I must admit I have taken my “architour” passion to a new obsessive level in New York where looking at buildings sparked new connections in my mind with fashion design, but also with life in general.
On looking at the iconic triangular Flatiron (Fuller) Building, a well-known landmark located at 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Broadway, designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham (with details by Frederick P. Dinkelberg) and built in 1902, I started thinking about what kind of inspirations it may lead to in fashion, but also remembered Will Eisner's The Building (many thanks to my brother Nicola for lending me the book).
Actually I do think that Eisner’s works are a better introduction to life in New York than history books, since they manage to give the readers a much more real impression of what life is like in a huge metropolis (if you're heading to NY, check out also New York - The Big City).
Eisner's The Building moves from a landmark building set at the intersection of two major venues that looks like the Flatiron. The story focuses on a series of dramas happening around the building.
When the building is demolished to be replaced by a modern skyscraper, it leaves behind the ghosts of four people, representing the psychic debris left by the old building.
In the foreword to the graphic novel Eisner wrote: “After many years of living in a big city, one gradually develops a sense of wonder, because so much that happens there is unexplained and seems magical. When I was growing up in the turbulence of city life, it required only a surface alertness in order to deal with the welter of changes and experiences that sped by. There was little time to reflect on the rapid replacement of people and buildings. I took these things for granted. As I grew older and I accumulated memories, I came to feel more keenly about the disappearance of people and landmarks. Especially troubling to me was the callous removal of buildings. I felt that, somehow, they had a kind of soul. I know now that these structures, barnacled with laughter and stained by tears, are more than lifeless edifices. It cannot be that having been part of life, they did not somehow absorb the radiation from human interaction. And I wonder what is left behind when a building is torn down.”
Eisner’s words made me think a lot about new parallels between buildings and clothes: in the same way demolished buildings leave behind the ghosts of the people who lived, worked and walked in and around them, discarded clothes leave behind the shapes of our bodies once we remove them (think about Boltanski’s piles of clothes).
But while the Flatiron brought to my mind this connection with Eisner, my Art Deco mood that prevailed in the last few days, also connected the triangular shape of the Flatiron building with a famous picture of René Lalique’s iconic fountain, entitled "Les Sources de France" and created for the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes.
There were a few fountains designed for this event and inspired by modern art: Gabriel Guevrekian's was for example based on a Cubist painting and featured four triangular basins and a fountain of glass in the centre, surrounded by triangles of grass and flowers, while the 5 metre-high monumental fountain created by glass maker and jewellery designer Lalique featured 128 glass caryatids in different sizes and decorations.
Admired from one side, Lalique's dynamic fountain, Illuminated from within and placed on a cross of concrete covered with glass plates and set in an octagonal basin decorated with glass tiles, produced a sort of optical illusion, giving the impression of standing in front of a triangular building similar in shape to the Flatiron, but made of water and glass.
In the 20s, fountains were a recurring Art Deco motif also in pieces of jewellery characterised by falling vertical strands. Lalique's fountain actually inspired many jewellery pieces, among them also an iconic diamond and platinum bracelet created by Cartier in 1925.
So, what will the shapes, ghosts and optical illusions created by the Flatiron Building inspire you?
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments