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James
Carpenter: Environmental Refractions,
by Sandro Marpillero.
About halfway into this first monograph on multi-faceted
glass artist James
Carpenter is a large section devoted to 7
World Trade Center. While the design is attributed to
David Childs of SOM, it's apparent upon reading the timeline
documenting Carpenter's involvement in the fast-track schedule
that everything we see, from the stainless steel base and
the illuminated lobby to the minute details of the complex
exterior wall, is in many ways the hand of Carpenter. Certainly
it would be specious to say that he is the architect
of the project, as his skills include working with architects
and engineers to develop solutions to specific problems,
therefore giving him the title "design consultant,"
but by the end of the book it is clear that Carpenter is
extending his reach beyond merely visual effects created
by various glasses, surfaces, and lighting to encompass,
for example, even the thermal comfort of the occupant. In
effect he is becoming a sort of artist/architect/engineer
hybrid, called on to improve designs to the point where
removing him means completely changing the final product
beyond recognition.
Since early in Carpenter's career, he has been called upon
to contribute specific pieces to an architect's project,
such as a glass prism window that steals the show in a church
by Edward Larrabee Barnes in Indianapolis, Indiana. One
of Carpenter's most well-known pieces is his Dichroic
Light Field near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. He
won a competition to address a blank, brick wall in a high-rise
building by Handel & Associates, creating an opaque
glass backdrop with 216 glass fins that bend colored light,
so depending on the time of day and the point of view, the
effect is always different. Carpenter's piece is clearly
separate from the greater architecture (especially as his
involvement came much after the fact), but in his recent
work the boundary between architect and glass artist is
more and more vague.
From 7 WTC and another SOM
collaboration at Columbus Circle to his latest design with
Vincent James
at Tulane University, Carpenter's design contributions seamlessly
meld with the designs of the architects he works with. But
in Tokyo, Japan, we'll soon have the first glimpse of a
"sole" James Carpenter Design Associates piece
of architecture in Gucci's Ginza
flagship, where Carpenter's signature prismatic glass
peppers a relatively simple rectilinear box. It appears
that his design responds to the illuminated urban condition
of Tokyo not through signage but via the building's exterior
itself, a fitting response by this manipulator of glass
and light.
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