Wednesday May 14, 2014 – Wednesday May 14, 2014

A conversation around the 25 OfficeUS Issues to be explored at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale

OfficeUS Issues

Speechbuster @ Rafael Viñoly Architects

50 Vandam Street

May 14, 2014

7pm

Storefront for Art and Architecture presents OfficeUS Issues, the inaugural event of the Speechbuster Residency, a project that inserts public debate within private spaces with its first stop at Rafael Viñoly Architects in New York.

This event is free and open to the public. RSVP required due to limited capacity. If you plan to attend, send an email to [email protected].

Location: Rafael Viñoly Architects, 50 Vandam Street, New York

Subway: Spring Street C / E  - Houston Street 1

OfficeUS  is an architecture group that aims to redefine the terms of design and production in architecture on a global scale with its first headquarters at the United States Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale de Venezia in Venice, Italy. Starting in June 2014,  OfficeUS will work over 25 weeks with a team of six OfficeUS Partners in residence in Venice, 90  OfficeUS Outposts offices around the world, and a series of weekly visiting Office US  Experts towards the production of a new architectural lexicon.

The work of  OfficeUS is organized around 25 OfficeUS Issues, a set of narratives that trace and address pressing questions from the last 100 years of architectural thinking and practice to today. The 25  OfficeUS Issues resonate with the archive of projects and offices of the OfficeUS Repository library that contains projects designed by US offices working abroad. These projects will be presented in a chronological archive of the last 100 years which visitors will be able to access during office visits to the OfficeUS Headquarters in Venice. 

Individually and collectively, these issues and projects tell multiple, imbricated stories of US architectural firms, typologies, and technologies, as well as a broader narrative of modernization and its global reach. Together, the elements of  OfficeUS create an historical record of the contribution of the United States to global architectural thought, and a petri dish in which that record is submitted to contemporary agents of disruption, critique, pessimism, and optimism.

On May 14th in New York, a group of architectural experts will sit around the Speechbuster table to launch and open up the discussion about the  OfficeUS Issues.

The conversation will be moderated by one of the  OfficeUS curators and one of the OfficeUS Partners. 

OfficeUS  is curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Ana Miljacki and Ashley Schafer.

For more information about OfficeUS , please visit www.officeus.org.

About the Speechbuster

The Speechbuster Residency inserts public debate within private space. The project activates spaces through a series of conversations, screenings and events negotiating between the performativity of the Speechbuster, contemporary issues in art and architecture, and the space it occupies. Its inaugural location is the Exhibition Space at RVA located at Rafael Viñoly's downtown New York office. The Speechbuster, commissioned by Storefront with the support of the Rauschenberg Foundation and designed in a collaboratively by architect Jimenez Lai and artist Grayson Cox, embarks on a journey through a series of private spaces in New York City.

Exhibition Space at Rafael Viñoly Architects  

Located within the headquarters of Rafael Viñoly Architects at 50 Vandam Street in West SoHo, the exhibition space is a 2,450 square foot multi-function workspace with 25-foot ceilings. It regularly hosts meetings, lectures, workshops, events and temporary exhibitions. 

Founded in 1983 and based in New York City, Rafael Viñoly Architects is an internationally renowned firm with offices in London and Abu Dhabi. The firm has completed an unusually large number of diverse projects on five continents that range in scale from laboratory casework detailing to master planning. Over the past quarter century, the practice’s key trademark is the ability to reinvent institutional typologies and integrate the public realm into civic buildings.

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