into this big business, this big company.

When we start projects, we always identify what we call “driving principles.” These are the goals that we establish both for ourselves and for the client. The more difficult ones are when people are all over the place. And if we don’t believe that our mind is there, usually we don’t pursue them or don’t ask to be considered for them. But you learn over time that with those guiding principles in place, four or five years doesn’t turn out to feel so long. Out of a four year project, probably the first year is the envisioning and creation of what it is. Then, the second year is documenting and drawing for the contractor, and then the third and fourth year are actually building. The actual creation of what we’re doing is about half that time, and the other half is trying to ensure that they build it the way that we’ve envisioned.

So, when I departed, I told myself a few things. Whatever I do, it’ll never be over 20 people. Because once you do that, you just start breaking it up into pieces. And secondly, I think it was wanting to return to enjoying the design, not just managing the company.

M: How do you define design?

V: I think it’s that broader aspect of creating. I believe that it’s any process of creating something from nothing. I believe that everything that we think about and as relation to our physical environment is design—someone designed this cup. Someone designed this building. Graphic design, graphics, industrial product design, architecture, buildings, industrial, automobiles. Once you start narrowing down your interests, that’s when you get into these specializations—I’m going to study architecture, study

A: What do you think influenced your vision?

V: I think not growing up in an environment with an established period or style of architecture. I don’t have what I consider a certain style. Most of my work is rooted in the site initially where it is. I know some people will say there’s an architect that they find very influential, and they draw inspiration from that person’s work.

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There are architects whose work I admire, but I’m not sure that I think about it that way, because I didn’t grow up like that. The influence that drove me was the privilege of having the ability and talent to actually create.

That gave us the freedom to say, “Let’s take up a more contemporary and modern approach instead of trying to build a 1940s museum shop.” I think what makes that building successful architecturally is the juxtaposition of old and new together.

When I was in school and college, I did very well—top of my class—but one of the motivators was that for the first two years, I really did think somebody was going to tap me on the shoulder one day and say it’s time to go. Because it’s a very different environment shift, from where I grew up to where I am.

M: How can architects be more mindful?

V: I don’t think you’ll ever stop the development. What architects need to be careful about is scale. When this new work comes into certain communities, people try to maximize square footage on real estate. The original structures have that issue because there was more land; if you built a structure or office building or house, there was a certain scale. Things were low, sprawling. That space between was probably more important than the things.

M: How would you say your outlook on or vision of design has developed over the years?

V: Less is more. You somehow feel at a younger age that you need to be more expressive and you need to be more.

You’re trying to create things that will get attention. As a younger designer, you start thinking that to do that is through expression, whether it’s color or form. As you become a more experienced designer, you start realizing that for things to be beautiful and noticed, it doesn’t have to be all of this. I was talking to a couple of designers yesterday about a project we’re working on in Greensboro right now.

We have two concepts that we’re developing. I call one Versace and one Prada because one of them is expressive and eccentric, and then this other one is calm and sedated, and I think that one will be more successful over time because it’s not trying to be a piece of a certain period. Restraint actually is better as opposed to unnecessary expression.

The trick is how you do that simple, beautiful thing that still gets noticed without it becoming boring, forgotten, mundane. When you look at a black and white photograph, there’s something captivating. What if I don’t see all the clutter? What if I see just the forms or the silhouettes?

Now, you come in that same environment and because of the value of the land, you can’t afford to not put more on it. All of a sudden, you now are being asked to quadruple the square footage on the second piece of property. Now, you get these tall, bulky things, and it looks like a hot mess.

You could put square footage in there, but scale and massive form has a lot to do with how it finds itself in that place, so you don’t end up with this congestion of structures where nothing relates to anything. That takes effort and sensitivity, but I think scale is the key to how all this comes together.

A: Do you ever feel strange about replacing a building that is now archaic, but was somebody’s back then?

V: I think it depends on who the architect was. We were asked to do a renovation of a building in Atlanta, which was a Marcel Breuer, and that was tough because we fundamentally did not believe it should be dealt with. Breuer’s are very brutalist—they’re basically concrete bunkers. It was a downtown library, and when it was designed, it was a repository for books. That’s not what it’s used for today, so it was a challenge where we were being asked to modify a signature building done by a very respected, prominent architect.

A: You have designed a lot of civically oriented delegates, like the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. I went there, and it was really interesting that the original lunch counter where the sit-in took place was preserved within this modern museum space. How did you go about the process of building a space that’s modern but also preserves the site of history?

Our decision was to modify the inside, but never the outside.

When it comes to those types of projects, you have to be really respectful. Restraint is key. As long as you’re improving, it’s okay.

V: When we first started that project, we were actually the second architect. The first architect was hired and was dismissed. The building was in pretty bad shape.

M: Could you talk a little bit about the process that went into the Durham Public Library and the inspirations behind it?

They kept talking about preservation of artifacts like the lunch counter. I said, “Look, the most precious artifact you have is not in the building. It is the building. That’s what needs to be preserved.” That turned the project into a restoration project.

V: That was another story that started out as a very insular project. It was all about warehousing books. Sectionally, the building was like pancake floors. We went with a strategy where you break the floors, offset them, and bring light down through the middle so people can use an interior core.

That orients them, and they can understand how to navigate through the library.

Once we got the building restored, there were some parts of it that we felt were critical to either replace or repair.

Since we were restoring it into a museum, those new programs, galleries, offices on the upper floors, administrative areas, museum shops became projects within the project.

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That project’s all about how you navigate from when you get out of your car, up to the building, through the building, back down. It’s almost like a museum sequence. Whether it’s quiet space, whether you’re checking out a book, playing games, whether you’re trying to contemplate your space, it was about taking a building that is very singular and breaking it up into navigable pieces.

There were some naysayers: “Why is the county putting all this money into the library?” Some people have a tendency to think of libraries as old-school. But people don’t go to libraries anymore just to check a book out. They’re community places.

A: How would you suggest navigating the balance between wanting your firm to be lucrative and wanting it to be meaningful, especially for young people?

M: Do you have a favorite part of the library? Are you happy with it?

V: Being able to earn and provide for yourself is important. But I’m a firm believer that you have to find your passion and put it first. You have to understand that whatever it is you’re doing, you’re going to be doing it every day for a while. If you’re not passionate about it, I think that’s kind of a long day. And that passion can grow. It doesn’t have to be instantaneous.

Over time, if you’re passionate and you’re good at what you’re doing, I think these other things come along pretty quickly.

V: I’m very happy with it. That project was originally envisioned as a 6 million dollar renovation—a light touch. Go in and redo the carpet and that kind of stuff. We were hired and they asked us to basically revisit the program. I said, “What do you really want here? Do you want this to be a destination?” “Yes, yes, yes.” “Then why are we doing this as a light touch?” So our proposal was to do a complete renovation.

A: What are you working on right now that excites you?

It’s going to take about three years. It’s not going to cost 6 million dollars. It’s going to cost 43.8 million dollars. And probably for a year, we had not been told for sure that they were going to find the money. We took a huge risk. Part of the reason it worked out is that people were able to envision an opportunity to design what we did. When people can start visualizing something, they can get behind it. Once that funding was approved, it was a matter of delivering.

V: We’re relocating the office. We’re kind of rebranding ourselves. The thing that I’m creating more than anything right now is a reinvention of who the firm is and what we will be focused on for the next ten years. That mainly has to do with my high level of confidence with the people I work with. Two years ago, I made the decision to empower some of those people to take on more, and they have done that. Sometimes it’s not so much what you do, it’s what you don’t do. What you’re willing to trust somebody else to do.

I love the fact that it’s downtown. It’s a building that seems designed in relation to the experience of DPAC, but not everybody can afford to go to DPAC. This is a public library, and everybody, no matter what their income level is, no matter who they are, gets to experience that architecture.

As related to projects, as strange as it sounds, this Bertie County thing—this whole Lost Colony thing—has turned out to be pretty intriguing right now. I think it could change the whole direction of the project.

M: How do you navigate the balance of aesthetics and function, and how is figure a component of your architecture?

A: What are your goals for the future?

V: I think the form of the buildings should be a result of the function. There are a couple of big moves on [the Durham Public Library] project. One is the stair interior and one is the canopy. Both may appear to be more form-driven, but they’re actually function-driven. The form is just a result of it.

V: I am most interested in continuing to preserve the culture we have. We have a very special group of people in my perspective. We’re going to start a bioethics research building at John Hopkins University in honor of Henrietta Lacks. We have been working with her family, which has been absolutely awesome. We finished advanced planning back in February, and now we’re just waiting to start the schematics in July. I’m personally signed up for that, so I’ll be spending time in Baltimore.

A lot of it has to do with tricking you with stairs. You probably can’t find the elevator in the building. It’s in there, but it’s hard to find, because we want people to navigate in this space. And unlike a lot of libraries, we allow the client to go outside. There are balconies, green roofs, outdoor play spaces. The auditorium is not your traditional auditorium. When you go into this big dark box, you notice it’s full of glass and the seats pull back. It’s a very versatile space.

We’ve been working with a group called the Berman Institute. It’s about the spirit of the building and what the experience will be, and we’re fusing [Lacks’s] whole story into the building, which is very challenging because the story is not all rosy. There’s been a huge injustice done. And so the enemy is the hospital, the one who hired us. The reason that the project will be special is that if it is successful, it will hopefully help begin to mend these pretty broken relationships. And that will all be based on how successful the building is. That’ll be the next five years.

There are tons of families from Raleigh that come to Durham because of the programs, so this space will support all that.

It’s over several hundred thousand square feet. It will open in April, and I think it’ll be really good for the community.

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FOUNDATIONS

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FOUNDATIONS

PHOTOGRAPHY Sophia Liu WRITING Mindy Wu & Ayesham Khan

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THE SUN ALSO SETS

The Sun Also Sets PHOTOGRAPHY Jack Muraika WRITING Advaitha Anne

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Stroll east on Raleigh’s Hargett St. as the sun sets, and one might glimpse a green glow at odds with the golden sky, cast by an unassuming brick establishment off S. Wilmington St. Upon a closer look, the light beckons approach to The Architect Bar and Social House’s narrow door. Enter, and a staircase guides one to the bustling second floor, housing The Architect. Although the pop music and yellow lights on the dancefloor suggest a traditional nightlife destination, the green light cuts through The Architect and hints at the presence of something else: The Green Light speakeasy.

Since its conception in 2013, the idea of The Green Light has been carefully cultivated by owner Jonathan Seelbinder, transforming an old architect’s bare overflow room into an experimental speakeasy. For Seelbinder, every detail is personal.

In the entrance of The Architect, historic blueprints of the building line the staircase, while the modern artworks framing The Green Light’s entrance belong to Allan Murphy, a local artist and friend.

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THE SUN ALSO SETS

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THE SUN ALSO SETS

Behind the two-panel, soundproofed bookcase in The Architect, the Prohibition-inspired bar glimmers in the light. However, manager Jon “JB” Blackman hints, “You’ve got to come when the sun goes down.”

Rich leather seats, marble tables, and red vinyl bar chairs complement the velvet baroque wallpaper.

The Edison lights above the bar illuminate the deep wooden counter and open cabinets with a rich glow.

It’s obvious that this space is no contemporary bar. The Green Light recreates the illicit charm of a traditional Southern speakeasy and gives guests a tranquil night of whimsical, yesteryear glamour.

To preserve the atmosphere, during business hours there is a strict 32-seat policy. Select reservations are taken through a private number, given out only by the executive staff to dedicated customers. Everybody else, regardless of their background, must rely on the lucky sighting of the green light indicating open seating. Intimacy is a treasured commodity, which the Green Light offers in abundance.

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THE SUN ALSO SETS

When the sun sets, the room twinkles with young couples socializing, friends reminiscing, businessmen unwinding and professionals relaxing and transitioning after a long day’s work. The cocktails, prepared at the bar with house-made syrups and a collection of liquors stored in a hanging bird cage, include original creations as well as iconic recipes. Whether it’s the classic Jungle Bird, a Tiki drink of fresh orange and whiskey, or the Eastern Medicine, a rose-tinted cocktail with hints of habanero tincture, guests are encouraged to be curious and adventure away from the expected.

Bartenders are also constantly experimenting; their fresh experiments are displayed near the end of the bar, including the multi-toned Ready When You Are fusing mezcal, dry curacao, cranberry and Aperol flavors. In a bustling city, The Green Light provides a sanctuary for those who believe in the stories of the underground rumrunners and invisible secrets, appreciate the novelties, and immerse themselves into this reinvented ode to Prohibition.

At the end of the Green Light’s menu lies a tale of a policeman, who, in 1926, was enchanted by a green light outside an architect’s office, but was unable to wander beyond the bookcase. As in the story, the Green Light is open only for those who have the imagination to make it to the top of the staircase, drawn to the green light in the corner – for them, the trip down the rabbit hole has just begun.

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Barbican Estates ...

PHOTOGRAPHY Advaitha Anne WRITING Bryan Rusch

BARBICAN ESTATES

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Speculation for the post-COVID-19 world is running rampant. Recent articles include perspectives on the social and economic fallout, blunders and successes, and medical and governmental reform. However, there is another type of article that has been surfacing: photography of this empty moment.

Spaces that were once buzzing with tourists and the daily lives of millions are now stripped of occupants. These spaces are in isolation themselves. Pictures of Florence jump out of the screen like some long-lost print collection.

The streets of China, empty but for a single soul, seem to signal the fruition of a distant architect’s vision, rendered real for the first time.

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Yet, some spaces have been conceived as bastions of design and humanity, enhancing the character of each. The idea of insular communities has been experimented with for millennia – the frontier, the enclave, the garden neighborhood – all now transported into each of our own living rooms. A place where the public and private lose distinct boundaries.

Just north of the Thames is one such bastion: the Barbican Estate. The skyscrapers and monolithic residential blocks cut the slick landscape with a cement that wears its history, textured and weathered. The verticals and horizontals of the buildings are mirrored in every nook of its construction. Wandering its halls, one follows the whims of those lines. Catching a glimpse into the complex, the balance of those monolithic, straight-backed constructions alongside babbling water and dancing trees tantalizes the viewer with seemingly impossible dynamism.

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The stories told by the structure depend on the scale. At a city level, the Barbican tells a tale of post-war reconstruction and the demand for a modern cityscape. For the neighborhood, it is a residential hub and attraction. For its residents, it is a private refuge. The term “concrete jungle” cannot be misinterpreted here. Behind the reeds and the forest of piers it takes to lift each residential block off the ground, one never knows what they will find — in the architectural wonders or in the lives of the humans who inhabit these halls.

Walkways on the third floor give way to private gardens, these gardens to waterfalls down to the central courtyard, and, even here amidst the water, cement walls make way for private meeting spaces. The visitor to this space experiences symbiosis with the structure. These spaces were meant to be filled with people — their use gives them definition, for they are nearly unrecognizable without it. Are those stairs for water or for people, that landing for plants or residents? That role is for you to discover.

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The magic of the Barbican Estates is the self-awareness and possibilities it brings to those who enter it – features every architect must imagine when determining how structure will fit in a city. There are always the factors and numbers to be weighed as the institutional impetus and the designated need begin to confine. But what draws the eye?

To find the soul of a site and form a new type of existence; choice is in the detail. To rise above, or to expand beyond the horizon line. To wear your history on your sleeve, or to keep it hidden, only for those allowed entrance.

The Barbican Estate has become a symbol of that which is part of, yet apart, as we must be now. That structure, out of space and time. That rare human who walks across an architect’s sketches. Going nowhere. Existence boiled down to a single goal: scaling, representation.

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While we sit, let us think of how to build a new world that brings the beauty of every corner of this Earth when we engage in a post-COVID-19 world - let us find our role and the choice we have in this existence.

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