Immediately after the official announcement was released
that Joseph Grima was stepping down as the acting
director of the seminal downtown New York gallery
Storefront for Art and Architecture this past January 2010
and move on to Domus Magazine as editorial director at
Domus, an extremely contested international search began
for its new director.
Today it has been made public that Spanish architect Eva
Franch (1978) will be taking over the triangular-shaped
space that has courageously been advocating innovation
and progressive thinking in art and architecture to a global
audience since 1982. She follows the legacy of an
international group of influential and creative practitioners
that have successfully raised the profile of the small Soho
location through their directorships: founding director
Kyong Park (1982–1998), co-director Shirin Neshat (1988–
1998), Sarah Herda (1998–2006) and Joseph Grima
(2007–2010).
As she stated today in an interview with Domus, she
enters Storefront in a time when “conditions have changed
and practitioners have moved from constructions sites to
spaces of imagination and planning” – a phenomenon that
underscores the importance of “reestablishing relationships
between architecture, art and other disciplines to construct
innovative platforms of communication.”
Franch describes Storefront for Art and Architecture as “an
institution of the edge and in the edge—not only
ideologically, but also in terms of temporality and physical
location.” “Storefront has the unique condition of being in
the fringe between an institutional place for culture and the
street itself, and therefore has the ability to reach out in
both ends. This ability to operate in an institutional and
informal manner simultaneously gives Storefront the great
advantage and possibility of operating in much more
audacious manner than most institutions.”
Although she cannot yet fully disclose the details on her
future programming, she mentioned it would still operate
through a core programming of exhibitions around which
an ambitious events series will be structured. As there is
still programming scheduled from Grima’s tenure, Franch
will soon join the Storefront team to ensure a smooth
transition to her programs by the end of this year.
In regards to what Storefront’s audience can expect in the
coming years, Franch states that she would like to build on
the gallery’s tradition of being “unpredictable and fresh”.
Interested in methodologies rather than destinations, she
sees Storefront “as a space of and for presentation; as
such, it will provide different paths of explorations and
confluence, by bringing together the cultural, social,
political and environmental moments that float within the
discipline of architecture”; it will bring together
“philosophers, scientists, politicians, dancers, cooks,
filmmakers, builders, writers, etc.—as they are all
fundamental points of reference in terms of
experimentaion,” according to Franch. Without forgetting
the importance of laughter: “it’s important to have a place
that gives importance to humour, that occasionally breaks
through the seriousness of the disciplines we are engaged
in”. José Esparza
Eva Franch is an architect, researcher and
founder of OOAA (Office Of Architectural Affairs). Franch
has studied at TU Delft, at ETS Arquitectura Barcelona
where she received her Master in Architecture with Honors
in 2003 and at Princeton University with a “La Caixa”
grant where she received the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood
Prize and her M.Arch II degree in 2007. After graduation
she received the Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship at the
University at Buffalo where she taught for a year. In 2008
she was awarded the Wortham Fellwoship at Rice
University where she has been teaching for two years as
the Master Thesis studio director.
Eva Franch appointed Storefront's new director
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- Elena Sommariva
- 12 May 2010