Newark ArtsPark
2009 - Newark, NJ
FINALIST - Newark Visitors' Center Competition
with Cristina Toma
As an art form that emerged in NY in the mid-1970s, graffiti is now a venerated form of impromptu expression. The works are fleeting, and are often only immortalized through photography. Styles have become highly localized, leading to the NY Style, the California Style, the European Style, and even a Newark Style, pushed forward by local artists such as BREW, DRE, COPE2, BLES, and MEDOW. Currently, the Cartier Foundation in Paris is exhibiting a retrospective on the rise of graffiti as mainstream art and has commissioned prominent American and European graffiti artists to create new 'tags' to showcase street art as 'high art.'
The project seeks to create a new forum for graffiti along the Newark Waterfront and to embed counter culture into architecture. A formal language has been devised from the strokes, textures, and stylistic qualities of these works. Intrigued by the three-dimensionality of graffiti, the process has been broken down into three main components: scribble, fill, and define, which operate at the graphic, building, and urban scales.
The Newark Visitors’ Center was conceived as a beacon for the Newark skyline, jutting over the bank of the Passaic River. Its form, a gestural scribble, formed around the building's program, creates a building with unobstructed, multi-level spaces and cantilevered views onto the Passaic River, the Newark ARTSPARK, and the Red Bull Arena. It captures the pulse of graffiti as contemporary art form - a building where new artistic currents will intersect with architectural innovation in order to revitalize the City of Newark.
FINALIST - Newark Visitors' Center Competition
with Cristina Toma
As an art form that emerged in NY in the mid-1970s, graffiti is now a venerated form of impromptu expression. The works are fleeting, and are often only immortalized through photography. Styles have become highly localized, leading to the NY Style, the California Style, the European Style, and even a Newark Style, pushed forward by local artists such as BREW, DRE, COPE2, BLES, and MEDOW. Currently, the Cartier Foundation in Paris is exhibiting a retrospective on the rise of graffiti as mainstream art and has commissioned prominent American and European graffiti artists to create new 'tags' to showcase street art as 'high art.'
The project seeks to create a new forum for graffiti along the Newark Waterfront and to embed counter culture into architecture. A formal language has been devised from the strokes, textures, and stylistic qualities of these works. Intrigued by the three-dimensionality of graffiti, the process has been broken down into three main components: scribble, fill, and define, which operate at the graphic, building, and urban scales.
The Newark Visitors’ Center was conceived as a beacon for the Newark skyline, jutting over the bank of the Passaic River. Its form, a gestural scribble, formed around the building's program, creates a building with unobstructed, multi-level spaces and cantilevered views onto the Passaic River, the Newark ARTSPARK, and the Red Bull Arena. It captures the pulse of graffiti as contemporary art form - a building where new artistic currents will intersect with architectural innovation in order to revitalize the City of Newark.
a beacon on Newark's renewed riverfront
examples of the Newark Style of graffiti
scribble, fill, and define
site circulation
site circulation
program
site plan
Visitors' Center floor plans
section through Visitors' Center
inside Visitor's Center lobby
view across river from observation deck