FORM A Space for Ideas, Culture, and Aesthetics
“What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.� - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Editor’s Letter This season, we worked with our team to transfigure FORM into a space that champions the role of aesthetics in altering our daily lives. Our fast-paced and sensationalized world has eroded the importance of living reflectively and with intentionality. In response, FORM has taken a new direction whereby readers are invited to slow down, ponder, and just “be”. The publication itself is more open, and aims to provoke deeper thought while instilling a sense of calm in the reader. The scope of content has also broadened, with the introduction of three engaging sections, interspersed with introspective creative writing. Our Art & Design section employs visual essays and examinations of art and architecture to provide content with intellectual substance. “The Role of Lines” serves as a theoretical piece, seeking to examine the use of a fundamental visual component – the line – in the disciplines of painting, architecture and photography. Meanwhile, visual pieces such as “Chlorine” and “Vert.ité” explore existential themes of free, authentic living. Our Style section, comprising of three editorials, captures FORM’s reputable styling sensibilities, while incorporating themes of casual sophistication and vivid storytelling. Each editorial balances contemporary fashion trends with timeless style, imbuing the viewer with inspiration for an elegant and distinctive wardrobe.
The Travel & Culture section features the most impressive lifestyle establishments in the Durham area, such as the Durham Hotel and the Runaway brand – institutions that have played a significant role in fostering Durham’s creative community. The section also features a visual essay on Malta that prods readers to think beyond the bounds of their locality. Last but not least, our meditative creative writing pieces, situated between the main sections, create a space for words to speak for themselves. Although most of the publication proudly embraces FORM’s visual DNA, these pages allow the reader to confront beautifully arranged bodies of text, containing pensive words that can, and should, stand alone. Overall, we believe that this issue represents a serious turn for FORM – a change that will inform the magazine’s purpose and identity for years to come. We hope that the reader will find within the publication, “a space for ideas, cultures, and aesthetics.” Kojo Abudu
EDITORS IN CHIEF CREATIVE DIRECTORS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Kojo Abudu Cassidy von Seggern Elizabeth Lim Brian Lin William Bernell
DIRECTOR OF ART & DESIGN
Tommaso Babucci
DIRECTOR OF STYLE
Christina Tribull
DIRECTORS OF TRAVEL & CULTURE DIRECTOR OF LAYOUT DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS ART & DESIGN CONTRIBUTORS Katherine Ahn Claire Alexandre Doha Ali Gea Bozzi Paloma Rodney Bryan Rusch TRAVEL & CULTURE CONTRIBUTORS Angela Griffe Blythe Davis Selin Ozcelik LAYOUT CONTRIBUTORS Gillian Card Nia El-Amin Annie Kornack Julia Marshall Savannah Norman Ziyi Wang Blaire Zhang
Sonia Fillipow Joseph Kim Kelly McLaughlin Gianna Miller STYLE CONTRIBUTORS Jaiveer Katariya Emma Landis Anysia Lee Yasmin Maktal Jared Wong Allison Wu Hannah Yehudah Lan Zhuang WRITING CONTRIBUTORS Blythe Davis Madhav Dutt Bryan Rusch COMMUNICATIONS Stephanie Cutler Fallon Grayson Savannah Norman Kristen Mendoza Carly Mirabile
Table of Contents ART & DESIGN VERT.ITÉ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 SUPERSTUDIO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 8 CHLORINE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4 THE ROLE OF LINES.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 WHO IS THE ARTIST OF THIS?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8 STYLE SLATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 THUNDERBIRD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 REVERIE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 FREEWAY.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4 TRAVEL & CULTURE THE DURHAM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8 BEYOND MONK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 MALTA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 0 RUNAWAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 8 MAKE LIVING AN ART.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 6
FORM
“Material, space, and color are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material that can be picked up and sold, but no one sees space and color. Two of the main aspects of art are invisible; the basic nature of art is invisible.� - Donald Judd
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“Take another step forward; get one step closer. Break this barrier of space. Expose the human emotions at stake under the naked skin.”
Vert.ité Vert: French; green + Verité: French; truth This photographic essay explores the open interaction of natural bodies with grand tropical green leaves, sharp-winding cacti and complex shadow patterns to elucidate the necessity of being vulnerable in a new setting. Uncovered skin in an exotic surrounding brings out new shapes, shadows and colors, creating sensuality, intimacy, and vulnerability.
“Drop the layers that separate you from a given space. Let yourself be drawn into a new terrifyingly beautiful environment. Connect with a truer self.”
PHOTOGRAPHY & WRITING Claire Alexandre and Tommaso Babucci MODELS Olivia de Gaudemar, Albin John, Paschalia Nsato, Chris Taylor, and Sofia Zymnis
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SUPERSTUDIO Florentine Avant-Garde Architects of the 1960s
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“They yearned to produce something that inspired action, and they realized that the only way to do this was to create disruptive objects.�
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Superstudio: The Architects that Refused to Build In 1966, twenty architecture students in Florence, Italy gathered to form Superstudio, a radical collective that sought to revolutionize the concept of design. The students took inspiration from Italy’s Legista labor movement, which emphasized the autonomy of the individual in choosing his or her own fate. Superstudio asserted the right of designers to refuse the labor that had been assigned to them – a critique of the rise of uniform, bland modern architecture that accompanied globalization. In the 1960s, architecture became the most popular area of study in Italian universities, in response to the rapid rate of industrialization and urbanization in the northern cities. This social and economic upheaval produced an urgent demand for affordable housing. Real estate developers called for the cheap and hasty construction of mass housing projects, thereby prioritizing profit over innovative design. The resulting structures resembled plain, vacuous erections, which failed to capture the imagination of a new generation of progressive architects. In response, this group of disillusioned architects founded Su-
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perstudio in order to transform the urban environment. The radical architects felt constrained within these capitalist conditions. They yearned to produce something that inspired action, and they realized that the only way to do this was to create disruptive objects. Superstudio aimed to present architecture as “obstruction,” by placing the disruptive objects across the routes of everyday life. Therefore, by producing objects that were impossible to ignore, the architects hoped to make viewers constantly aware of their immediate environment. Monumento Continuo, Italian for continuous monument, is one of Superstudio’s most notorious projects. The brilliant project, which envisions infinite, gridded structures expanding across nature and eminent cities, relates to the group’s vision of “architecture as obstruction”. This dystopian vision of life on earth imagines a future where edifices do not exist, people do not work, and individuals practice a nomadic existence - free from all the anxiety of the world. This homogenous world is stripped of power, technology, and culture. The squared surface represents not only a network connecting society, but also serves as a metaphor for the systematic and logical allocation of resources. The images present landscapes - collages that imbue both a sense of the familiar and foreign.
Art & Design
Since there are no real structures, the practice of design becomes conceptual rather than concrete. Visions, dreams and illusions dominate this new activity, and building becomes a thing of the past. As framed by Emilio Ambasz, this project is a mental attitude, rather than a three-dimensional structure that could one day come to life. Around the same time, Superstudio created Quaderna, an Anti-Design campaign that condemned consumerism and the exuberance of pop design furniture. As a line of rigid, geometrical shaped pieces coated in a grid-pattern, Quaderna stood in stark contrast to the colorful, whimsical objects of pop design. The group advanced the concept of deconstruction, which sought to eradicate the status and significance allotted to objects by reducing them to their most basic, neutral element. As a result, we would live with objects, rather than for them. The utilitarian character of Quaderna’s furniture is thus aligned with the notion of pure
functionality. The iconic, minimalist furniture is still produced today by Italian industrial design company, Zanotta. In 1972 Superstudio’s work reached a global scale when it was presented at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the hit exhibit “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape.” The group stayed together for a mere twelve years, and in 1978 it disbanded, with some of its members going to teach, others to write, and some, paradoxically, to build. Quaderna and Monumento Continuo fundamentally proposed that if global architecture and design continued in the same direction, where bland structures were being incessantly erected across world capitals, individuals would live in a monotonous world, lacking any color, imagination, or character. These avant-garde architects’ refusal to build was an unprecedented design action, and posed crucial questions regarding the role of the designer.
Words by Gea Bozzi
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“Visions, dreams, illusions dominate this new activity, and building is a thing of the past.”
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CHLORINE A visual essay inspired by lyrics from Apartment X’s “Chlorine” The new EP by Apartment X is the culmination of multiple attempts to form a cohesive and well-established body of music. Working out of their own apartments, the band members, Quinn and Pascual, embraced the limitations of their time and space to create a unique and minimal sound. The album thus reflects a conscious stylistic choice for simplicity and personal narrative, making it a deeply intimate and authentic experience for listeners.
introspective song, “Young,” in which the main character grows disillusioned with his own future. The song, “Blink,” further the character’s development by expressing a desire for meaning, happiness, and living in the moment. The final work, “Chlorine,” embodies the last stage of the character’s narrative, in which he reflects upon the parts of his life that have become neglected because of his choices. When put together, the EP by Apartment X is a story of exploration and extremes – it exhibits an individual’s unending search for happiness and meaning, despite life’s difficulties and challenges.
Conceptually, the EP conveys an individual’s complicated transition to adulthood. The extended play begins with an
PHOTOGRAPHY Tommaso Babucci ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY Aurelia Fava and Bryan Rusch WRITING Pascual di Tella and Quinn Scanlan MODEL Pascual di Tella 26
CHLORINE
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a million places to hide / but none of them are right / and there’s a million things outside / that scare me at night
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CHLORINE
wet skin smells like chlorine my girlfriend smells like chlorine the ocean smells like chlorine
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waste my life now i’m twenty one / plastic animals and a water gun / with chlorine / read about me in your magazine / fish go belly up it’s not what it seems / it’s chlorine
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In day to day moments, they only live at the fringes. The edges between one object and the next – the power of lines is lost in the hustle of a continuous moment. Only when frozen, stripped and evaluated do their true nature come to fruition. Our minds frame with lines, our eyes follow lines, our bodies interact in accordance with lines. In most works of art, we are never meant to recognize these impulses, but certain artists have re-invented this age-old definition, transforming their pieces into a conversation.
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MIRÓ Words by Katherine Ahn
The art movement, which emerged in the 1920s, was about expressing the state of the subconscious. When one thinks about Surrealism, household names such as Salvador Dali and René Magritte often come to mind. Whereas Dali and Magritte worked on expressing the subconscious state through naturalistic modes of representation, the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró (1893-1983) took a different approach – expressing the spontaneity of the mind through abstracted forms.
native and unusual. He divorces his work from cultural or personal context, allowing his paintings to be appreciated at a purely aesthetic level. Miró is not just resigned to lines. In his works, trails of shape and color are also present, further complicating composition and form. But these addendums are just ancillary to the lines, running through every work with an inevitability of form. When looking at the lines, a sense of life is present. Some lines are tense and rigid while other lines are fluid, with a variety of thickness throughout. The brushstrokes of some lines have speed – some do not. The lines contain feeling and emotion, a translation of movement and tension from the wrist to the page.
Miró revolutionized the line by not making them representational; a viewer did not have to interpret the paintings, because he used lines purely for what they were – as aspects of design as opposed to an allegory for meaning. Looking at Maternity and Woman Encircled by the Flight of a Bird the images seem chaotic, even with the aid of descriptive titles. In this work, a clear connection between the depictions of women and birds is ambiguous, leaving room for the viewer to search and interpret. By making random combinations of objects interact, Miró captures the imagi-
These emotions speak in Miró’s tryptic, The Hope of a Condemned Man. The lines are heavy and sluggish, yet free flowing and expressive. Their curvature maps out the duality between hope and anguish with a grieving human. The unfinished compositions represent an unfinished tale,
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ANDO Words by Paloma Rodney
In architecture lines are transformed from merely representational fragments of a work, to the foundational profiles of structures. The self-taught Japanese architect Ando uses these simple constraints to take his viewers down his own unconventional path.
quest of the natural world. Yet even here, Ando has created poetry. Sand. Rock. Clay. Water. His formula is created with nothing but natural sources. Between these smooth walls, the lines emerge. Crisp corners and clean cuts in the concrete create the sterile cleanliness that effortlessly carries the viewer across the space.
Taking notes from the Japanese art of haikus, Ando creates simple structures, emphasizing the absence of the excessive use of lines in his buildings. The lines carry the viewer through the space, engaging all their senses. Around them, Ando has created a microcosm where his architecture is complemented by the untouched nature it has been built around. Therefore, there is complete harmony between man, nature, and structure.
In his Church of Light, Ando has made an empty cross of two perpendicular lines in the concrete, open to the outside. Natural light penetrates his architecture, blurring the boundary between the building and its surroundings. Japanese culture is centered around communion of the five senses, which Ando seeks to balance in his work. His architecture speaks for itself, leaving the onlooker free to interact with the calming space around them.
The muted tones of his structures are often created with cement, something often seen as the epitome of man’s con-
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GRUYAERT Words by Doha Ali & Bryan Rusch
Every moment, our surroundings change ever so subtly. The photographer’s role is to choose the right moment and angle in order to capture the breathing spirit of a stagnant instant. Magnum, an organization of elite photographers, has featured the Belgian artist Harry Gruyaert for his ability to tell tales through the pervasive lines in his images.
Michaela O’Brien, Fine Art Professor at Duke University, has students map the relationships of lines across images. Through physical interactions, the flow of subtle lines and their intersections decode how the artist keeps one’s attention. Gruyaert often makes these relationships explicit, as seen in Department Store Entrance, where gateways and poles distinctly break up the work. Their layering gives the perception of three-dimensions, with light, color, and tone weaving between the lines, filling the space with context.
Gruyaert has taken the once invisible techniques in photography, and subversively emphasized them as the primary features of his work. Most explicitly, his Hotel Lavatory portrays the Rule of Thirds. Here, the viewer follows the walls of a hallway, to see a man, stock-still, looking at himself in a mirror. He stands out, the rest of the image made of dead space. Here, the vertical lines of the wall edges cut the plane into thirds – the center third being the primary focus. Where the walls meet the floor, and where the blue tiles give way to white, the image is once again narrowed, the action being channeled to the center.
Achieving this feat is the ultimate goal of photography – to transcend the constraints of the two-dimensional surface. Curved, horizontal and diagonal lines become vectors in which the information of the moment is carried in the space. It sweeps us away. The ephemeral beauty of Spain: Region of Galicia lingers for an instant, as we traverse the highway to the next sight, living in an unmoving dimension. 39
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Who is the Artist of This? Words by Bryan Rusch
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WHO IS THE ARTIST OF THIS?
Love is a mirror.. You see nothing but your reflection. You see nothing but your real face. -Rumi
Every second we take the next step in painting our lives, making choices and acting on emotions. Brush strokes today become the foundations for the future, and we can look back to see the beauty we have left in our wake. But too often we do it blindly, with only the slightest idea of how things might turn out at the end. We fret and we become frantic as we view the pieces of those around us falling into place. We see their beauty and we witness their mastery of making life an art. And on our own, that is all we can do, watch and wait. Patience sees the completion of all things, and the beginning of the rest. But this passivity takes a toll on the soul. Faith in oneself is sometimes the hardest faith to keep. We desire a way to escape, and to be set free – to step out of our body, and gain the chance to see the world from a new perspective. The secret to this can never be unlocked within us. To understand our place, we must lose our self-interest, and reach into the place of another. To find a Lover is to find oneself. When you give yourself fully to another, your actions, thoughts and intentions lose their ethereality. They are embodied, and your artistry is mirrored. Your paint strokes become intention, and your art is no longer in a void. The true Lovers’ art loses its boundaries, and their lives synchronize to build up a known masterpiece, more effective, more powerful, and more expressive than either one could have made on their own.
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“Fashion sighs after trends. I want timeless elegance.” - Yohji Yamamoto
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PHOTOGRAPHY Elizabeth Lim MODELS Geena Gomez and Allison Wu
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rain coat Zara trousers Vince sweater American Eagle boots Bamboo
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shirt J Crew blouse Chicos Design trousers Ralph Lauren neck tie Olive shoes Camper
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sweater Vince jeans Gap coat Acne Studios shoes Coclico
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PHOTOGRAPHY Brian Lin MODELS Peyton Dilweg and Ezgi Menzi
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top Forever 21 trousers Forever 21 jacket Saint Laurent boots Zara
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Ezgi: dress Zimmerman shirt Zimmerman boots Zara Peyton: skirt Topshop jacket Current/Elliot sweater Free People shoes BDG
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Reverie PHOTOGRAPHY Joseph Kim and Elizabeth Lim MODELS Delmar Kaiser and Istvan Urban
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Delmar: sweater Carolina Herrera trousers Banana Republic sneakers Common Projects Istvan: sweater Drumohr blazer Salvatore Ferragamo trousers COS shoes Tod’s
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FORM
“Sometimes you just listen to the white noise between channels and try to hear something, like cloud-watching.”
Night tracking. The highway stretches. The taillights way in front of you leaving trails. Particles swimming across your corneas. Warm, flat soda in cans between the driver and passenger seats. A low, low heart rate. Big city north. Big city south. Nothing but backroads in between, intersecting, splitting, veiny like webbing. No streetlights out here. Next to you someone is asleep or awake and quiet. You drive on through Hollywood, Boca Raton, Coral Springs, past West Palm Beach, into some small town that you think is a shortcut. Driving, driving, driving in the dark. The two of you sit in companionable silence for a long time; the radio comes on and off. Sometimes you just listen to the white noise between channels and try to hear something, like cloud-watching. The highway cuts through the heart of the city; the car’s the hemoglobin molecule rushing through the arteries into the center, across the overpass of the aortic arch, finally out of the muscly, fibrous business district, and as the road branches into four-lane venules and then two-lane capillaries, the streetlights thin until they disappear. The other cars dissolve and the smog slowly clears, and by now the sun is all the way down and the pinkish clouds are fading. Now the seat next to you is so quiet it seems asleep, and the fifty-five mph speed limit sign is swelling before you. The only lights are the moon and the radio tower and your headlights. Maybe if you checked the rearview mirror you’d notice the city receding into the far far night and the black swallowing the reflectors behind you.
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FREEWAY
“Maybe if you checked the rearview mirror you’d notice the city receding into the far far night and the black swallowing the reflectors behind you.”
And you do eventually make your way into the big city north, and it’s still glass-silent. The skies are smoggy, but not too smoggy, from the West Palm Beach air pollution. You can see the clouds and you can see the stars. And you think of those guys who flew to the moon back in 1969, how they were so far up that there wasn’t even any up or down. Earth wasn’t below them; it was just way over there. And there were three of them, right? Three brains bouncing across the lunar surface, colonizing the place for just a little while with three separate centers of the world. And so to Buzz, or whichever one stepped off the rocket first, the location of everything ever done shifted. Then behind him came the other two, and the center of their worlds shifted onto the moon too, but they weren’t first, so you can’t remember what their names were. Just other bodies. All this happening with the rest of the world, the Cold War, Woodstock, whatever other major historical events occurred in 1969, Buzz just ignored all this when he stood out there. He was planting that American flag, but it was his own. And when he left, the flag blew over, and that was because he was gone. The world moved to the moon for twenty hours or so, and then it left.
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“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.� - Miriam Beard
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THE DUR HA M PHOTOGRAPHY Tommasso Babucci WRITING Blythe Davis
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THE DURHAM
In 2016, The Durham emerged as downtown’s premier independent boutique hotel. The structure was adapted from a mid-century bank and maintains many of the modernist elements that made the original building unique. The hotel engages with the Durham community through its restaurant and events. Likewise, all the ingredients in the food served at the hotel restaurant are locally sourced, and many of the recipes are based on traditional Southern fare. The Los Angeles-based design group Commune provided the inspiration for The Durham’s mid-century style, punctuated with angular art pieces, from the lightweight polyhedral sculptures dangling from the ceiling in the lobby to the elegant, minimal urns. Through its food and design, The Durham blends the new with the old and the traditional with the innovative.We had the opportunity to speak to the hotel’s owner, Dan Robinson, general manager, Craig Spitzer, and chef, Andrea Reusing, to learn about its history, design, and role in the Durham community. In downtown Durham, nestled between a brick office building and the classically-styled post office sits what seems, at first glance, to be a remnant of the 1950s and 60s. The exterior is all lines and blocks, minimally sculpted and untextured. In an architectural tribute to mid-century modernism, a stack of enormous letters, each on its own square plate, spells out “The Durham” down the flank of the building. The sound of evening jazz music from the rooftop, or the sight of an early morning yoga class gliding up there along with the clouds gives the place life uncharacteristic of such a relic. The place is too buoyant to be an artifact— it’s a living, breathing creature that seems to exist in both the mid-century and the now—and somehow in neither. In 2008, Duke alumnus Daniel Robinson and five colleagues purchased the building without specific plans for its use. The space appealed to them not only because of its unique architecture but also because of its abundance of natural light, the way the building’s design allowed it to transform during different times of the day with different light levels, and the overall openness of the space. The idea to turn the building into a boutique hotel wasn’t a serious possibility the owners considered until 2010, though. “We talked about what possibilities existed,” remarked Robinson, “and [the idea of a hotel] was the one that stuck.” The Durham was originally established to provide an alternative luxury hotel to the Washington Duke; Robinson and his colleagues wanted to attract business travelers and young professionals in order to bring a new kind of audience to the city of Durham. 85
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Craig Spitzer, the general manager of The Durham, talked to us more about the way in which the hotel fits into the city’s landscape. He described one of the goals of the hotel as “bringing the outside space into a built environment.” The hotel achieves this objective in more way than one—certainly, it weds the traditional Southern culture of Durham with the refined environment of a boutique hotel, but The Durham also entwines elements of the past and present in a way that makes the hotel its own center of chronological paradox and liminality.
phosed into a cohesive design that leaves the hotel’s aesthetic hovering somewhere between the 1950s and 60s and now. The hotel lobby, for instance, is an amalgam of minimal design elements with what Spitzer calls “big, bold shapes and patterns” that harken back to the building’s mid-century origins. But sitting at the glass-topped tables tessellating the bright red and white color-blocked floor are young professionals typing on thin laptops and tablets, sipping coffee from the adjacent bar, and floating new business ideas. The atmosphere is almost surreal with its combination of functionality and design, modern and old.
Durham as a city has a habit of repurposing. Spitzer phrases this phenomenon well. He called the process of establishing the hotel one of “adaptive reuses.” Much of the city’s culture today centers around the reuse of tobacco warehouses and brick structures. These architectural relics have paved the way for Durham’s current cultural renaissance: now more than ever, the city is overflowing with globally-influenced food, art, and commerce that blend with Durham’s southern location and attitudes in a one-of-a-kind way.
This juxtaposition of old and new, local and transient, extends beyond the physical elements of the hotel and is also reflected in the way the hotel treats both its guests and its staff. With the intention of making the hotel unique to its locale, The Durham presents gift boxes to its lodgers in an act of Southern hospitality with contents created by local artists and artisans like Burt’s Bees. The lobby of the hotel provides a homelike atmosphere, serving as a greeting space and a living room; the rooftop is accessible at all times. Even the rooms of the hotel are minimal to encourage lodgers to mingle in the common spaces. “You can’t get that anywhere else,” concluded Spitzer.
The name and establishment of The Durham, then, are both reflective and encouraging of this cultural flourishing. “Naming your hotel after the city… comes with an obligation to attempt to truly represent what the community is and stands for,” said Robinson. And The Durham has done more than attempt—it has succeeded. While the hotel is geared towards what Robinson calls “transient young professionals,” the kind of business people who come in and out of Durham and the Triangle in general, in order to demonstrate the city’s potential as a business center, its presence in the center of downtown Durham necessitates its status as a cultural hub. “We try to host community events a least a few times a week,” Spitzer noted. For instance, when the Durham public library was undergoing renovations, The Durham hosted children’s book readings in partnership with the library. The hotel also hosts yoga classes, jazz nights on the rooftop, and stargazing nights in conjunction with the Duke planetarium, in addition to countless other events that bring together the Durham community.
“The place is too buoyant to be an artifact— it’s a living, breathing creature that seems to exist in both the mid-century and the now— and somehow in neither.”
In addition to being a link between travelers and the Durham community, The Durham serves as a meeting place for two points in time. The building retains many of the mid-century design elements that were a selling point when it was purchased, but these elements have metamor-
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We also spoke to Andrea Reusing to learn more about the Durham’s food and the inspiration behind its preparation. Reusing, the award-winning chef at The Durham’s restaurant and founder of Raleigh’s Vin and Chapel Hill’s Lantern, is self-taught. She began to cook when she attended New York University to study politics and film. As a young adult, Reusing worked a number of food-based jobs as a cocktail waitress and bartender but was inspired to open a restaurant once she realized she preferred a more creative and artisanal approach to cooking than she could get in a nightclub environment. After moving to North Carolina and informally catering home-cooked food, she opened two restaurants in the Triangle area with family and friends, and began to refine her cooking preferences, realizing that she was drawn to a communal, process-oriented environment.
community is the most important part of work. With The Durham’s seasonal and local menu, Reusing and her staff are often faced with making do with whatever ingredients are available at the time, and have to take on these challenges as a team. “We spend a lot of time preserving,” Reusing mentioned. When an abundance of ingredients are available at a certain time of the year, it’s important for The Durham to keep them available for when they are out of season. Reusing calls this challenge of adapting recipes to what’s available the “stone soup aspect” of her job, mentioning that it’s her favorite part of working as a chef. “I like coming home and having to cook something from whatever’s in the fridge,” she said. “It’s like alchemy.” Thus, for The Durham’s kitchen, the process of sourcing ingredients and creating a recipe that will blend them in an original and delicious way is the priority. The restaurant’s philosophy seems to be that with good, local ingredients and a staff that works together, you can’t go wrong.
Upon Reusing’s arrival at The Durham, she saw an opportunity to work in a setting that would encourage these preferences. “The owners were very open to a different vision of a hotel,” Reusing told us. She describes the menu she and the owners of The Durham pursued as “tight, seasonal, and locally-sourced.”
We asked Reusing about some of the specific ways The Durham differs from other restaurant environments she’s worked in. “There’s no lock on the door,” she replied. As a hotel, The Durham is a public space, connected more directly to the outside, to the city of Durham and its inhabitants, than a traditional standalone restaurant. “There’s a certain kind of openness and experience that you don’t get in other restaurants,” she said of working in this kind of transitional space.
Reusing described the experience of cooking in The Durham as social and process-based. As the chef, she takes on a key role in running the kitchen and hotel, so she is expected to take the reins as a leader. If you can’t handle that, she says, “you’re in trouble.” For the kitchen staff at The Durham,
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Like the architecture, design, and atmosphere of the hotel, the food is unique within the Durham community. One of the themes of The Durham’s menu is reinterpreting the past as it relates to the present. Reusing aims to adapt traditional Southern recipes in a way that makes them new and modern, to change what she refers to as “the perception of the past” restaurant patrons experience. For instance, one of Reusing’s favorite dishes is the relish tray served at The Durham. Relish trays were a mid-century staple meant to use up extra ingredients that might not have fit into other recipes; the trays often included small amounts of pickled ingredients, leftovers, or other seemingly random components. At The Durham, the relish tray reflects the current season and available preserves, and undergoes constant evolution as the year rolls on. The Durham’s restaurant also rewrites the perception of Southern food and culture through the use of typically unpopular ingredients. Reusing mentioned that she often uses seafood products like mullet and shrimp heads that are usually discarded by other chefs, and has found numerous and sometimes surprising ways to use every part of the available local ingredients. In this way, The Durham’s food and cooking process is, as Robinson commented, “reflective of that exuberance and vibrancy continuing to evolve in downtown Durham… both in terms of tradition and evolution.”
315 E. Chapel Hill St. Durham, NC 27701 www.thedurham.com
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“The Durham’s restaurant ... rewrites the perception of Southern food and culture”
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Beyond Monk A History of Jazz in Durham
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Enveloped in the dissonances and melodic twists characteristic of Thelonious Monk’s style, I am mesmerized by the historical richness of Monk’s compositions and conscious of Durham’s current jazz revival. On the final night of the centennial celebration of the legendary jazz pianist, The Ethan Iverson Trio and Ravi Coltrane performed the North Carolina native’s most iconic pieces. The refurbished, concrete setting echoed Coltrane and the band’s lush sound in an anachronic sensory experience. These energetic saxophone riffs and abrupt piano chords are no stranger to Durham, as prominent jazz artists have passed through the city for decades.
“Because of this, lineages and histories of Jazz are remarkably” intertwined”
Revered pianist, Mary Lou Williams held the title of Jazz Ensemble Director at Duke University from 1977 to 1981. Mary Lou is known for writing and arranging numerous compositions such as the “Zodiac Suite” and “Trumpet No End” for prominent bands such as those of Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. She also directed her own swing band, mentored Thelonious Monk, and “could hang with the bebop guys.” Mary Lou’s successor, Paul Jeffrey, adopted Monk’s bebop style as a reactionary measure to the swing era sound. Unsurprisingly, the lineage of this position follows a historical timeline of Jazz sub-genres as it is carried through generations. Today, Professor John Brown holds the position of Jazz Ensemble director. Brown brings with him a taste of the Duke Jazz department’s rich history by hosting several artists throughout the year who work with students both in the classroom and on stage. With his students and band members, he shares the priceless tradition of learning directly from “giants” of jazz. Brown continues to craft his reputation as an equally prominent and knowledgeable bassist and teacher. Present day Durham is an artistic hub with immense potential. Professor John Brown joins academicians Ira Wiggins of North Carolina Central University and Jim Ketch of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in continuing the traditions of jazz among college students. Outside of the classroom, the greater Durham community is ripe with new talent. Artists looking for a gig in the area often turn to Elaine Crovitz, also known as Mama Jazz. Best known for her role as a “connector,” Mama Jazz is most certainly an authority figure of the Durham jazz scene. She introduces artists to venues such as the Beyù Caffè, and for more experimental musicians, Sharp 9 Gallery.
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“...learning Jazz is a dynamic process.”
Mama Jazz’s efforts are matched by other locals. Trumpeter, Al Strong, is equally involved with the fruitful revival of jazz in Durham. Professor Strong of NCCU notably founded The Art of Cool Project, a non-profit organization that hosts an annual music festival. The Durham festival is known for its diverse lineups with contributing artists from jazz-fusion, trap house jazz, RnB, rap and related genres. Professor Strong’s vision for the festival is reminiscent of the journey jazz has taken in recent years; as artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries stray from the norms of straight-ahead jazz, the distinction between formal jazz and other genres has become less obvious than it once was. From an artist’s perspective, learning Jazz is a dynamic process. Students of the craft find that their sound is shaped by the musicians they learn from and play beside. Because of this, lineages and histories of jazz are remarkably intertwined - sometimes crucial to the sonic image of entire regions. The Monk tribute concerts are evidence of this; the connections between historical figures have left a tangible mark. Durham’s future in the realm of Jazz reflects the massive economic growth the city has undergone in recent years. The historical presence of prominent jazz artists in Durham, while sometimes transient, has laid the foundation for a flourishing and vibrant musical culture in the city. In the age of musical progressivity and genre-blending, this rapidly growing cultural hub will continue to attract innovative musicians.
PHOTOGRAPHY Joseph Kim WRITING Selin Ozcelik
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Malta
A Traveler’s Journal
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Various shades of powder blue and tan meet in clean, urban lines to form narrow city streets bursting with energy and life. Deep reds and muted greens peak through on chipped wooden shutters and corner shops. Walking down the cobbled roads, hints of Arabic influence seamlessly blend with classic Italian and Ancient Roman motifs. Along the coastline, skyscraper hotels cast their shadows on the powerful, crystal blue waves. Behind these goliaths, warm sunlight pours through, illuminating the quiet streets dotted with flowers and small restaurants. The antiquity of Malta has miraculously survived through the modern ages. On the older streets, corners are decorated with statues and shrines of religious figures, a tradition dating back to the Romans. Getting lost in these streets, it feels as though one has been swept into another era. Make one turn and you are pushed back into modernity with honking cars and bustling crowds. One of the must-see locations is Malta’s sub-island, Gozo. An island built for the adventurer, one can swim in a blue lagoon in the morning and hike to the lighthouse on the top of the island by dusk. PHOTOGRAPHY & WRITING Angela Griffe
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RUNAWAY
A Conversation with Gabe Eng-Goetz & Justin Laidlaw
PHOTOGRAPHY Joseph Kim WRITING Sonia Fillipow
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Durham-native Gabe Eng-Goetz founded the apparel and lifestyle brand, Runaway, to promote the idea of “running from convention.” Gabe received his MFA from Syracuse University and channels his fine art background into designing apparel that embodies the innovative, “New Carolina” identity. What started as a one-man operation, designing t-shirts out of his garage for friends, developed into a popular online store in 2011. Gabe’s original designs are now printed on t-shirts, shorts, jackets, hats, beer coozies, Durham Bulls jerseys and more. Justin Laidlaw, a fellow Durhamite, reconnected with Gabe in 2014 after receiving a last-minute call to model for a Runaway campaign. His sustained enthusiasm for the brand quickly landed him the role of communications and media director. The two have since launched a flagship store in downtown Durham, fostering the growth of the city’s creative community through events and collaborations with local artists. We met Gabe and Justin at their store on West Main street to discuss inspiration, community, authenticity, and what it takes to run a small, creative enterprise.
Sonia: So what inspired the brand Runaway?
S: Can you talk about your creative process?
Gabe: The brand itself is inspired by traveling abroad and by the idea of running away. I came up with the brand when I was living in Sydney. That whole time while I was freelancing I knew I wanted to develop a clothing brand. I threw around probably a hundred different names and logos. For several months, I was all-in trying to develop this brand. Runaway was the one that stuck. I felt like it spoke to what I was doing, which was running away to find something greater than myself. The kid in the logo was inspired by the street crossing signs in Sydney. There is a mother and child, but they aren’t super blocky and graphic like the ones in the US - they’re almost retro illustrative. For some reason that stuck out to me, and I kind of developed this logo based on that kid. And that was the genesis of it, and as it’s gone on, the brand has been very much not only a reflection of my own artwork and aesthetic, but also the city of Durham and the surrounding environment here.
G: There is really no direct line, but typically we’ll have four seasonal “drops” [collections] outside of the capsule collections. For each line, we try and draw some main theme. The last theme was drawn from 80s punk band imagery as well as Asian-inspired art. I’m half Chinese, so I felt like I was trying to tap into some of that. You also always have to follow styles and trends to a certain degree, but ultimately you always want to be that trend-setter. We did a pair of suspenders last line. I really think suspenders are going to be the next wave. J: It starts with Gabe, but there is so much that goes into a brand beyond the products themselves. After we decide what the products are going to be, we build a lot of our promotional material around a common theme. We think about what other artists or musicians we can collaborate with that fit within the aesthetic of the collection. At least one product in every season is done by a guest designer, which is really fun because it allows us to tap into other creativity aside from our own, and make new relationships with people who bring a different aesthetic to what Gabe does. We have done collaborative products with other organizations as well. The Durham Bulls sought us out and we have been making a Jersey for them for the past two years, which is really, really cool because they are obviously a much larger organization than us.
Justin: Our company tagline is “run from convention” and that idea is just to pursue your passions and not to let anything get in the way of what you aspire to do and who you aspire to be. We try to promote that lifestyle as much as we can through the company, through the products, through the people we work with, and through the events that we host. The Inspiration really comes from that idea of running from convention just being who you are and being comfortable with that.
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S: Describe your brand in 3 words S: Who is the Runaway customer?
J: Oh, that’s hard. Authentic, fine art, innovative, community-minded are probably four solid ones. Runaway is much bigger than the brand, so we try to include the community as much as possible. A decent amount of collaborations we’ve done are with other local companies, like we did a t-shirt with The Parlour, Gabe did Cocoa Cinnamon’s logo for their new location. We did a shirt for Beyú Café, so we have a “Runaway Latte” on the menu there in exchange for doing the t-shirt. Everything we do we try to include the community as much as possible, because they give back to us in a tremendous way.
J: I always think about the toys you get in the toy store that say ages five to ninety-nine because we really have customers of all shapes and sizes. We’ve got your diehard “Durhamites” that just want something to represent Durham. You’ve got your eighteen year-old skateboarders and rappers that want the more “steazy,” weird art stuff that Gabe does. We’ve even got moms, athletes, and programmers. And what’s cool is that these communities have started to overlap a lot, and that’s when our events become really fun to be a part of. You begin to see all of these different types of people in one place. As someone who grew up in Durham, I know that what Durham ultimately represents is this melting pot of different cultures. As a brand, to really be able to bring those people together and break down those barriers—I mean—that is worth it more than any dollar amount.
S: This sense of community seems to pervade amongst Durham creatives. J: Yeah, I mean it’s a way of life here. We grew up feeling that way, it’s a learned trait over time, especially growing up in the public school system here you meet so many different types of people. You are exposed to a lot of different art and music, and culture.
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S: What kind of musicians do you work with?
S: Who should I follow on Instagram?
J: We’ve worked with the music festivals around here, so we try to connect with the artists that are playing the festivals. We are pretty connected with the local Hip-Hop scene. A lot of the artists that we sponsor are younger than I am. I’m not sure if you are familiar with G Yamazawa, he went to Jordan High School here in Durham. He had an album come out recently, and one of the songs on there, “North Cack”, has become super popular. Back in the day, people from North Carolina would call it “North Cackalacky”, and so the abbreviated version is North Cack. The song has almost become an anthem for North Carolina in the past year or so. It’s been really cool to see him get recognition because he’s been part of our brand family for a long time.
J: If you don’t follow Gabe already, he posts a lot of his drawings that don’t make the cut for Runaway. His handle is @Runaway4ever, it’s such a funny handle—It’s very “AIM”. S: What’s the greatest challenge of starting a small business? J: People often confuse our success for how big the company is. They think, “Oh they’re working for the Durham Bulls, they must be killing it.” And you know, the brand is obviously progressing, but it’s still nowhere close to the point where we are comfortable. It can be tough when people expect a lot out of you when you’re still a small business. Especially when you have to keep up with the demand of today’s fast-paced, short-attention span consumer. For instance, with shipping, we try to give our customers that seven-to-ten-day window. But when you can get stuff from Amazon the same day, it’s like, how can you compete with that? And so again—going back to authenticity—when you’re communicating with those customers you just have to be upfront and say: “Hey look, we’re a small business and we do the best we can. We are happy to help you” and go from there.
S: Social media can be pretty overwhelming these days. How do you connect with your audience online? J: Yeah, it’s tough, but I do think there is a right way to do it. We’ve done a pretty good job of attracting loyal fans. We don’t do a whole lot of “spammy” promotions to get followers because we want to really connect with those that do follow us. I think authenticity is really important here— people can see through you if you’re not authentic.
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J: We also have to compete with bigger brands. We are competing with Nike and Urban Outfitters and other street wear brands that have been around awhile or that exist in markets much bigger than ours, like New York or California, and so it is an uphill climb in that regard. But, at the same time, there are a lot of passionate creative people here in Durham and in the Triangle that put their heart and soul into their work, which is really invigorating. When we think about the things that we are going through, it’s like: “Ok, it’s not that bad.”
S: So who do you turn to for guidance? G: I have a couple retail mentors locally who were the first people that gave me opportunities in their stores. I learned a lot about retail and marketing through them. Unfortunately, neither of them are in retail anymore because it’s a tough game. At school, it was my art teachers and professors who formally trained me and got me to the place that I’m at. My sister too—she’s an interior design rock star out in Portland, but she’s always been a fine artist at heart as well, so she’s always been there for me. And then I look up to a lot of people too—I mean Pharrell is such an amazing creative person. Everything he touches just turns to gold. Outside of that, I have a lot of fine artists that I really look to and draw from, but that’s for my own fine art rather than clothing.
S: What’s it like being your own boss at such a young age? G: Well I’m not that young [laughs], but I’ve been doing it for a while — almost six years. It’s a lot of work, but as long as you’re passionate about it and you have somewhat of an obsessive personality, it works. It’s always a learning curve. I mean, I’m learning something new every day. I still don’t know too much about the industry and I still feel creatively inspired through clothing. I think that’s what keeps me so focused on the brand. With other jobs and projects I’ve worked on, as soon as I get bored and am not learning anymore, I know it’s time to move on.
S: What’s your next move? G: Oh man. Well, we are just trying to push as big as we can. You know, we are still such a local hometown brand and I want to push outside of Durham and North Carolina. I really want to be an internationally recognized brand. Yeah, I think that’s the dream for any designer.
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Make Living an Art 118
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million choices are presented, but only if we are receptive to them. Take back eating, and make it your own, make it you.
We Breathe. We Work. We Eat. We Live. We Repeat. Day in and day out, we do these things, participating in a system that we did not create, in a world we did not chose. Our acts are our own, but the intention and the motives in the grand scheme are out of our control. In the moments between these actions we find our self-definition. Large acts that we have the chance to choose between the mundane necessities. What makes us different from our roommate, what makes us different from friends. That is where we can truly live – in the gaps. We express ourselves and carve out our own. I don’t know about you, but at least for me, I wish to find a way to make all of life an art.
We Work. At college, we do not have the luxury of a 9-to-5 job. We often are tasked with laboring and studying til the small hours of the morning, over things we may remember only for a few years. We put in our time, and we put in our money, towards a piece of paper, an association with a name better known than our own. The time at college that we spend outside of studying can be truly glorious, but why can’t our work be as motivating? These are still formative years – college is truly about shaping our minds, so form it as you deem fit. Make habits that you will benefit from for years to come. Meet people and foster relationships you hope to hold for the rest of your life. Do what you love.
We Breathe. We Work. We Eat. We slip into these things, thoughtlessly accomplishing these tasks.
Eating defines your body. Work defines your mind.
We Eat. One bite, another, what are we eating? Why are we eating it? Eating is the basic of necessity of living, and with so much around us, it often just fades into a routine step between the rush. But take your time and look at your food, understand your food, and make the food meaningful. Our food is an expression of self – because it becomes ourselves. The art of eating is quite literally the art of making oneself. For this fact, we all owe it to ourselves to give eating the time it deserves. To make your own food, to choose certain foods, how you eat your food, every step of the process, a
We Breathe. Small, unconscious, every breath seems to be lost to the excitement of the world around us. But unlike the beating of the heart and the firing of neurons, breathing is one of the few bodily processes we can regulate to any degree. Little thought and little effort. Little art and little expression.
Words by Bryan Rusch
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Superstudio Featured Works: Superstudio, Quaderna Table, 1970 (pg. 16) Superstudio, Quaderna Furniture Range, 1970 (pp. 19) Superstudio, The Continuous Monument (On the Rocky Coast), 1969 (pg. 21) The Role Of Lines Featured Works: Alfred Y, Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light, 1989 (pg. 29 & 33) Harry Gruyaert, RUSSIA. Moscow. Gum department store entrance, 1989 (pg. 29) Joan Miró, Maternity, 1924 (pg. 29) Joan Miró, Blue Star, 1927 (pg. 30) Harry Gruyaert, SPAIN. Galicia. Santiago de Compostela. Finisterre. 1998.(pg. 34)
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