hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) are great fans of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, and bring their enthusiasm  for these two giants of the artistic avant-garde forward in time through hMa's on-going collaborations and conversations with contemporary avant-garde artists including Michael Schumacher, Bruce Pearson, Monica de la Torre, Roxy Paine, Joe Amrhein, and Susan Swenson, and including several other artists who we work with, mostly from the New York area.

Reunion by John Cage, featuring John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, and Teeny Duchamp playing chess. Post: Victoria Meyers architect

What hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) love about Cage, Duchamp, and our contemporary friends in the arts, is how the most intelligent works in the fine arts foster on-going discussions about science, technology, and culture.  Great artists look at culture as a whole, and create visual and sound interpretations of the technological changes of that period in time.  This discussion places viewers and listeners into that conversation, through an incisive and intellectually challenging presentation of ideas.

hMa's architecture incorporates contemporary discussions into buildings and space design.  hMa does this by bringing on-going discussion with artists who are making some of the most challenging contemporary art into the firm's design process.  hMa invites artists whose work poses challenges beyond the ordinary to incorporate their works onto and into hMa's buildings.

three early versions of the 'WATER' score frit pattern by NY composer Michael Schumacher in collaboration with hanrahan Meyers architects. For information contact: info@hanrahanMeyers.com.  Post: Victoria Meyers architect

As part of hMa's ongoing discussion with the arts, they are developing an interactive glass wall for their Digital Water i-Pavilion (DWi-P): Battery Park City Community Center in collaboration with Michael Schumacher.  The facade will be activated so that Visitors passing by the building will be able to wave cell phones at the building's facade and receive sound samples of Michael's 'WATER' score, depicted on the facade as a bar-coded frit pattern.

The DWi-P collaboration takes the idea of the 'normal' glass window which has been 'altered' by being selected for interpretation by the artist (and – in this case - by the architects) and uses that otherwise mundane and everyday piece of the built fabric to generate an architectural armature that works as a building -  but also as in interactive work of art.

scale mock-up of the frit pattern seen on-site of the Digital Water Pavilion: Battery Park City Community Center, with WATER composition shown as a bar code. For information contact:  info@hanrahanMeyers.com. Post: Victoria Meyers architect

Above, we are showing a full scale mock up of the glass - fragments of a future 550-foot long glass wall –  in our office for on-site installation -  at the building site at DWi-P.  hMa will keep Visitors to the blog updated on progress with the WATER score / glass installation.  DWi-P is scheduled to receive a Platinum LEED rating.

More to come….

for more information about the hMa / Schumacher collaboration, visit our website:  www.hanrahanMeyers.com. Contact:  info@hanrahanMeyers.com