Frieze Art & Architecture Conference 2016

What is it that makes a great space for art? Should architecture be subservient to art? Or should it make a statement of its own? How do the needs of public museums differ from those of commercial galleries, private museums and homes?

Join us on Tuesday 4 October from 10am-4pm, for the first Frieze Art and Architecture Conference. Bringing together major architects and designers in conversation with their museum, collector and artist clients, we will explore today’s most challenging and innovative projects.

Hosted by Alice Rawsthorn, speakers include Kirsty Bell, Craig Dykers, Martino Gamper, Michael Govan, Stephanie MacDonald (6a architects), Gabriel Orozco, Annabelle Selldorf, Peter St John, Francis Upritchard and Peter Zumthor.

The day is a must-attend event for any museum director or art collector looking to commission architecture, or anyone curious about how artists and curators envision architecture for art. A select number of premium tickets will include dinner with the speakers, after the conference.

Famed Swiss architect Peter Zumthor joins Director and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan, to discuss Zumthor’s plans for the new 37,000-square-metre home for LACMA. The dramatic, labyrinthine plan for the new museum is inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits, located adjacent to the museum, and will feature ‘meander’ and ‘cabinet’ galleries. Zumthor is known worldwide for such unique architectural spaces as Therme Vals in Switzerland; the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Kolumba Art Museum, Cologne; and the 2011 Serpentine Pavilion in London, to name just a few. He was recently chosen to design the extension for the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.

Michael Govan was formerly the president of the Dia Foundation, where he spearheaded the creation of Dia:Beacon and has a long history of working on successful architecture projects as well as monumental artists’ projects by Chris Burden, Michael Heizer and Barbara Kruger, among others. Govan and Zumthor will share their vast wealth of knowledge and experience about creating architecture for art, from projects inserted in remote landscapes to their highly anticipated addition to the museum landscape of Los Angeles.

The conversation will be moderated by Julia Peyton-Jones, Director of the Serpentine Gallery from 1991 through 2016. While there, she transformed the gallery into an internationally-acclaimed exhibition space, and oversaw the successful Serpentine Pavilion project, including Peter Zumthor’s pavilion in 2011.

Craig Dykers is a Founding Partner of the trans-disciplinary practice Snøhetta, and Partner-in-Charge of the recently completed San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Expansion. Snøhetta’s design for the new SFMOMA doubles its exhibition space and reimagines the museum as a gateway into the city. As a focal point for activities in the community and an important public space for the Bay Area, the design demonstrates Snøhetta’s trans-disciplinary approach to integrating architectural, landscape and interior design into all of their projects.

Within the next six months, Snøhetta’s designs for the Times Square Reconstruction in New York City, the Lascaux IV Caves Museum in Montignac, France, and The French Laundry Kitchen Expansion and Garden Renovation in Yountville, California, will open to the public, and Snøhetta’s competition-winning design for Norway’s national currency will be put into circulation.

Dykers will share his ideas about design as a promoter of social and physical well-being and how those values have driven their recent work as well as the firm’s other award-winning cultural projects, including the Alexandria Library in Egypt; the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, Norway; the National September 11 Memorial Museum and the new Times Square Reconstruction in New York City.

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco joins Stephanie MacDonald of London-based architects 6a to talk about their new project for the South London Gallery. For the first time in his career, Orozco, whose work often focuses on urban environments, will be creating a permanent garden at SLG, designed in collaboration with 6a and horticulturalists from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Orozco will also give a unique virtual tour of his Observatory House, built with architect Tatiana Bilbao on a rocky promontory in Roca Blanca, Mexico. This dramatic space, which serves as the artist’s studio, was inspired by Orozco’s visit to the 18th-century Jantar Mantar Astronomical Observatory in Delhi, India.

Stephanie Macdonald, co-founder of 6a architects, will also discuss the London-based practice’s award-winning collaborations with galleries and artists, including exhibition spaces designed for SLG, Raven Row and Sadie Coles HQ; the studio of photographer Juergen Teller; and the new expansion for the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. The conversation will be moderated by writer and critic Kirsty Bell, a contributing editor to frieze magazine and the author of The Artist’s House: From Workplace to Artwork.

Architect Annabelle Selldorf was born in Germany and moved to New York where she founded her practice in 1988. Amongst a variety of projects, she has become one of the art world’s most sought-after architects, designing numerous galleries for David Zwirner, Hauser&Wirth, Michael Werner and Gladstone galleries, and exhibitions for the Whitney Museum, Gagosian Gallery, Frieze Masters and the Venice Biennale. She has designed numerous homes for art collectors, and museums including the Neue Galerie, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. She will speak with Matthew Slotover, co-founder of Frieze, about the different approaches and challenges to designing such various spaces for art.

Italian furniture designer Martino Gamper and sculptor Francis Upritchard, married since 2009, have brought architecture, original furniture design, sculpture and more all under one roof in their shared London flat. In conversation with Kirsty Bell, author of The Artist’s House: From Workplace to Artwork, the duo will illustrate how their shared studio and living space marries their eclectic interests and styles. Gamper, who apprenticed with a cabinet-maker and trained under Ron Arad at the Royal College of Art, creates furniture that reinvents classic Italian designs by visionaries like Gio Ponti and Carlo Mollino. New Zealand-born Upritchard creates figurative sculptures and sculptural furniture that have been featured in solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery and The Hammer Museum in Los Angles, among many others. The pair will discuss the unique challenges of integrating their singular working practices into their home.