Ms. Joseph talking about the vinyl threads used in “The Senses,” an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in 2018.
Last semester, we were lucky enough to have Wendy Evans Joseph join us for an hour of StudioTalks! here in Addams. Ms. Joseph is a Penn alumna who traveled all the way down from her practice in NYC to speak with us. For those who were unable to make it and those who want a reminder of the highlights, we’ve written this event recap of our favorite moments!
Who is She?
Wendy Evans Joseph studied undergraduate architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating summa cum laude in 1977. She went on to get her M.Arch degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, then enter professional field by joining one of the country’s top architecture firms, Pei Cobb Freed. She spoke of her experience working for such a prestigious company as enlightening and expansionary for her knowledge in architecture. After about a twelve-year run, she took some time off from the firm, and in 1993, daringly founded her own practice in New York City named Wendy Evans Joseph Architecture. She began her ambitious venture with only a few employees, but quickly gathered momentum as her work gained recognition on a national and international scale. Today, she serves on the boards of both the Graduate School of Fine Arts here at Penn and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. She lives with her husband and four children in Manhattan and continues to produce ground-breaking work.
Highlights
Although she takes on a variety of project types, never boxing herself into any single category, Ms. Joseph spoke a lot with us about how she and her firm integrate forms of media into exhibition design. Here are some project details she shared that we found particularly poignant and thought-provoking.
Walls of Light
Ghostly impressions of walls and columns are made with focused light beams in hazy air. [Source]
In London, there’s a Roman ruins site that has a quirky history, including being unceremoniously situated in the middle of a parking lot for a period of time. This mithraeum, a Roman temple dedicated to the god Mithras, has since been restored to its original location. Studio Joseph designed the museum in which the ruins and its artifacts rest today. In the underground room that houses the ruins (only the foundation remains), Studio Joseph wanted to recreate the original mithraeum structure so visitors could understand what traversing the original space was like. However, instead of building models or physical replicas, they created a hologram out of projected translucent walls of light emerging from the physical ruins. They employed the use of haze, a glycol+water theatrical fog, to solidify the light into misty suggestions of walls and columns. The projected silhouettes emerge and disappear one by one in a minutes-long cycle, literally building and dismantling the temple around visitors, emphasizing what remains and what is lost. The experience is amplified with audial effects; music, soft chanting, and sounds of fire and water immerse visitors in the times of centuries-ago worship.
Watch snippets of the experience in this video by Local Projects.
3D Moire Effect
The Museum of the City of New York asked Studio Joseph to replace an old chandelier in the main entry staircase with a new centerpiece, a visual representation of the museum’s ‘identity’ in connecting the past and the present. Studio Joseph chose to create a grid of over 5000 vertically hung LED lights aligns with existing stair railings and windows, at least a portion of the array visible from all points on the staircase. The points of light line up to create starbursts that shift with the viewing angle, creating a 3D moire effect. You know those streaks and curved patterns that appear when you take a badly focused photo of your laptop screen or a view through a screen door? That’s a 2D moire pattern. This project, titled “Starlight,” utilizes the phenomenon to stunning effect. The starburst patterns are already striking on the ground, but even more so when visitors walk up the spiraling stairs and experience the never-ending flow of pattern changes.
Colorful Vinyl Thread
Playful screen partitions at the Cooper Hewitt. Photo by Studio Joseph.
Studio Joseph was asked to work on “The Senses” Exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in NYC. It was, throughout, an interactive exhibition that appealed to all the senses. A wonderfully appropriate detail for this exhibition were the interior partitions that Studio Joseph designed for a long exhibition hall with a series of smaller displays. The partitions were made of spare, curved metal frames woven through with colorful vinyl thread. Ms. Joseph recalled discovering this unusual material at a rug workshop in NYC: finding piles and piles of the raw rug thread, appealing both to the senses of sight and touch. The playful partitions are remarkably versatile. The frequency and thickness of the metal frames and vinyl threads can alter the thread spacing to tune the opacity, and the metal frames can be bent into endless configurations to suit the displays and mold the walking paths of the exhibit.
“Missing Voices”
Bronze plaques embedded in the ground express “missing voices” from America’s history of segregation. Rendering by Studio Joseph.
How do you physically represent the state of being “missing?” How do you represent human voice in a way that it could represent any member of the population? Princeton University called for designers to create an outdoor memorial on campus to reconcile Woodrow Wilson’s achievements with his support of racial segregation. Studio Joseph’s proposal was centered around the idea of representing any “missing voice” in history while providing a place to express all voices equally. Blank bronze plaques embedded in the granite tiles of the proposed plaza ground represent the missing voices, beginning at one end of the plaza and fanning outwards. Each plaque is no more significant than the next, able to house any missing voice from America’s long history with segregation. The plaza is also a public meeting place, encouraging new voices to speak. Behind a seating area on one side of the plaza, the proposal calls for a translucent concrete wall that can be wired as a display. Real-time quotes and words can then be entered by passersby on their phones or some other input panel and be displayed from within the concrete, serving as reminders of past voices or expression of modern voices.
Concrete wall displaying inputted quotes and words. Rendering by Studio Joseph.
Gallery: More Event Photos!
That’s all! Here are a few more photos from the event.
