It’s Queens’ time to shine!
Long Island City was once a barren post-industrial wasteland, but recent efforts are shifting the borough into a plausible location to live. Jet Blue flew its headquarters over two years ago and Queens Plaza is booming with real estate, but is it really New York if you aren’t living next to some college students? Read More
Queens has been kind to the architects at SO-IL. The small Brooklyn-based firm is run by husband and wife Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu (the name stands for Solid Objective-Idenburg Liu, though any Beastie Boys referents are not lost on them).
Their first major success, not counting Mr. Idenburg’s time designing the New Museum for Japanese firm Sanaa, was P.S. 1’s Pole Dance pavilion two summers ago, arguably the best installation in the Young Architecture Program’s dozen years. This spring, another pavilion, this one for the Frieze Art Fair, will open on Randall’s Island (yes, technically part of Manhattan, but it certainly feels more like Queens with its big, open spaces and proximity to Astoria). And now, in their most ephemeral and ambitious effort yet, SO-IL is—very quietly—taking over Jackson Heights with the Guggenheim for four weekends starting tomorrow.
Welcome to Transhistoria, the latest installment in the Guggenheim’s stillspotting program.
“How can we look at cities without constantly begin accosted by them,” said David van der Leer, an assistant curator for architecture at the Guggenheim. Read More
