Snarkitecture is a New York-based collaborative practice founded by

Daniel Arsham Daniel Arsham (born 1980) is an American artist. He lives and works in New York City. Early life and education Born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Miami, Florida, Arsham was 12 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed his childhood home. This trau ...

and Alex Mustonen.

About

Snarkitecture's work is focused on designing within existing spaces or

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

with other artists and designers. They aim to reuse or misuse existing architecture to make architecture perform the unexpected. Arsham and Mustonen met while studying at the

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and established Snarkitecture as a formal practice in 2008.

Projects

Lift
2013 An installation for the New Museum Gala, Lift is a floating landscape that is both architectural and performative. An array of forty-five white inflatable spheres, each controlled by an individual performer, establishes a grid to engage the massive architectural scale of the room. Choreographed movements unfold slowly over the course of the evening reconfiguring the field of spheres in a series of elegant yet playful exercises. As performers manipulate the suspended plane, Lift dramatically alters the visual and spatial qualities of the existing architecture to create unexpected moments. Richard Chai x Palladium
2012 This temporary installation uses reflection and inversion to create an uncanny sensory experience showcasing Richard Chai's collaboration with Palladium. Mirrors line the walls and ceiling of the small exhibition space, and compound the images of the boots featured within. Odin
2012 A

pop-up shop Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK, Australia and Ireland) or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to catch onto a fad or scheduled e ...

for Odin New York's fragrance collection, this temporary retail installation created an unexpected moment embedded within an East Village storefront. The entire shop was formed by a landscape of 1,500 matte white

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

cement

replicas A 1:1 replica is an exact copy of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without claiming to be identical. Al ...

of Odin's distinctive glass fragrance bottle. Suspended within a white shell, the matte white ghost bottles cascaded in a wave from the ceiling at the front window toward the floor at the mirrored back wall. A smaller landscape of bottles rises from the floor, inhabited by the only dark objects in the space - Odin's fragrances and their black packaging. The dark brown glass fragrance bottles were backlit and indented into the smooth white displays that spill out from the Odin boxes. Appearing as soft amorphous forms, the displays revealed themselves as the same hard white gypsum cement as the ghost bottle replicas. Why Patterns
2010-2012 ''Why Patterns'' is a performance by

choreographer Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who cr ...

Jonah Bokaer Jonah Bokaer (born October 1, 1981) is an American choreographer and media artist. He works on live performances in the United States and elsewhere, including choreography, digital media, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and social enterprise. ...

in collaboration with Snarkitecture, who designed the

scenography Scenography (inclusive of scenic design, lighting design, sound design, costume design) is a practice of crafting stage environments or atmospheres. In the contemporary English usage, scenography is the combination of technological and material st ...

. The work is titled after the score ''Why Patterns?'' by the composer

Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...

. The piece originates with a ping-pong ball that initiates a series of choreographed games. Various events flood the stage with thousands of balls, which are then manipulated by the movement of the dancers. Originally commissioned by Dance Works Rotterdam, the world premiere was held in February 2010 at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. The U.S. premiere will be on August 3, 2011 at the

Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Jacob's Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The organization is known for a Summer dance festival. The facility also includes a professional school and extensive archives a ...

. Dig
2011 ''Dig'' was an installation and performance in collaboration with

Storefront for Art and Architecture Storefront for Art and Architecture is an independent, non-profit art and architecture organization located in SoHo, Manhattan in New York City. The organization is committed to the advancement of innovative positions in architecture, art and desi ...

in New York, NY during March and April, 2011. As an investigation of the architecture of excavation, Storefront's gallery space was infilled with a solid volume of EPS architectural foam that was then excavated by hand using hand tools to create "a cavernous space for work and play." Richard Chai x Snarkitecture
2010 In October, 2010 Snarkitecture paired with fashion designer

Richard Chai Richard Chai is an American fashion designer. Career Chai creates clothes for an eponymous label. Before launching his own line, he designed for Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Cristiano Ronaldo for two labels, for underwear and socks from 2013 and ...

to create a temporary retail installation at 504 West 24th Street in New York, NY. The collaboration was the fourth in a series of five installations presented by the non-profit organization Building Fashion. Snarkitecture's design for the space uses a single material to fill an existing container beneath the

High Line The High Line is a elevated park, elevated linear park, greenway (landscape), greenway and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad spur on the West Side (Manhattan), west side of Manhattan in New York City. The High Line's ...

. White EPS foam was carved by hand to create a “glacial cavern” for the display of Richard Chai's collection – the material was recycled back into rigid insulation at the close of the project. The installation was open from October 21 – 31, 2010. A Memorial Bowing and Beacons
2012 In December, 2009,

/Snarkitecture were commissioned to create two

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

pieces at the new

Marlins Park LoanDepot Park is a retractable roof stadium located in Miami, Florida. It is the home of Major League Baseball's Miami Marlins. It is located on on the site of the former Miami Orange Bowl in Little Havana about west of Downtown Miami. Const ...

(designed by Populous) in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

, Florida, scheduled to open in April, 2012. A commemorative marker designed to honor the former

Miami Orange Bowl The Miami Orange Bowl was an outdoor athletic stadium in Miami, Florida from 1937 until 2008. The stadium was located in the Little Havana neighborhood west of Downtown Miami. The Miami Orange Bowl was considered a landmark and served as the ho ...

is based on Miami-raised Daniel Arsham's memories of the old “MIAMI ORANGE BOWL” sign. The letters were reconstructed in their original ten foot height and orange color and scattered throughout the public plaza on the east side of the stadium. Their positions capture an ambiguous moment between destruction and rebuilding, standing vertically, horizontally, mid-collapse or submerged in the ground and spelling various words as visitors move around them. The installation by Daniel Arsham/Snarkitecture for the illumination of the columns at the new stadium used the simple idea of revealing and concealing the columns through the use of light. The lighting of the four super columns which support the stadium's retractable roof uses programmable

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...

lights that fade up and down the columns in subtly shifting patterns, evoking the rhythm of a human breath. The BEACH
2015 The BEACH was an interactive architectural

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

National Building Museum The National Building Museum is located at 401 F Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is a museum of "architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban planning". It was created by an act of Congress in 1980, and is a private Non-profit org ...

in July 2015. Taking cues from the familiar experience of a summer day at the beach, Snarkitecture abstracted both the natural and cultural elements of the beach to create a reduced, monochromatic environment inside the museum's Great Hall. Standard construction materials like

scaffolding Scaffolding, also called scaffold or staging, is a temporary structure used to support a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and all other man-made structures. Scaffolds are widely use ...

drywall Drywall (also called plasterboard, dry lining, wallboard, sheet rock, gypsum board, buster board, custard board, and gypsum panel) is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum), with or without additives, typically extruded between thick ...

, and mirrors were utilized to create the enclosure that led to an ocean of 750,000 recyclable plastic balls. Components both functional and visual, such as beach chairs, signage, and the construction of a pier and island welcomed visitors to explore, play and relax in a fully immersive and unique setting. After its installation at the National Building Museum, the project also traveled to Tampa, Florida, at

Amalie Arena Amalie Arena (officially stylized as AMALIE Arena) is a multipurpose arena in Tampa, Florida, that has been used for ice hockey, basketball, arena football, concerts, and other events. It is mainly used as the home for the Tampa Bay Lightning ...

; to Sydney for the

Sydney Festival Sydney Festival is a major arts festival in Australia's largest city, Sydney that runs for three weeks every January, since it was established in 1977. The festival program features in excess of 100 events from local and international artists an ...

; to Paris at the Museum of Decorative Arts; and to Bangkok in the

Central Embassy Central Embassy is the crown jewel in an illustrious series of high-profile projects by Thailand's largest retail chain, Central Group's new flagship property is Central Embassy. This unique architectural monument, with its daring curves and vibr ...

. The use of the standard materials listed above allow the installation to be re-installed around the world economically and sustainably.

Objects

2013 * Felt Light * Slice * Trunk
2012 * Bend * Break * Broken Ornament * Float * Lean * Pour * Shelve * Split * Wasserman Table
2011 * Cast Light * Slab Table * Slip Bench

Exhibitions

2013 * ''Wallpaper Handmade'', Milan, Italy * Volume Gallery, Collective Design Fair, New York NY * Grey Area, Collective Design Fair, New York NY 2012 * ''Funiture'', Design Miami/, Miami Beach FL * ''Ornamental'', Grey Area, New York NY 2012 * ''Scale'', The

Standard Hotel Standard Hotels is a group of seven boutique hotels in New York City (Meatpacking District and East Village), Miami Beach, London, Maldives, Ibiza, and Hua Hin, Thailand. The hotels are operated by Standard International Management. The two origi ...

East Village, New York NY * ''BOFFO Show House'', Miami FL * ''Funiture'', Volume Gallery, Chicago IL 2011 * ''Dig'',

, New York NY * ''Not the Usual Suspects: ewArt in ewPublic ewPlaces'', ArtCenter/South Florida, Miami FL 2010 * ''Total Housing 01: Apartments'',

, New York NY * ''Booooooth'', New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), Miami FL * ''The Business of Aura'', Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York NY

Awards

2011 * Goal Posts, Marlins Ballpark, ''Commissioned'', Miami FL 2010 * Richard Chai / Building Fashion Series, ''Commissioned'', New York NY * Stephen P. Clark Center Lobby, Art in Public Places, ''Finalist'', Miami FL * In the Public Realm,

Public Art Fund Public Art Fund is an independent, non-profit arts organization founded in 1977 by Doris Freedman, Doris C. Freedman. The organization presents contemporary art in New York City's public spaces through a series of highly visible artists' projects, n ...

, ''Finalist'', New York NY 2009 * Commemorative Marker, Marlins Ballpark, Art in Public Places, ''Commissioned'', Miami FL * Column Illumination, Marlins Ballpark, Art in Public Places, ''Commissioned'', Miami FL * Marlins Ballpark, Art in Public Places, ''Finalist'', Miami FL

References

External links

Snarkitecture

Snarkitecture on Architizer

Daniel Arsham
{{Authority control American installation artists Cooper Union alumni