Resculpting the Big-Box Store: James Wines' Unconventional Transition from Sculptor to Architect 2039 views

From 1971 to 1984, James Wines and his architecture firm, SITE, an acronym for Sculpture In The Environment, designed a series of nine surrealist-inspired showrooms for the Richmond, Virginia-based retailer Best Products (Figure 1.1). Wines, however, is not a registered architect and has never had any formal training in architecture. After completing his Bachelor of Arts in studio art at Syracuse University and winning a Rome Prize in visual arts, Wines pursued a career in sculpture for twelve years. Despite a great deal of financial success and critical acclaim, Wines left the world of traditional object sculpture and entered architectural design by founding SITE in 1969. Thanks to the intimate artist-patron relationship he developed as a sculptor with the founders of Best Products, Sydney and Frances Lewis, Wines was able to launch his architectural career. Wines’ non-traditional background in sculpture provided him a unique outsider perspective and inspired his design ethos known as “De-Architecture” allowing him to construct some of the most widely recognized, yet controversial buildings in the United States of the late twentieth century.

MARH (Master of Architectural History)

plop art; retail; Greene Street; Lewis; SITE; showroom; sculpture,; deconstructivism; Rome; MoMA; Sydney and Frances Lewis; big box; public art; architecture; American Academy in Rome; sculptor; postmodernism; Marlborough Gallery; New York; environmental art; S.I.T.E.; Sydney; James Wines; stores; Marcel Duchamp; Philip Johnson; Judith Schwartz; architect; Frances; Robert Venturi; Slipek; Friedrich Kiesler; Dana Draper; turd in the plaza; artist; Richmond; Marc Mannheimer; Andrew Lewis; Best Products; Alison Sky; Virginia; James Newton Wines; James; surrealism; big-box; Italy; Wines; Rome Prize; Lewises; Sculpture In The Environment; Gordon Matta-Clark; Michelle Stone; Cynthia Eardley; De-Architecture; Robert Smithson

English

All rights reserved (no additional license for public reuse)

2015-04-28