Cathy Leff: What is your background?

Michael Maltzan: I was born on Long Island and grew up in Levittown, a postwar planned suburban community. Levittown didn’t have algorithms, but they knew homes had to evolve as families grew. Houses were traditional in form, but built as a kit-of-parts. Everyone owned their home, but it wasn’t utopian. We were a close-knit community, despite the reputation that people in the suburbs live isolated, diminished lives.

We moved a lot due to my father’s business but ultimately settled in Connecticut, where I attended high school. I didn’t have a great transcript, but I liked to draw. I attended Wentworth, a building and technology school, then a two-year program, which is now well-known. I started in construction, but moved to architecture when they noticed my drafting skills. I transferred after a year to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where the pedagogical philosophy was to learn to see first. I took classes in other departments and humanities and critical studies courses at Brown. I learned about art, history and studio practice more than architecture. I went to Harvard Graduate School of Design, when Harry Cobb was transitioning as Chair of Architecture and Rafael Moneo was incoming. Both were important influences: Cobb, known for Boston’s Hancock Tower, looked for architectural ideas in everything, and Moneo thought architecture had moral and ethical boundaries that should benefit society. Concurrently, I worked for Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti, where I learned how ideas get generated, how to represent ideas and architecture’s connection to its history.

CL: How did you wind up in LA?

MM: I took a senior studio with Robert Mangurian, a visiting professor from SCI-Arc. Our project was the new Getty site. It was nine times too big for a student project, but Robert never made small plans. We flew out to LA, and I immediately fell in love. It seemed familiar, comfortable. I realized LA and Levittown shared DNA. I knew then I would go west after graduating.

My wife and I bought a pick-up truck and drove across the country. My original plan was to get experience in a large office like SOM, but there no jobs due to the recession. I accepted a position with Frank Gehry, who just finished the American Center in Paris and Vitra Design Museum. He was shortlisted for the Disney Concert Hall competition. I thought the competition would last three months, but we won! I stayed seven years as senior associate. This was 1989, working on and off on Disney and other projects, but Disney kept me going. In 1995, I decided to leave and start my own practice.

CL: What was your trajectory from small studio to your office today?

MM: My first project was a tiny house addition. It was enough to survive. I designed a pro bono project while at Frank’s, Inner City Arts, which then got me shortlisted for an art school. That got published and things started moving. I did two collectors’ homes, which Terrence Riley, then MoMA’s Curator of Architecture and Design, included in his The Un-Private House exhibit. I got chosen to do MoMA QNS. Terry was so important during that period and always has been a big supporter of my work.

CL: What has this year been like?

MM: I’ve had a longstanding design process based on 2D and 3D models, so I’ve had to find other ways to create equivalents. It’s difficult to not have immediate back and forth with colleagues; yet, being forced to stay in one place has opened up more time to draw. Our younger architects have handled this period remarkably well. They’re adaptive, though a large part of their social lives is within the office. That’s been absent. I’ll be curious to see how the transition back works.

I’d like to be more conscientious about what we take forward when back in the office. We’ve yet to have the critical conversations of what we learned this year. I fear things will ramp up intensely, and it will be difficult to manage the onslaught, to make choices that benefit us all in the future.

CL: What would you change?

MM: During lockdown, the lessening of cars in cities has opened new spaces for pedestrians. We have taken back streets as a truly public spaces. It’s made new parts of LA more habitable. People want to be more in community and with each other. The changing role of cars will allow us to rethink our infrastructure.

CL: What can infrastructure funds do to address housing ?

MM: There’s an enormous housing deficit for every sector of the population, geographically, socially and economically. We can’t build fast enough to meet the needs. Housing is the building block of communities and can positively influence and sustain communities, providing accessibility and creating equity. That’s what we’re working on in the office, connecting those who have been largely isolated from each other. Yes, our roads and bridges are falling apart and need rebuilding but, mostly, we need to connect people and places within our larger social fabric.

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For four-plus years, Miami-based artist Chire Regans has commemorated lives lost to gun violence, telling the stories and carefully rendering portraits of victims. Her largest project, a public memorial titled Say Their Names, spans one city block and is on view at Bakehouse Art Complex. Days before its completion, Oolite Arts awarded Regans its first Social Justice Prize.

Cathy Leff: When did art become your tool of social change?

Chire Regans: I studied medical illustration. On February 27, 2016, six-year-old King Carter of Northwest Miami was killed by a stray bullet. His father posted a live video on Facebook, expressing his pain and loss. It’s uncommon in our culture for a Black man to display emotion publicly. This really struck me. It was all over the media. I thought about my son, then six. I felt helpless, hopeless and questioned, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ The response came to me, ‘Do what you do best.’ I’m best at drawing and expressing myself visually. I decided to tell this baby’s story. I posted it and similar stories online. It was around the same time Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were killed. Social media was effective in galvanizing people.

CL: Tell us about your portraits.

CR: My drawings are 9-by-12 inches, on black paper. I mostly use white pencil; sometimes, white charcoal pencil. I initially intended to put the work online. I’ve completed over 200 portraits. I’ve donated some to the families. I do commissioned portraits, but I cannot sell this particular body of work. My subjects always guide my hand. I speak their names aloud and bring them into the work.

CL: Where are you emotionally in the context of recent events?

CR: I go through repeated cycles—anger, rage, helplessness, hopelessness, and focus. The portraits allow me to vent. I can’t allow my emotions to paralyze me. I’m always thinking about what more I can do.

CL: What has been the impact of your work?

CR: It’s on the families. Parents cannot deal with their grief. Seeing their child’s portrait and story allows them to advocate for and speak aloud about their child. 

CL: Did you have any direct experience with gun violence?

CR: I lost my closest high school friend, James Reid, III. It had a tremendous impact on me. I’m consoled because he was responsible for so many close friendships I enjoy today. I am not a spectator. I talk about and equally share my loss.

CL: What was the genesis of Say Their Names?

CR: I applied for and received, pre-pandemic, an artist-in-residency fellowship with the Community Justice Project (CJP). I’m housed at Bakehouse Art Complex. Initially, I thought about community activations. COVID-19 changed that. It gave me time to think about how my work could evolve. The memorial just came to me. I wanted to raise awareness of gun violence and bring together CJP’s lawyers, artists and victims of gun violence to understand how to navigate the criminal justice system to become better advocates.

CL: What is different about the mural from other projects?

CR: I am physically creating art in the public realm, simultaneously in dialog with the community, rather than making art for public exhibition and then dialog. The process, scale and duration are distinct. People drive by and return to see progress. Others stop, recognize a name, look for a name or want to offer a name to commemorate. People take photos. They tell me their stories. We share an important moment. I tell them, “This space is for you!” 

Life is taken so quickly by gun violence. This project, which has taken months, extends the life of each victim. It acknowledges the importance of labor. Participants think about each person, their life and how they meant something to someone. I’m asked where the victims come from: Ninety percent, South Florida. It’s important for me to honor the lives lost here.

CL: Congratulations on receiving the first Social Justice Prize from Oolite Arts, a $25,000 unrestricted award.

CR: It’s unbelievable! I sometimes feel the need to step back from this work. It’s taken an emotional toll. This prize reminds me I am doing exactly what I am supposed to do.

CL: What’s next?

CL: I’m working on a living memorial of this body of work. I also now want to engage with people who can really change things. I’d like to see a large-scale gun violence memorial in Washington, DC, visualizing the impact of our laws or those we failed to pass and showing losses in real time. Artists always have created memorials. Washington is an important location. Gun violence is a war. We need to confront and memorialize lives lost to this battle.

Chef, artist-activist and social entrepreneur Kurt Evans is back in his native Philadelphia, following a stint as culinary director at New York-based nonprofit Drive Change. There, he managed a professional training fellowship program for formerly incarcerated youth. When the program ended due to the COVID-19, Evans returned to his hometown, simultaneously working on a new book, continuing to build his culinary-focused library and re-establishing a workforce development program at Down North Pizza. Even with a full plate, Evans is thinking about re-launching his “End Mass Incarceration” (EMI) dinner series, initially launched in 2017. Cathy Leff checks in with Evans to dig deeper into his mission-driven, multi-pronged agenda.

Cathy Leff: Tell us about EMI.

Kurt Evans: I am a chef who uses food as a tool of activism. Food has a long association with Black activism, the subject of a book I’m working on. The Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed thousands of kids and was the antecedent for the now-federally-funded free breakfast programs across the country. During the Bus Boycotts, Georgia Gilmore and other women fed the entire movement, selling food from their homes and raising bail bond funds. I research and write a bit each day.

I started participating in “activism” dinners with friends Ben Miller and Christina Martinez, owners of Barbacoa. Many of their employees are immigrants, like most comprising the backbone of the restaurant industry. Christina’s interest is raising funds to support immigrants’ rights. I’ve always helped others with dinners around their social issues and wanted to do my own, addressing issues important to my neighborhood. There was a growing awareness in the media—news and popular—around mass incarceration. Almost everyone had seen and was talking about the movie 13th by Ava DuVernay. I wanted to bring food into that conversation. EMI was birthed in 2017 with an itinerant agenda, and the first dinner was held at the restaurant Farmacy RX. Fifty people attended, including then-candidate for Lt. Governor, along with other political and civic leaders. From then on, I researched everyone online so I could be more intentional and strategic about seating at future dinners. I learned to cook from my grandmothers and have experience working in both mass production cooking and fine dining restaurants. I read and collect all kinds of cookbooks. I’ve worked in great restaurants to hone my skills, which I now use in innovative ways to raise awareness and inspire action to end mass incarceration—and, to raise money for organizations dedicated to this issue.

When I returned to Philadelphia this spring, I needed to find things to do. I started working with South Philly Barbacoa, the local partner of chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, feeding 200 people a day. José Andrés is Peace Prize stuff. He’s giving away a lot of money to support undocumented workers and smart solutions for addressing hunger and poverty. I also bought a pizza restaurant, Down North, prior to going to New York. It’s set up as a fair wage, equitable workplace for employees, all of whom were formerly incarcerated.

CL: Tell me about your book collection.

KE: I have more than 1000 books in my collection. I’m always buying, mostly cookbooks, from specialized and antiquarian bookstores and online. Vendors now come to me. I’m on auto-pilot. I only collect first editions, though I have bought a 6th edition book from 1922. Early on, I collected recipes. Now, I’m interested in philosophy, stories and context. I want to be taken to the place the writer is describing, where the food comes from. My collection, with books dating back to the early 19th century, is international. About 40% is dedicated to African American cookbooks or writers of African American cookbooks. I really admire author, activist and collector Tony Tipton-Martin, who wrote The Jemima Code (2015), among other books dealing with African American culture. She has an amazing library on the rich culinary heritage of African Americans. My dream is to rival hers.

CL: Can you share an EMI recipe?

KE: I start each meal—and conversation—with an amuse-bouche of prison-inspired Chi Chi. To make, combine one bag of cheese puffs (smashed well into fine pieces) with one pack of any flavor ramen noodles (crushed into semi-small pieces). Mix all well, along with the ramen flavor packet and 1Tbs of mayonnaise, in the empty Cheetos bag. In that bag, add 1 cup of very hot water. Shake up and down a few times to mix. Grab the bag and squeeze out the excess air. Roll into a long log and let sit 20-25 minutes (until it’s the consistency of a tamale). Unroll, and serve at room temperature.

If inspired, invite some people to your home to sample, start a conversation on mass-incarceration and join my movement.

Back in his hometown of Philadelphia, culinary artist Omar Tate takes an unplanned break from a non-stop, multi-year journey to discover his cultural identity as a northern migrant of African American descent. Moving slower, eating better and getting more restful sleep, he speaks about Honeysuckle Pop-Up, a work in progress and process.

What set you on your journey?I wanted to control my destiny. I knew if I became a cook, I could become a chef. If I became a chef, I could become a business owner. If I became a business owner, I could become an entrepreneur. It was a path to success.

What was your training? I learned on the job. I am pretty studious. But my first real position in a kitchen was culture shock. I was the only Black person. I worked at a private golf club outside of Philadelphia. I learned some Spanish to communicate with the Mexican staff and to fit in.

Then I moved to NYC and got a job at Michelin-starred A Voce. We made great food, but the pace was insane. I missed caring about food and where it came from.

I had an epiphany while working at Once Upon a Tart. Its owner, Alicia Walter, was really inspired by womanhood. She amplified the voices and power of women through food. That’s what I was chasing but with things that didn’t belong to me culturally. I wanted to make food that represented me. I immersed myself in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I told the librarians I wanted to learn about the food and culture of northern African American migrants. One of the saddest things about COVID-19 is that I can’t get to a library. I draw inspiration, too, from literature and writers like James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston, among others.

Then what? In 2018, I took off for the South, with the idea of studying Black food from its source. My first stop and on day one in New Orleans, I entered a small bar. A woman there offered me a bowl of red beans and rice. Everyone in New Orleans eats red beans and rice. She just gave it to me, wanting nothing in return. I hadn’t experienced that type of generosity. I realized there and then that the people around food are what’s important, not the food.

I went to Charleston, from where my family migrated in 1929. We still have houses in our name. I got a job in a bar around the corner from a family home. I stayed a month, doing research in the city archives. I found an 18th century pamphlet relating to a slaveowner from Orangeburg who had enslaved my ancestors. I visited the plantation. In a dilapidated cabin, I retrieved three artifacts, which tell that plantation’s story: a shovel, representing work; a wooden sculpture, representing the mind; and a medicine bottle, representing the enslaver, who was a physician. I was so blessed to find these things.

Tell us about Honeysuckle Pop-Up. Back in NY, while working as sous-chef at The Henry, I launched Honeysuckle. I have always written, especially poetry. The food comes out of my writing or it becomes my writing. Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, on the surface, are associated with Black food. They’re not on my menu. My poetry accompanies each meal and substantiates what’s on the plate. I curate the entire space with my art, giving guests a multidimensional, cultural experience. Remnants on a South Philly Stoop was inspired by childhood memories of summer evenings in Philadelphia, sitting on the stoop, eating blue crab and sunflower seeds and spitting out the empty shells. A slate slab, my plate, represented the concrete steps. I served crab, candied lemon rind and sunflower puree. Torn pieces of the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest Black newspaper in circulation, were a garnish. Kool Aid, made with freeze-dried fruit, sugar and citric acid, is a constant. This is Black food to me. It’s what I ate and drank growing up. It represents my Black life. I combat the stigma of Kool Aid and its disenfranchisement of Black folk while celebrating the joy I remember. I always serve homemade honeysuckle ice cream. The honeysuckle bush in front of my childhood row house connects me to a time of innocence.

Though now itinerant, everything about Honeysuckle says, “welcome to my home.” Guests become part of the story by ingesting it. My work is a culinary version of high art. It’s personal, intimate and intentional. When Black people come, they cry. It’s like church. For others, it blows their minds. I validate Black culture as part of American culture and celebrate Black people in a way we have never before been celebrated.

French-born, Tokyo-based artist Nicolas Buffe debuted in the US this past spring with the opening in the Miami Design District of “Serious Play,” one of five facades comprising the Museum Garage project. Buffe’s four fantastical twenty-three-foot caryatids flank the garage’s entrances and exits. This work, like others, combines his fascination with video games, French and Italian Baroque ornament, and Japanese anime and manga culture. His art has been exhibited in Maison Rouge, Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Hara Museum in Tokyo. He has collaborated with Commes des Garcons and Hermes on fashion projects and designed theater and opera sets. Here, he chats with Cathy Leff about his own mash-up visual language.

CL: How did you become interested in Japanese culture? NB: As a young boy, I was completely obsessed with Japanese animation. Japanse TV series with superheroes and special effects were my favorites and popular then in France. I especially liked Spectreman, a kind of Planet of the Apes remake with the superhero fighting bad gorillas that were attacking Earth. There was so much Japanese animation available on TV. I was watching feature length animation. I didn’t even realize at time it was Japanese. It just seemed part of my everyday life and culture. When I would draw, I would make my own superheroes, similar to another Japanese one, Space Sheriff Gavan, who was a robot-like man who could switch suits in a second to take flight. He was my childhood superhero. I also was always playing video games, normal for a child in France at the time.

What was your formal art training? The moment I became conscious I had an interest in art, I went to L’Ecole des beaux arts. There was lots of pressure there. Being in a school surrounded by 400 plus years of French history was very impressive. Then there was the Louvre, across the river, looking back on you. I felt the weight of history and the weight of my peers and professors. I had a sort of crisis, since I wondered if my fascination with cartoons and animation were a legitimate pursuit. I questioned it I should throw away all the things I loved and grew up with? Then I said to myself, I would create art I care about from my interest in popular culture and the childhood things I liked, but also my interest in history. I began to construct a personal way of looking at history and my place it. I didn’t think I belonged to any current contemporary way of thinking about art. I built my own family of art.

Did your professors encourage you to pursue that path? Yes, they were very encouraging. It wasn’t like Les Miserables or Cinderella. It was just a way to construct my universe and my history. I remember maybe it was Basquiat who was building his own imaginary ancestral history going back to the dinosaurs. I had my own way of doing it with my own taste, going back each century and looking at ornament. I love the grotesque and artists who can work across disciplines. One day they write a text, then create a sculpture, then make a painting. I never put limits on my practice nor placed boundaries between art, design, and architecture. I also love video games as an art form. Denying video as an art form is like living at beginning of 20th century and saying cinema isn’t art. My work leaves doors open for many audiences to enter the work. I first try inspire awe and then more serious probing.

Do people need to understand all of your references? My art derives from popular culture and philosophy. I try to create and solve a puzzle in each piece. The more educated the viewer, the more they understand the references. However, the notion of game—to play—is a big part of my work. I try to get you to unravel the clues. I call my work “serious games” because I’m always mixing up things and trying to put together things that don’t seem to have anything in common. My work is a network in time and space—sort of like space travel.

What are you working on now? Video games. It’s ongoing work and I don’t know exactly when it will launch. I’m working with a French TV channel, Arte, who produce cultural projects. Recently, they started to produce video games and web content. Mine is a video game for a gaming device. The theme is one I have been working on for many years, the dream of Poliphilo, a Renaissance romance story. Poliphilo falls in love with Polia, but she doesn’t love him. In his dreams, he goes through many adventures looking for her. Everything is allegorical. The original book was published in 1499, in Venice. It then was very avant garde. There are cryptographic drawings in the book, with many meanings and codings. It’s close to a video game, with many clues within. I first saw it when at L’ecole des beaux arts. No one is sure who wrote this book—maybe a group of people, but all the ideas in it are very humanist. The French edition had a tremendous influence on French art. For example, Louis XIV’s Gardens of Versailles are a kind of game of Poliphilo.

You’ve now lived in Japan for many years. How do you identify culturally? I learned a lot of things from Japanese and French culture. My PhD thesis was about mixing different cultures. I am a French man who has been Japonized. I have a lot of Japonese inferences in my behavior. It takes a different energy to dive in to a new culture. The Japanese are super protective, shy, and don’t understand why we’re interested in them. I’m almost like a one of my superheroes. I took off from France and landed in Tokyo.

Andrés Jaque, founder of the Madrid-and New York-based Office of Political Innovation, has been questioning the role architects play in addressing the critical issues of our times. He is the recipient of the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2016) and the Silver Lion of the Venice Architecture Biennial (2014), and his work has been exhibited in and acquired by museums around the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Here, Jaque—who at press time was just appointed director of Advanced Architectural Design program at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation—speaks with Cultured as he prepared for his curatorial debut as part of this summer’s Manifesta, the nomadic European Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Cathy Leff: How did growing up in Spain during the post-dictatorial era of Francisco Franco influence your work? Andrés Jaque: I was a child during the years of “La Movida,” the counter- cultural movement of the late ‘70s that emerged in the aftermath of Franco. It was an amazing time. I was very aware of the divide in different sectors of society. There was a sort of hedonism in response to the regime’s repression. Artists like Guillermo Pérez Villalta and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar were pushing the boundaries of art and architecture. They looked to fashion, performance, domesticity, film, furniture, music, design and parties to challenge centralized power and macho structures of the past. Though it felt fun, I knew they seriously addressed political issues and presented alternatives to what was possible.

CL: What was your first activist activity? AJ: While in architecture school, I designed a suit that carried everything I needed to live for a weekend—my pillow, toothbrush, everything. I became my own portable environment and spent a crazy weekend at the beach. I wasn’t really doing it as an artist. Someone heard about it and asked me to do a new version of it, which I called Automatic Fabric and presented in a gallery working with an amazing performer, Alicia Rios. I was trying to make the point that architecture was not about buildings or boxes that contained society, but about the making and shaping society. I wanted to present architecture as a series of players or actors that could bring people together. I was interested in articulating the relationship between architecture, people and the broader culture. This still is my interest.

CL: How do you define yourself professionally? AJ: I am an architect. My practice has four dimensions: architecture; research and writing, which connects me to reality and allows me to explore topics I think crucial; teaching; and what I consider pushing the boundaries of artistic discipline. Architecture is a design problem; I want to show how architecture can serve society. I teach an advanced design studio at Columbia University and “vertical studios,” or option studios, at Princeton. I work with a high degree of freedom; I identify and address relevant political discussions of the moment, exploring the way architecture is playing a role there. At Princeton, I’m looking at the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers and the consequences of offshore economies and how architecture contributes to these concerns. We’re seeking ways to provide alternative solutions that could be more inclusive and consider the victims of these systems. That’s the kind of work I love to do.

CL: What can you tell us about Manifesta? AJ: I am one of four people curating this year’s Manifesta. Our theme is the “Planetary Garden.” Gardens are a metaphor to think about a new world out of the encounter with otherness. Gardens contain all kinds of insects, plants from different places and environments. People spend all day caring for these different botanical species. Architecture is crucial to this care, building green houses, addressing heating and irrigation systems and other environmental issues necessary for gardens to thrive and survive. There are more than 30 artists, thinkers, architects, filmmakers and designers producing works in Palermo’s gardens, museums and other spaces.

CL: What is the one big problem you wish you could solve? AJ: Inequality. While it existed before, we are in a new age, and it’s affecting everyone in different ways. Nothing is more urgent.

Making design matter is Michael Wolk’s guiding philosophy. As a student at Pratt Institute in New York, where he grew up, Wolk’s design focus and bold talent attracted John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who provided his first professional commission: to design their Joko Recording Studio. In Miami since 1973, Wolk opened his own studio, Michael Wolk Design Associates, in 1984, where he serves as Chairman and Creative Director.

Known for his furniture and furnishings designs, Wolk creates collections for a select group of the country’s leading residential and contract furniture companies, while creating one-of-a-kind pieces for domestic and public art commissions.

Here, he speaks with Cultured about recent collaborations with a Spanish marble firm, whose robotic technology is transforming his creative possibilities.

CL: How did you discover this robotic technology? MW: It found me. I’m the first creative endeavor the firm has undertaken.

My marble supplier Daniel Tormo approached me about designing a sculpture to test this new technology in which he had invested. It carves the most complex forms out of a solid block of marble. We decided to experiment with my “Tucker” chair. First introduced in 1990 by Design America, it was inspired by the 1948 Tucker car. It was so ahead of its time, with big front fenders and three headlights. I especially loved the middle, swiveling headlight. The “Tucker” is one of my iconic pieces. It’s complex, with all of its curves. No one ever has been able to knock it off. It’s built like an airplane, with a complex plywood armature underneath. While it was on view in an LA showroom, it was picked to be in the movie “Batman Returns”—used in Max Shrek’s office. So, it took on the moniker of the “Batman” chair. It also was in the movie “Inspector Gadget,” though the “Batman” chair already stuck. It’s amazing this piece, so hand labor intensive, is now being made by this inanimate robotic arm. We created a 3-D plot file from the original drawings of the chair. And, from that, they created the file used by the robotic machine.

I used to make small clay models of furniture before I made anything in life size. I would work in clay to come up with a design, going back to my interest in object as sculpture. I wanted to see how the design resolved three dimensionally, what it looked like as form in space. These small models can now be plotted to a 3-D file, scaled up, and carved by this machine.

CL: Is it furniture or sculpture? MW: It’s sculpture. It’s also an object that functions. I didn’t originally have marble in mind. Nor did I think I was designing a strictly functional chair. When I design for domestic use, I consider factors such as mean height of users and their comfort, how deep the springs are, how dense the foam is, how thick the arm rests are, etc. In this case, those considerations are secondary. The piece is sculptural in category though it comes from the idea of a chair. I never turned off the sculptural quality. It exists in everything I do.

CL: Can you speak about some of your public art commissions? MW: I especially love “Living Room Suite,” commissioned mid-1980s by you, Cathy, when you worked for the City of Miami. It was a City Art in Public Places commission for the Allapattah Elderly Center. These pieces are made from poured concrete. We began this project when technology was simple casting. We built forms, poured cement into forms, and the big technology was to be able integrate color into the concrete. This was my first public art. Over time, I continued to work on more sculptural ideas. I did another public commission for Rockville County, a seating collection called “Cosmic Doodles,” created in 1990.

I never separated functional art from sculpture—everything in my mind was sculpture. I always saw sculpture as something that didn’t preclude function. There is no barrier. Maybe other people feel the need to create hierarchies between art and applied arts. I never worked differently or thought differently whenever I designed anything. I always followed both tracks—for manufacture and for art. I start with same approach regardless of what I design. Some pieces only exist on a sculptural level, but the elements are always the same.

CL: Tell me about your practice. MW: My practice has always been what I wanted it to be. I maintain sketchbooks and sketch every day. One day not long ago, I went back to my sketchbooks and found in them ideas I had repeated over the years, or seeds of an idea that later came back to me. Hidden in my sketchbooks are all of my ideas. I’ve slowly done and executed all of those ideas.

CL: When did you know you wanted to be a designer? MW: I always knew I wanted to be a designer. I sold a painting in 4th grade. I was always the class artist, and one of the parents liked a painting I did for a class show. It was a textured painting of a melted crayon. They bought it.

I got a full scholarship to Pratt. I didn’t go to a public school that focused on art. When I arrived at Pratt, I started sweating because I hadn’t been around such talent. I had always been the best in my school and now I was among really talented peers. So I just worked and worked.

There’s a reference in the movie “Flamingo Kid,” starring Matt Damon, I always liked. The character was conflicted about his future, and his father advised him to just be an honest kid, go to college, figure out what you like doing better than anything else, and then figure out what you do better than anyone else. If God’s smiling on you, he said, it will be the same thing.

God’s smiling on me—I get to do everyday what I love and want to do.

Jamilah Sabur

Jamilah Sabur is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice involves performance, video and installation. She is interested in embodied cognition, social mimicry, dissonance, ritual and the uncanny. Cathy Leff speaks with the young artist, as she prepares for her new exhibition, The Rhetoric of the Living, opening March 8^th at Emerson Dorsch in Miami.

Your new works draw from Florida’s cultural history. Can you tell us about your interest in the State?

My family came to Miami from Jamaica when I was four, so I grew up here. I returned to Miami to live fulltime three years ago. I was so lucky to have been an artist-in-residence last year at Crisp Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College in St. Augustine. I connected with George Aaron Broadwell, whose research focuses on endangered languages and psycholinguistics. He teaches at University of Florida, and we’ve been having some really amazing conversations about the structure of the Timucua language. I always have been thinking about how language breaks down. Because human language is linearized, we can only say one word at a time, the order of elements in a sentence takes on great relevance in the way it is interpreted and translates across cultures. A new piece in my upcoming show, I will wet you (pl.) with the new water, is a 12’ neon work based on the Timucua syntax of a 1612 baptism, which came out of my residency. I’ve also been interested in colliding and overlapping history. My video, A point at zenith (Cuando caen las flores), also on view at Emerson Dorsch, addresses two moments in northern Florida in the years 1656 and 1982.

Jamilah Sabur’s I will wet you (pl.) with the new water. Courtesy of Emerson Dorsch.

Can you address the recurrent themes of time and space in your work?

Residue, if you just consider it as a felt experience, invites you into space, which is where my work comes from. I can almost feel the traces of history on me as I make my way through life. The shape of today’s world is sort of the residue of millions of past moments, I suppose. I am always searching or grasping for the source of that felt residue… maybe I am also coming to terms with the grasping. It is from a past that you can neither change nor see, but which is still there. The sheer scale of it all, all the residue that is thick on the world, speaks to a grandeur greater than kings can have. I suppose I grapple with alternating or simultaneous impulses to know the source, to resign to the presence, to relying on the great scales of history, society and space…

Can you speak about your artistic preoccupations?

At the root of my investigations, is a desire to feel, to remember that I have a body with senses, to feel truth. I am scared at how fast our relationship to the world is changing. The years now, that I’ve spent adapting to this new form of interacting, through a small format screen, the cell phone, I feel like I am erasing this part of myself that is engaged in the processes of feeling things emotionally, there is a blunting effect I am constantly trying to fight. I don’t want to become numb, so this desire to feel material, explore material and its techniques is crucial. I’ve worked with many materials but I always seem to find my way back to plaster, a humble substance, I can extrude time, get inside of it and become it–it’s a process.

An installation view of “THE RHETORIC OF THE LIVING.” Courtesy of Emerson Dorsch.

You have a busy year ahead.

Yes. I’m excited about a performance I’m choreographing this May commissioned by Bas Fisher Invitational (BFI) in Miami, and, in June a project in Montreal curated by Sophie Le-Phat Ho and Ronald Rose-Antoinette. September, I have a solo show at Cornell Fine Arts Museum, in Winter Park, FL, and I am finalizing negotiations for an exhibition at another important US art museum. Stay tuned!

Since opening her Paris studio in 1998, Matali Crasset has been on a design mission: to influence how we live and interact with each other. In conversation, Crasset speaks about her practice, philosophy and projects.

You’ve always designed for a sharing culture and for nomadic living and working. How were you so far ahead the times? I always looked for a new logic in doing things. Design is profound and more than function. It addresses primary needs and fulfills unconscious desires. I drew from universal scenarios and rituals of everyday life and shared experiences. I came from a small village and understood the importance of community. My family was humble. I started with a blank page.

Is there a project that was especially satisfying? The common stove, which was commissioned for this year’s Ljubljana design biennial. Inspired by a traditional domestic object, I worked with the local school of carpenters to create a community stove that provides warmth in the forest, can be used to cook things and bake bread. It’s now permanent. It’s a sort of robot or small protector for the community. It blurs domestic and community spaces.

Does your work have an ideological agenda? To understand how we can better live, interact and work together. It’s even more necessary now. I start with a strong design intention and take time to understand the culture and context for each project.

Is there something “French” about your work? I hadn’t really thought much about that, but people tell me the combination of art or design and social impact is particularly French. This intersection or joining of life and culture makes sense. Culture is how we evolve. I like this idea more and more.

Is joy an aim or outcome? I don’t try to evoke an emotion but to affect human behavior. Design can transform. It can inspire you to become an active participant in life and society. I am optimistic. Optimism is important. It comes from curiosity. You have to be curious to try new things. I like working for curious clients and serving their curiosity. The Hi Hotel was quite important for me, allowing me to push the limits of innovation to create a new prototype for hospitality. My clients trusted me 110 percent. They were rare and generous, inviting me to collaborate on this project. I wanted to be equally generous.

How important is color? Color is life and life is color. Children love all colors. As adults, we forget about color because someone decides color reflects good or bad taste. We should be free, like children, to select colors we like. It’s something marvelous and gives pleasure. Color is spontaneous. It doesn’t need interpretation. Though colors have different meanings in different cultures, there is a something universal about them. It helps make my work more accessible. In a way, if you don’t wear colors, maybe you’re afraid of feeling. Maybe society, in a sense, is afraid of feeling.

Can you tell me about your iconic haircut? In a way, I didn’t select it, but it is a bit like Jeanne D’arc’s. I tried many different haircuts, but this one was “mine.” It allows me to breathe. I’ve had it since design school. I also like that it’s half male, half female. It’s my way of fighting preconceived codes of femininity.

How did working with Denis Santachiara and Philippe Starck impact you? I am so thankful to both of them. They gave me confidence. It was important for me to be first understood by other designers. They signaled what I was doing was interesting, which motivated me to go forward to find and refine my approach.

Is it true Brigitte Macron selected your furniture for her office? Yes! We have a very old organization French institution, the Mobilier national, which provides furniture and tapestries for official residences. Each year they solicit proposals from contemporary artists and designers. A number of these are selected and made. The patrimony is made available to the President and Ministers. About four years ago, I submitted a proposal for office furniture, which was selected. Since I don’t have any political agenda nor had I ever done this type of work, I didn’t want the piece to convey power. I wanted to express that its occupant was open and interested in listening to the visitor; to make the visitor comfortable and want to sit and have a talk with you. The piece has two different heights: one, allowing you to sit at the center to concentrate, and, the other, to be active and look at your books and files. It was completed about two years ago. You never know if anyone will select your piece. Some pieces never leave. Some users pick more traditional pieces from the 18th century. I always thought this desk could be for a woman, since it’s not so big. In fact, that was my hope. I also wanted it to be contemporary rather than decorative and to create a new typology for work.

Do you have any dream projects? No, I like to design for the dreams of others. I never dreamed I would design a hotel, do architecture or electronic music. Sometimes, dreams of others take you down a path you otherwise would not envision on your own.

What’s ahead for 2018? I’m working on a project for Centre Pompidou. My redesigns for Paris newsstands/kiosks will be installed next spring. I’m designing a scenography for the Philharmonie de Paris about Arab music and the exhibition “Velvet Underground: New York Extravaganza,” also designed for the Philharmonie, tours the U.S. with its first stop in New York.

Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor, wants you to question him. He believes in standing behind a concept, and welcomes debate. He also believes that architecture needs to consider the lifespan of a building, rather than the creation of complete structure. Here, the internationally acclaimed educator, author, architect, thinker and humanist shares some of his ideas.

CATHY LEFF: How has your thinking about architecture education changed over time? MOHSEN MOSTAFAVI: I was shaped by my specific circumstances and experience. I moved to London as a teenager and studied in the 1970s at the Architectural Association School. Late 1960s’ attitudes about freedom and openness, especially the emphasis on youth, seemed present. My interactions with interesting architects, historians and theorists instilled a specific idea of architecture relative to the city, history and contemporary European philosophy. Over time, I focused on questions of design and practice, with interest in the intersection of architecture and landscape and, by extension, architecture’s relationship to nature.

CL: How has the GSD changed since you joined? MM: We are very interested in “disciplinary knowledge and transdisciplinary practices.” Faculty with different backgrounds and expertise are collaborating and producing work with their students. Having an architect and historian come together or a technologist and designer or ecologist and landscape architect or planner and food expert are examples of how the School is becoming increasingly collaborative. We have created a platform for cross- fertilization among schools and departments at Harvard and across the world at large.

Our students explore “real world” projects, participating in actual situations across the globe. Freed from the burden of an actual commission, this engagement produces exciting ideas and leads to unexpected visions.

Architectural education occurs within a specific temporal moment. Pedagogy and our mode of thinking are in constant motion. We build on the knowledge of the past to respond to and imagine potential future scenarios. Architects and designers are not historians, yet they require knowledge of history, technology and other forms of knowledge to continue imagining and designing.

CL: What are today’s opportunities for architects? MM: To make themselves relevant and utilize their talent to engage with a broader set of issues connected to the built environment and connecting to other fields. Understanding cities through the lens of climate change, new forms of public space, the intersection of mobility and housing, new spaces for work are some examples of domains that remain relatively unexplored. We need a bolder agenda, to be more daring.

CL: Can you discuss the Future of the American City? MM: Presently, this GSD initiative focuses on four cities: Miami, L.A., Detroit and Boston. We aim to create a multi-year research investigation that brings the resources of the School, faculty, students and alumni together with local experts, stakeholders and government agencies to explore ways that emphasize effective and strategic planning.

It’s hard to speak of the “American City” without recognizing the enormous diversity that exists throughout the country. The selection of these four cities represents socio-economic and geographic diversity. Our plan is to establish a three-year project for each city. We are focusing on an integrated approach that will have important implications for the way in each one considers its future.

CL: Is architecture experiencing its own disruption? MM: This is a complex issue. On the one hand, the field of architecture experiences too much disruption; on the other, it doesn’t experience sufficient disruption. It’s not surprising that architecture is a profession affected by economic volatility more than almost any other form of practice. These radical economic cycles can have a devastating impact on the organization of many practices that have to be responsive to the oscillations in decision-making by their clients. It’s important to recognize that architecture, the nature of its procedures as well as its engagement with the construction industry, has in some ways remained too constant. For example, there is little that parallels within the architectural industry a phenomenon such as that of miniaturization, which has had a massive impact on the evolution of technology. Is there a way in which the relationship between design and production can change? Might there be ways in which we should consider our notions of comfort? There may not be an easy answer to these questions, but they do point the way towards the possibility of disruption having a potentially productive impact on the way we might conceive the built environment in the future.

CL: Who were your mentors? MM: I was lucky to study with Dalibor Vesely and Joseph Rykwert. Dalibor, who sadly passed not so long ago, was my teacher and then colleague in London during the late 70s and early 80s. Originally from Czechoslovakia, he was an engineer and architect with immense knowledge of continental philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics and their connections to architecture. We taught together in London and Cambridge and remained close friends. “Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation” is a work I always refer back to.

Rykwert is an amazingly erudite scholar who wrote many important books, including “On Adams House in Paradise,” “The Dancing Column” and “The Idea of a Town.” He was my supervisor—an amazing historian deeply rooted in the present. We overlapped during my tenure at the University of Pennsylvania.

CL: What recent projects have caught your attention? MM: My involvement with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the last 10-plus years allows me see very modest and very beautiful projects. For example, the project of Marina Tabassum from Bangladesh for a mosque was selected for an award. It’s a striking building of simple brick with an astonishing quality of light on the interior. Chinese architect Zhang Ke transformed a hutong in the center of Beijing by adding a children’s library. There are many architects doing exceptional work across the globe. A few notables include Junya Ishigami in Japan; Christian Kerez and Valerio Olgiati in Switzerland; Smiljan Radic in Chile; and, of course, Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

CL: What would you like your legacy to be? MM: I try to facilitate the best possible circumstances for the creative minds of our students, faculty and staff; to produce the kind of work that matters.

After First Lady Michelle Obama wore one of his creations for her first state dinner with India’s Prime Minister in 2009, Mumbai-born, New York-based fashion designer Naeem Khan’s career went stratospheric. Since then, the House of Khan has become a global powerhouse with a clientele comprised of the world’s most influential ladies in politics (FLOTUS and Kate Middleton), music (Beyoncé), food (Padma Lakshmi), tech (Marissa Mayer) and film (Penelope Cruz, Eva Longoria and Mandy Moore, whose navy caped dress with a plunging neckline stunned on the Golden Globes red carpet this January). Today, on the occasion of the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, Khan reflects on his work for and with Michelle Obama.

How did you come to design for First Lady Michelle Obama? I received an unexpected phone call from her stylist asking me to design a dress for the first State dinner. They gave me total freedom. There is a level of trust that came from spending time with her. She knew from the first dress I got it right. We wanted to make it easy for her; I knew she didn’t have the time for 10 fittings.

How did the relationship develop from there? For her Cuba trip, I designed a dress for a dinner in a garden, something less formal with lots of flowers on it. And when she went to China, I designed something in red out of respect for the Chinese people. I embroidered chrysanthemums throughout the fabric. It made a political statement. I’m conscious of location, occasion and what it’s going to say. When the Prime Minister of India came for the first state dinner, I designed a dress with multiple messages— the cut was very American, the fabric was handmade using an old Indian textile technique. The pattern was inspired by Andy Warhol. The dress was a mix of American and Indian cultures symbolizing the two countries that were meeting.

Why Warhol? Earlier in my career, I worked for Halston. Andy was a big part of the entourage. We created certain dresses with poppies, and Andy and I would sit down together and draw a lot of poppies. I would then have them embroidered into the textiles.

What do you think Michelle Obama tried to convey through fashion? She wanted to demonstrate she was a normal person, but she understood her role. Her dresses showed her respect for the person she was greeting or honoring. She dressed for them, and she did that so wisely.

For what other leading women on the global political stage have you designed dresses? Queen Noor of Jordan. She’s a good friend. I met her through the Aga Khan. I’ve also designed for royalty, from the sheiks in the Middle East to Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge. They all like things that are made exclusively for them. Middleton wore one of my dresses during her visit to India. It was for that iconic photograph where she was sitting where Princess Diana sat in front of the Taj Mahal.

Do you find there’s a common thread shared between the women you dress? They want to be elegant, classically chic and want something timeless. They don’t want to be trendy. The work has to be high quality. What I designed for the First Lady I wouldn’t make for anyone else. Each piece is fashionably correct for the personality and occasion. I consider how much sleeve, how open the neck, how does it look when she’s entering the room. All these things matter. If she’s going to be dancing, I think about how much train.

What fashion statement caught your attention during the election cycle?Donald Trump’s baseball cap! It helped get him so many votes. He took that baseball cap, made it his own fashion statement, and connected to so many people. I think he sold something like eight million of those hats. For me, men’s suits all look similar. But the cap connected to his base, and he hit a home run with that. It’s incredible that with so little money, it had such an impact. There’s something to be studied here.

How has the work for Michelle Obama personally affected you? It humbled me. Michelle Obama has done so much for society and for education. I’ve learned so much from her. We are in conversations with the school board about building a fashion school on the site of my future studio. In Miami, this will create interaction between students and the industry, allowing me to pass my art on to the next generation. This is the first time a public school and fashion house will be next to each other. We will create 100 to 150 new jobs in Miami. Being around Michelle and her interest in inner-city children influenced my desire to inspire children.

Is there anyone for whom you wouldn’t design? I wouldn’t design for a dictator. Otherwise, I put my own political beliefs aside when it comes to my work.