May 12-18, 2005

art

Back to the Hand

BY DESIGN: With the Site and Architecture Workshop, (l-R) Scott Stewart, Young Yoon and Erin Gallagher want to focus on craftsmanship, a trait they find lacking in contemporary furniture and architecture. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

A new Center City exhibition space emphasizes the arts in everyday crafts.

by Trey Popp

"The house is a machine for living in," declared the Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1923, and modern architecture gained a credo that may as well have been hewn into a block of reinforced concrete. Handcraft was out; mechanization was in. What was once the preserve of artisans and skilled laborers became a platform for abstruse theories, utopian schemes (Le Corbusier's plan to replace the neighborhoods of central Paris with a series of identical cruciform towers is only the most notorious) and, ultimately, computer-driven design. The ethos of mass production did not stop at the architect's desk — furniture and interior design soon succumbed as well.

The folks behind "Slow Craft/Slow Modern," the inaugural show in the Site and Architecture Workshop exhibition space recently renovated by the architects and craftsmen of Saaw, Inc., want to change all that. "Our shop really came out of the realization that in contemporary design, there was an absence of high craft, which is basically the pinnacle of making," says Scott Stewart, who founded the fabrication and design firm Saaw with Erin Gallagher and Young Yoon in 1998. "Actual making is a process. It's not predetermined. As you watch an object come together, when you control it with your hands you have the ability to fine-tune your creation."

"Craftsmanship and design belong together," Stewart adds, "but in the contemporary environment they're being separated. The skills of plasterworkers are vanishing. Steelworkers mostly do straight production work now. The only making is by artists, and we wanted to bring it back to architecture and furniture design."

The current exhibition is a collaboration between Saaw, the design outfit Cover, and the design and development firm Onion Flats. All of them place a heavy emphasis on the notion that there is no intellectual substitute for the physical act of creation.

"There's an ethic of making with your hands and of making as a way of thinking, basically," says Tim McDonald of Onion Flats, which considers itself something between a design firm and a school that teaches young architects how to take buildings literally into their own hands. "A lot of architects project ideas on paper and then have somebody else make them. We collapse that distance."

The exhibition features photographs of Onion Flats' current condominium project in Fishtown, where it is bringing a self-consciously urban mode of architecture and elements of green design to a neighborhood known for neither. Cover, which has collaborated with Onion Flats in the past, contributes a series of metal panels that have been intricately welded into a screen partition.

The larger part of the smallish show consists of Saaw's furniture, which combines the clean, spare lines of modernity with a near fanatical reverence for material. Unstained planks of mahogany or Brazilian cherry ride lean structures of solid steel. Whether employed in tabletops or chair bottoms, the wood carries an ultra-flat, water-based finish that's unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. "The material by itself is beautiful," Stewart says. "The important thing is not to mess it up. You're really just a guide for your material." The north wall of the gallery is hung with a broad expanse of polished plaster that shines like the surface of a pearl.

Citing the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and Japan's Tadao Ando as influences, Stewart says he aims to reinject modernism with the soul it lost around the time the Bauhaus movement seized the reins from Le Corbusier. He also believes a return to handmade work has environmental repercussions. "We're not green," he says, "but we like to think that what we do cuts down on consumerism. When you have something special, you tend to cherish it. One object can last several lifetimes. Without high craft, without that level of quality, people tend to discard the things they purchase."

As it happens, that attitude has brought Saaw more than just the consolation of philosophy. The firm is responsible for the plasterwork and finishes at the Anthropologie store on Walnut Street and has been retained for similar work on the retailer's Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan. "Slow Craft/Slow Modern" comes down in a week, but Stewart hopes to turn the exhibition space into an on-again, off-again gallery dedicated to the full range of things made patiently by hand. "We're thinking about doing a show of ceramics," he says after singing the praises of Soho jewelry maker Ted Muehling, who crafted a pair of earrings that Stewart's wife wore on their wedding day. His love of thoughtfully crafted objects runs deep.

And so did Le Corbusier's in the end. Shortly before the modernist master died in 1965, he made a declaration that was considerably gentler than the line that won him fame: "The home should be a treasure chest of living." Perhaps he'd have liked this modest exhibition.

"Slow Craft/Slow Modern," through May 22, Site and Architecture Workshop, 105 N. Watts St., 215-636-0677, www.saaw.com.