Caruso and Thomas Demand – The Connection between Architecture and Art
Tina Grone was in the audience at Tate Modern, as Adam Caruso (Architect) and Thomas Demand (Artist) came together to discuss some of their recent collaborations and the connection between Architecture and Art.
Most notably, German artist Demand http://www.thomasdemand.de/ stated that he doesn’t want to end up designing toilets. The architects in the audience notably repulsed. However, the collaboration between Adam Caruso, Peter St. John and Thomas Demand has been fruitful. They again came together on the exhibition design of the current show of Demand‘s Photographs in the New National Gallery in Berlin. An icon of the modern canon, designed by Mies van der Rohe, the Gallery was finished in 1968. The initial exhibition designs consisted of fabrics rather than module walls, a strategy developed by Mies with Lilly Reich. This concept adapted from Mies earliest projects still works today. The textile surfaces offer a theatrical background for Demands’ pictures. Caruso St. John chose a fabric by Kvadrat http://www.kvadrat.dk/textiles/collection/ and also designed the dark wooden vitrines. Interestingly the pictures could not be hung directly to the roof because of the deflection of the steel – it can be up to 100mm. The picture would not have lined up. Hence the re-invention of the fabric curtain wall. It frames spaces and guides the vista.
Another collaborative project between the two big names – Demand and Caruso St. John – has just won planning approval in Zurich West. http://www.carusostjohn.com/projects/nagelhaus/ It is an accessible sculpture, an analogy to a specific house in China that fell victim to a modern development. It reminds of the UCL library in Bloomsbury, London which appears to be as tall as a skyscraper just by playing with the proportions of window size and floor plates – a visual trap most of us fall into. Asked if one has to expect similar buildings playing with scales and images by Caruso St. John, Adam Caruso nodded enthusiastically. Demand was left out in the cold, he had provided the initial idea, now let’s wait for the next designs.
However, if you do not feel like booking a flight to the German capital neither are fond of an artist photographing cardboard spaces, you still might want to check out the new art gallery by Caruso St. John in Nottingham opening in two weeks time. It might be worth a visit of Robin Hood’s home town. The gallery can’t be missed as it is more of an icon than the usual Caruso St. John project and adjacent to the train line. Should you instead want to acquire your very own Thomas Demand, check out his gallery in London – Sprüth Magers http://spruethmagers.net/artists/thomas_demand.
Be warned, it might be out of most architects’ budgets.
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Tags: Adam Caruso, Thomas Demand
