Pop-Up Hotel (Boardroom B&B). Speculative renovation of 548 W22nd St. iconic arts building as pop-up business hotel for Boardroom B+B, a corporation invented by artists Chloe + TJ. More info on Boardroom B+B website. The design utilizes the existing interior, complete with exposed masonry, concrete beams, and high ceilings, to develop a narrative of cultural clientele continuing the art world tradition of repurposing Chelsea's industrial building stock for high-end post-industrial services. Extensive programming - including bar, conference rooms, and auditorium - are built onto the roof level with the addition of fabric coverings and storefront glazing, to achieve the necessary density of business amenities. Additional small conference rooms are built around the glazed elevator at each level. Spring 2011.
Double artist studio at 20 Grand Avenue Studios, Brooklyn, NY. Design-build project combined two artist studios by demolishing part of an existing wall. Spring 2011.
Garden House. Residence for artist Chloe Bass, conceived for Detroit, MI location but not yet sited. Conceptual schematic for single level residence with extensive indoor planting, open kitchen, and a balance between privacy and maximum daylight. 2010-ongoing.
Prince Georges African-American Museum and Cultural Center with Bernard Tschumi Architects. Developed Schematic design and design development documents for museum in Prince Georges County, Maryland with a focus on initial massing, gallery interior design, landscape design, and green roof strategy. The 76,000-square-foot facility is anticipated to hold 34,000 square feet of permanent and temporary exhibit space, a 200-seat auditorium, community meeting rooms, classrooms, and a museum store. 2009-2010
Up/Down, North/South "Many Harlems." Commissioned by the Studio Museum in Harlem, this set of drawings evolved from a joint presentation at the Studio Museum between Mitch McEwen and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, author of "Harlem is Nowhere." The Up/Down, North/South collaboration between Studio Museum & Goethe Institute develops interdisciplinary works and presentations between visual artists and writers. "Many Harlems" will be published as a Studio Museum in Harlem PDF, forthcoming 2011.
The Last Newspaper Exhibition | New Museum, New City Reader VII: UnReal Estate. Published and exhibited as part of the New Museum's "The Last Newspaper" exhibition, this conceptual design accompanied an article written jointly with artist Chloe Bass proposing a future 2030 in which Brooklyn had syndicated its culture and environmental design to various resource rich countries around the world. Facilitated by an immersive google platform, this future reality of global Brooklynism also witnesses the architectural realization of hyper-speculative real estate. Exhibited winter 2010.
BLACK SITE #2 | Commissioned installation for Deptford X Festival at the Old Police Station (Curator Anthony Gross) | September 2010 | London, UK | Find out more about the BLACK SITES project here
Mitch McEwen, is founding principal of A. Conglomerate, an emerging design practice that specializes in cultural projects, public space, and consulting for artists and arts institutions, as well as founder of SUPERFRONT, an architecture oriented non-profit headquartered in Brooklyn. She is a recipient of the The New York State Council on the Arts 2010 Independent Projects awards for Architecture, Planning and Design. The Akademie Schloss Solitude has granted her a residency fellowship in architecture for 2012-2013. Her architectural work has been published in Architectural Record and the New York Times, and her writing in African-American studies has been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society (IRAAS, Columbia University, 2007, 2009). Since founding SUPERFRONT in January 2008, she has curated more than fifteen exhibits and published 4 exhibition catalogues. In 2006, she was invited to join the adjunct faculty of Columbia GSAPP as Adjunct Assistant Professor to create a new cross-disciplinary course for urban planners and urban designers. She has created workshops for the New Museum and Bard College and lectured at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Association of Architecture Organizations, Polytechnic Universty of Puerto Rico and elsewhere. She holds an M.Arch from Columbia GSAPP and A.B. from Harvard.
Inspired by the CIA's documented use of rap music as an element of sleep deprivation torture, BLACK SITE #2 consists of a multi-media installation that hybridizes ad hoc detention with ad hoc performance. Two microphones are fed into sound exciters and surface transducers that turn wall and furniture elements into speakers. Visitors are invited to use the microphones to engage in a competition, a game, or any form of performance. Using components often deployed in video game production of 'virtual' experience, multiple levels of transduction create a range of output from audio to tactile effects. 2010-2011.
Abu Dhabi Media Zone masterplan with Bernard Tschumi Architects. Development Control Guidelines, open space and pedestrian route planning, produced as urban designer on master-plans and large cultural projects in the office of Bernard Tschumi Architects. The master plan for twofour54 integrates the large facilities required for full feature film production with the pedestrian scale and fine grain public spaces that a media-oriented neighborhood must provide for cultural life in the 21st century. 2008-2009.
1432 Atlantic Ave | Design-build project Live/Work Studios A + B. Two live-work studios maximize the given 350 square foot space by sharing one window. A bedroom nook occupies the upper half of a repurposed stage platform with the bed overlooking the window onto the backyard (left). Studio B tucks a bedroom above the existing bathroom and ducks under the platform to situate a desk and working area next to the same window (right) while maintaining privacy and separate egress. Spring 2009.
Archeography: Suspended Gardens | performance installation for MonstaH Black and AfroMosaic Soul at SUPERFRONT. A design-build-dance project, this comprised the architectural component of an integration between choreography and architecture, in which a design workshop and a dance workshop shared responsibility for producing a performance and site-specific installation over the course of 6 weeks. Le Corbusier's early drawing, "le jardin suspendu d'un appartment" became a starting point for this exploration. By extracting motifs from this drawing and reconfiguring them within the SUPERFRONT gallery space, the design tested relationships between theatrical performance and architectural performance within the system of the free plan. Built within the SUPERFRONT gallery space, a (13' x 35' x 14') storefront, the installation/set included platforms, portable stages, and climbing mechanisms, as well as ropes bolted into the masonry wall. 2009.
Urban Recyling Plant proposal for re-use of Pier 57 in Chelsea (New York City). Conceptual design developed for Sure We Can, affiliate of Picture the Homeless, non-profit advocate for the rights of homeless New Yorkers. Sure We Can aims to create a global model for independent can recyclers, i.e. "canners," to create their own Canner-run, self sustaining redemption centers, not only providing jobs for homeless people who want to work, but, at the same time, eliminating billions of tons of solid waste and the costs of having it go into their waste streams and, instead, getting those valuable materials back into their recycling systems where they can save additional costs and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of 100% new material manufacturing. 2008.
SUPERFRONT, gallery renovation, Brooklyn, NY. 650 square foot gallery renovated from office demolition. Ceilings raised, brick walls exposed, floors repaired, windows replaced. Design and construction of custom furniture, including fold-out bar. Design-build project. 2007.
Spring 2007, Detox Urbanism: Europan 9 competition, Syracuse Italy with Nina Ilieva and Sernhong Yu. The programs outlined in the Europan competition brief were not viable. Project research traced a complete network of toxic dumping sites through Italy. The network of sites reveals the 21st century criminal operation known as the Eco-Mafia. Unfortunately, policies that enforce the proper treatment of waste also make it criminally profitable to exploit the system with fraud, bribery, and extortion. Toxic waste trafficking proliferates throughout cities with organized crime, infiltrating building materials, water sources and, even, agriculture. The architectural response to this criminal toxicity = evacuate immediately. The big spheres contain mobile laboratories and temporary housing for anyone who refuses to leave post haste. Why a sphere? Because a sphere minimizes surface area per volume, reducing the exposure of the facade to the toxic outside air and allowing the maximum amount of remediated air to circulate inside. Spring 2007.
Stair Critique: Performance Architecture I. Video of movement on, through, and under found furniture element in Brooklyn loft. The video explores movement as a mode of critique of the built environment. Subsequent exhibits at SUPERFRONT continued to investigate the relationship between architecture and performance, as well. 2007.
Consulting for artist installation at PS1. Schematic studies to determine method for hanging bulky fabric-based sculpture from ceiling of PS1 gallery. 2006.
Concept for restaurant covered outdoor seating. For a Harlem restaurant forced to enclose a backyard space for noise reasons, this scheme proposed a custom application of thick plastic panels. The overhead span problem was resolved by covering the space in a loop and leaving the central space open for (very quiet) serving staff. The tight space was converted into a spectacle by carving a ramp into the floor. Summer 2006.
Found preservation tactics | the Palast der Republik with Reinhold Martin's Advanced Architecture Studio at Columbia GSAPP. In defiance of the demolition of the Palast der Republik in Berlin, the construction fence is scaled and a metal tie rod is hoisted back over. The tie rod travels as checked luggage back to New York, via Berlin Tempelhof Airport, which has also since ceased operations. Spring 2006.
Writing Boxes for the Novel Project at Flux Factory with co-designer Kwi Hae Kim. According to the brief issued by the arts collective Flux Factory, which acted as the curator and client for the project, a writer was to be placed into this space for one month to write a complete novel. The Writing Boxes responded to this by integrating the notion of writing and fiction into the design concept, referencing the dead letter boxes of early twentieth century espionage. The project improvised with materials gathered from arts donors. The starting goal - to provide spaces for writing as a solitary act and also as fiction and performance - was achieved with packing crates and hanging acrylic walls that acted as curtains. The writer finished 172 pages in 4 weeks. Spring 2005.
Exhibition catalogues edited as Director of SUPERFRONT, including curatorial essays. With graphic design support from Do Not Bend, inc. 2008-2011.