By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Architect Iker Gil and designer Rick Valicenti are masters in their fields, just don’t expect them to stay in their lanes.
During his parts of their presentation at Bowling Green State University, the architect didn’t flash slides of flashy structures he’d designed. Instead much of his work is centered on a journal, MAS Context that serves as a catalyst for a range of projects for his MAS Studio.
Valicenti, a 1973 graduate of BGSU, has worked with Gil, designing the most recent issues of MAS Context. But in doing that he provided a format and a guide — typefaces for the stories and headlines and a variety of preset layouts — and then stepped away and let the contributors and editors make the final decisions.
Valicenti founded the design collaborative Thirst. An article in the Chicago Tribune said the enterprise: “Collectively, Thirst has shaken up the cold rationalism of corporate identity.”
The firm has designed books, signage in the International Terminal at O’Hare Airport, books, animations, and immersive environments. “To me the world of being a designer wouldn’t be as much fun if I focused on just one thing. So I like to do a little bit of anything.”
And that always means working with other creative minds.
Gil and Valicenti were the only two people on the Donnell Theatre stage, but they brought with them the spirits of a host of collaborators from different disciplines. “Interdisciplinary collaboration,” Valicenti said, is “a “grown up” term they never use in their daily work.
“The key to collaboration,” Gil said, “is you bring your own expertise. You’re very open and you’re honest, and you really start at the table at the same level, and you really push the project to a level you couldn’t on your own.”
That includes working with people who are passionate about the same issues they are.
Thirst created graphic for an opera presented in Times Square. The performers were in tanks that gradually filled with water until only the singers heads were above the surface.It was a commentary on sea level rise caused by climate change.
Then Valicenti pointed to some of his company’s graphics, and said the audience could look at them if they got tired of watching people swimming.
His firm has also designed work for the Anthropocene Alliance that assists flood victims and organizes communities to combat climate change. Then he showed a photo of a school art class where the image was visible on a wall. “You know when you have success when you have that iconography pinned up in an elementary class,” he said.
That fits with his commitment to helping bring along the future generation of designers. That includes Zach Minnich, a 2014 BGSU graduate, who works as a senior designer for Thirst.
The 40-something Gil is of another generation. They listen, Valicenti said to different music.
Gil was born in Bilbao, Spain, and arrived in Chicago 11 years ago, and set about immersing himself in the design community there.
He worked for SOM, one of the country’s most storied architectural practices that is responsible for some of its most iconic structures, including the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower.
He went on to found MAS Studios, and the related journal, though he also serves as executive director of the SOM Foundation.
Gil’s portions of the talk featured projects based around other buildings. He grew up in Bilbao, an old industrial city, that was transformed with the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in 1997.
Gil chose to demonstrate how that structure changed the city with a video of a bicyclist moving along the city’s vibrant waterfront without ever showing the museum.
A more recent project looked at the Barcelona Pavilion. The structure was built for the 1929 International Exposition. It was torn down the next year when the exhibition closed, and for 56 years only existed in drawings. Still, Gil said, it was highly influential. In 1986 it was rebuilt.
Working with the Luftwerk, he helped give visitors a fresh perception on the building.
He used lasers to extend its lines, and a fog machine to create atmosphere. He brought in a sound designer who works on horror movies.
The idea was to create a narrative.
They are also collaborating on a similar artistic intervention in Plano, Illinois on the Farnsworth House, which like the pavilion is the work of architect Mies van der Rohe. Again lasers will play an important role in reimagining the building.
“Obviously these are historic buildings and you can’t do anything to them,” he said. “But through light we can change our perception, the way we can engage with them. So it is a very powerful tool.”
He said these structures are “laboratories” in the ways people think about them.
Gil and photographer Andreas EG Larsson created images to celebrate the Marina City high rise. When Gil moved to Chicago that’s where he wanted to live.
The apartments all have similar layouts, depending on whether they have one, two or three bedrooms. The photos of residents in their apartments showed how they were able to impose their own personalities on the building. One apartment even had an eight-foot ceiling, and that, Gil said, requires a chandelier.
They wanted to show how architecture supports a variety of people in their daily lives.
The project led to him designing renovations of several neighbors’ apartments. They also had a one-night-only light installation on the top of one of the buildings.
In 2010, MAS worked with members of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin on a project to develop the area around Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
Instead of imposing structures on the area, MAS provided a template for design. That included a post design inspired by the indigenous practice of bending trees to serve a directional guides.
“We gave them a system and a structure they could apply,” he said.
The concept, he noted, was similar to what Valicenti did with MAS Context.
“I think we can do a much better job of what’s the experience of people when they inhabit a building,” Gil said. “We’re not just doing bricks. We’re crafting an experience and shaping how people are coming together. I’m more interested in designing and communicating that.”
