Each spring, the MFA Graduate Foundations Core Design Studio course at Pratt Institute, Department of Interior Design, asks students to draw inspiration from Isamu Noguchi’s work.

The students explored the retail sales experience at the Museum through the design of a new Noguchi Showroom. The project deployed a design language derived from analyses of Noguchi’s work which permeated the existing site and defined partitions, display fixtures, lighting, furniture, surfaces, and finishes—with a focus on sustainable materials—to promote the sales of Akari Light Sculptures, books, and gifts from the Noguchi collection. The results informed flexible retail and cafe space which included event seating, storage, office/meeting space, and restrooms, also with an emphasis in lighting, materials, surfaces, and finishes.

These associated programs are adjacently located in Isamu Noguchi’s 10th Street studio, across the street from the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens, and parallel the Museum’s current design expansion explorations which celebrate the Akari Light Sculptures. Museum Director Brett Littman and Facilities Director George Juergens (a Pratt graduate) worked closely with the students, presented an in-depth history of Isamu Noguchi and the Foundation and Museum, participated in milestone reviews, and finally selected two winners and two finalists.

We ask as students, as educators, and as practitioners: How can design foster a dialogue between the acts of making, supporting, and commodifying?

Students
Nour Bannout, Chan Chen, Jaeeun Cho, Lauren Cooper, Gabby De Castro-Olano, Nicole Debarba, Candice Du, Xianjie San Du, Barbara Dweck, Paris Fabrikant, Tammi Fung, Denisse Gregorio, Yichen He, Hanjun Huang, Soojin Kim, Paul Lagasse, Fang-ting Lee, Changjie Li, Bing Li, Yeswanth Loganathan, Xin Lu, Sunny Ma, Sophie Moore, Linh Nguyen, Thomas Normant, Katy O’Connor, Ruoran Pan, Alyeesha Puri, Marisa Rapezzi, Lesley Siegel, Jiadai Sun, Alexis Velasco, Yuzhi Wang, Yuxi Wang, Charlene Wang, Isabella Weigel, Caleb Wint, Yanyu Yang, Su Yingying, Soo Yoon Chung, Tingting Yu, Shan Zhang, Irene Zhou, Yuying Zhu, and Yizhen Zhu

Faculty
Brita Everett, Sheryl Kasak, David Ling, Tetsu Ohara, and Suzanne Song

The project aims to explore a possible future for retail spaces in a post-COVID society where the virtualization of our lives becomes more established. The design challenges traditional models of retail space or exhibition by creating rooms for culture and various events while selling. The design allows more diverse use of the space in different timelines, balancing the retail, storage, and exhibition functions while rethinking the community responsibility and cohesiveness of the art gallery.

The spatial strategy is to use translucent fabrics and movable traction lines to create a sense of de-spatialization: the fabrics will start from a panel with no concept of space and grow out of it through traction. Through combinations and variations, light and transparent layers of visual partitions are created. Finally, these spaces can be easily “dissolved” by releasing tension through the cords at the top. By designing different panels, spaces can be flexibly created and dissipated, easily serving a variety of different activities.

Faculty: Brita Everett

The point of this project is to use different scales and locations of stones as the representation of the concept “Floating Mass,” creating a dramatic space since Noguchi uses lots of abstract works in stone to demonstrate his understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. Combining modern construction technology with natural materials to provide a surreal spatial experience. Using the floating system that could accommodate flexible use and reconfiguration, the suspended stones will be enlightened by different Akari. Presents a new transformation of nature in the interior space, also showing the existence of floating as a state of weightlessness. Applying the unstable seats that could integrate the feeling of weightlessness to create a playful environment, and encourage people to interact with Akari. Allowing the customers to escape from gravity for a moment, and bring an experiential journey for offline purchasing.

Faculty: David Ling

The proposed Akari showroom is a celebration of simple geometry: basic shapes that were frequently employed by Isamu Noguchi in his works, especially in his Akari light sculptures. Simple geometry forms the building blocks of the display system for the sculptures. It is also at the heart of the sculptures’ morphological transformation. The showroom invites viewers to journey between clusters of light to witness the evolution and spectrum of Akari morphology that lies between the most basic shapes. To enhance viewers’ understanding, the display system ensures each sculpture’s applicable position, visibility and reachability. Richlite panels, which share the Akari sculptures’ warmth and paper microtexture, are the main component of the display system, thereby magnifying the sculptures’ tactile qualities. Going beyond retail, the showroom enables viewers to physically experience and understand both the individual Akari sculptures and the morphological relationships between them. Yet, it achieves this goal through the lightest touch. Environmental impact is kept low by minimizing manufacturing and operational waste. In addition, the panels’ infinite combinations, multiple applications, and demountability both unify and diversify the usage of the space.

Faculty: Tetsu Ohara

The system is inspired by Noguchi’s own comments on Akari light, as he compares the beauty of Akari light to that of cherry blossoms and falling leaves. Akari light sculptures’ illumination blossoms from the center and spreads out in space. The proposed showroom design presents an immersive and ambient environment of light. Inspired from Akari’s natural bamboo and washi paper materials, the display fixtures are conceived as an abstract metaphor of blossoming trees. The ceiling and floor mounted fixtures are built of spiraling bamboo frameworks that aim to capture a dynamic gesture of growth and transformation. The Akari sculptures themselves are installed in the bamboo structures to represent blossoming flowers of illumination. The design aims to show the Akari sculptures integrated into the environment, the sculptures are the flowers that grow out from the site. To evoke a simulated natural environment akin to blossoming trees within a park, as representation of natural appreciation and aesthetics.

Faculty: Suzanne Song