Queens
Take a journey through Queens
Plywood Protection Project
Founded in 2016 by Neil Hamamoto, worthless studios envisions to provide space, resources, and technical assistance to aspiring artists. The Plywood Protection Project, an ode to worthless’ mission, aims to avoid the wastage of discarded plywood, and instead transform them into public art installations. The initiative began as a result of the peak protest weeks across New York City, where retailers, restaurants and luxury brands boarded up their windows to protect their businesses, and plywood prices skyrocketed and supply was depleted citywide.
The project announced a call for proposals and awarded materials and grants to five winning artists to transform recycled plywood into public art installations. Tanda Francis, one of the five winners, is a Brooklyn-based artist with a primary focus of creating public art that incorporates monumental African heads. Her installation, “Depth of Shadow” will be on view at Queensbridge Park from May 15 to November 1, 2021. The sculpture will feature laminated plywood around a casted cement bust, with 12” deep cement anchors. The top head portions of the piece will be painted deep black while the base below the head will be stained black allowing the textures and marks on the plywood to come to life.
Plywood Protection Project
Outdoor Installation
2222 Jackson by ODA Architecture
Designed by ODA New York, 2222 Jackson is an impressive 11-story, 175-unit rental project steps away from the cultural icons of Long Island City. Following creative cues from the nearby MoMA PS1, the structure displays a captivating concrete facade to complement the aesthetic identity of its notable neighbor. The building is a reflection of the resilience of design, layout, and material that uncovers a simple, tectonic way to unite innovation with efficiency without sacrificing a commitment to the vertical village. In this project, ODA Architecture looks at the “box” as a real opportunity, and ironically so, to break out of the box.
The interplay of structure showcases studio apartments that are longer than their one and two-bedroom counterparts. They project seven feet beyond the facade, dancing along the face of the building, and creating corner windows for apartments above. The team played on the mobility of the street wall that had the potential to live as much as 10 ft. away from the street itself, and applied the idea of disengaged, rearranged volumes based on the zoning regulations to the site.
2222 Jackson by ODA Architecture
Architectural Landmark
Culture LAB LIC at Plaxall Gallery
Culture Lab LIC is a new nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the development of art, theater, music and community services in Western Queens. Donated by Plaxall Inc., the 12,000-square-foot converted waterfront warehouse located on the Anable Basin in Long Island City is home to three art galleries, a 90-seat theatre, and an outdoor event space. With a motivated vision to uplift the arts, the organization has built a strong community that embraces fine art, performance, and community events in a diverse, equitable and inclusive space, geared toward empowering people of every age, background, identity, and ability. The physical site is host to over 30,000 guests annually, as well as a media platform, where networks of artists and organizations can converge and collaborate.
Culture LAB LIC at Plaxall Gallery
Cultural Institution
Eventscape
With its new chapter in Long Island City, Eventscape has opened its doors to New York City’s architects, designers and engineers in an ongoing period of contraction. The award-winning custom fabrication firm has been housed in a 20,000 square feet facility that includes 10,000 square feet that was originally home to Barney’s.
Going by the moto, “build the extraordinary”, the Toronto based firm aims to redefine the boundaries of architectural fabrication and working hand-in-hand with creative partners. The NY facility enables Eventscape to provide constant and immediate on-site assistance or local architectural projects. The new creative workshop houses an advanced manufacturing wing complete with a Kuka 7-axis robot arm, a Haas milling center, a CNC router, numerous fine woodworking machines, extensive metal fabrication tooling, and a generous material library, all overlooking a gorgeous skyline of Manhattan.
Eventscape
Studio
Glacier Rock
A previously abandoned wasteland in Long Island City has been transformed into a buzzling pedestrian plaza on 12th St by the VOREA Group in partnership with the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) through the “Street Seats” program in 2019. While honoring its vibrant and growing neighborhood, the space also encompasses an ancient unique glacial formation that has now displays as the plaza’s centerpiece.
The 12th Street District is a direct counter to Long Island City’s inclination toward sterile high-rise towers. The formerly underutilized warehouse buildings fronting 12th Street have been repositioned or are in the process of being converted into new retail, food and beverage and creative office uses. The project, in all its efforts, continues to create a sustainable neighborhood for the Long Island City community, with best-in-class companies as well as small businesses who benefit from the area’s convenience and accessibility.
Glacier Rock
Outdoor Installation
Hunters Point South Park
Situated along the East River in Long Island City, Hunter’s Point South Park directly faces the Manhattan skyline with views of icons like the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. In 2018, the Park opened its Phase II 5.5-acre extension that begins south of 54th Avenue and wraps around Newtown Creek. This part of the park is known for its resilient waterfront design and architectural features that were conceptualized by a collaboration between SWA/BALSLEY and WEISS/MANFREDI with ARUP. The design re-establishes the site’s former marshland identity and introduces a multi-layered recreational and cultural destination, bringing the city to the park and the park to the waterfront.
Although the highlight of Hunter’s Point South Park is its gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline, the park offers many activities and interesting features such as its permanent art installation titled “Luminescence” designed by local artist Nobuho Nagasawa. Phase I contains an oval shaped turf field and a basketball court with an outdoor gym. In Phase II, a continuous meandering causeway, elevated slightly above the river, offers a walk along the river’s edge and protects nearly 1.5 acres of newly established wetlands.
Hunters Point South Park
Public Space
Krypton Neon
Since its founding in 1981, Kenny Greenberg’s studio Krypton Neon has an integral part of the LIC cultural landscape with its reputation as the undisputed Neon studio for Broadway stage productions, Hollywood films, and significant museums and their collections. In addition to creating neon art and working with artists, creative teams, and businesses large and small, Greenberg has exhibited his work in Socrates Sculpture Park, The Hudson River Museum, Flushing Town Hall, and other public venues.
The studio space itself offers an eclectic mix of glass blowing work stations, high vacuum processing equipment, vintage and modern neon signs and art, and ongoing works. Visitors can occasionally experience a hands-on neon making workshop within the working neon studio that introduces one to designing, heating and bending glass tubing as a starting point for creating your own work of light. The studio’s convenient location near the LIC waterfront lets it draw from its diverse neighbors, including landscape designers, shop designers, photographers, musicians, sound studios, producers, lighting companies, and galleries, and places it in one of New York’s better artistic hubs.
Krypton Neon
Studio
MoMA PS1 Art Bookstore
Housed on the first floor of MoMA PS1, a landmark destination of the culturally rich neighborhood of Long Island City, the Artbook’s Bookstore is a vibrant source for cutting-edge contemporary art and humanities publications. MoMAPS1 is devoted to today’s most experimental, thought-provoking contemporary art. Founded in 1971, it is the first nonprofit arts center in the US devoted solely to contemporary art. The featured publications at Artbook’s store contextualizes art practice and criticism in unexpected and compelling ways while reflecting cultural trends worldwide, and complimenting MoMA PS1’s exhibitions.
Artbook’s extensive event program features book signings, readings, screenings, discussions and experimental talks by artists, curators, performers and critics, serving as a hub for current culture. In honor of its location, the store offers Long Island City residents a 10% off all trade titles with proof of address.
MoMA PS1 Art Bookstore
Retail
Penny Bridge
Designed by INC Architecture & Design, Penny Bridge is Chef Dan Kluger’s newest restaurant located in the heart of Long Island City with a seasonal menu inspired by American diners and simple comfort food. The design of the space is informed entirely by the food, and was conceived to serve as a backdrop for the restaurant’s seasonal menu focused on reimagining diner classics.
A myriad of textures and colors in its interiors bring the vibe of the restaurant alive. Exposed concrete mixed with bright tones and refined light woods define the primary color and texture palette of the space. The main dining room features custom decorative lighting developed in collaboration with the New York City-based studio Stickbulb. To stay true to the concept of hyper-localism, INC have worked with local makers and manufacturers to source key pieces throughout the restaurant.
Penny Bridge
Hospitality
Rux Studios & Stickbulb
With a working mission to grow creative brands with ethical roots, RUX Studios thrives to design a better world one company at a time. The studio’s first brand, Stickbulb, is an award-winning lighting brand founded in 2012 that makes light from wood by locally sourcing material from old water towers, fallen trees, demolished buildings, and sustainability managed forests to build their modular LED fixtures by hand.
Designed by the founding studio, the first-ever Stickbulb is located in the booming Long Island City neighborhood of NYC. The gallery is part of a 10,000-square-foot space with a design studio and production facility all under one roof. The building’s industrial details, textured terracotta walls, and weathered wooden floors have been offset with brand’s sleek, modern LED fixtures. Through breaks in the panels, visitors can glimpse Stickbulb fixtures being assembled, raw lumber being hauled, and hear the occasional rip of a bandsaw.
Rux Studios & Stickbulb
Studio
Sculpture Center
Originally founded in 1928 as The Clay Club by sculptor Dorothea Denslow, SculptureCenter provides an international forum that connects artists and audiences by presenting exhibitions, commissioning new work, and generating scholarship. After acquiring its current title in 1944, the organization was moved to its carriage house in Manhattan. In 2001, SculptureCenter purchased a former trolley repair shop in Long Island City, Queens, to better accommodate the exhibitions of large-scale work and respond to the needs of artists working today.
In 2014, the Building SculptureCenter Campaign allowed for an expansion to the building, including a new 2,000 square foot addition to the existing structure. Designed by Andrew Berman Architect, the new two-story building that was built in the adjacent lot, stitches into the original industrial building at the ground floor and cellar levels. Natural light and robust primary materials that speak to the existing building and industrial neighborhood were used to extend the distinct atmosphere of the SculptureCenter through the expansion.
Sculpture Center
Cultural Institution
Socrates Sculpture Park
Amongst many notable destinations Long Island City’s East River waterfront, the Socrates Sculpture Park is a NYC public park with sweeping views of Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The park was founded in 1986 by visionary sculptor Mark di Suvero, who led a coalition of volunteers in transforming an illegal dumpsite on a five-acre plot of landfill into a beautiful oasis for art and community. The Park’s landscape consists mostly of a flat grassy lawn where exhibitions of public artworks are constructed on-site in the open-air artist studio facility, and are installed on a rotating basis.
Affectionally called “the shed,” the large metal canopy (built by Mark di Suvero) that houses the artist studio is located on the southern edge of the Park in full public view – allowing visitors a unique glimpse into the creative, often labor-intensive, art-making process. A glass greenhouse installed on top of shipping containers, ornamental plantings on the eastern border, Socrates’ education studio housed in two open-air structures- ‘Sticks’ & ‘Sticks 2.0., and the Broadway Billboard above the southern gate are some of the other notable design features of the expanse.
Socrates Sculpture Park
Cultural Institution
Noguchi Museum
The Noguchi Museum was founded and designed by Japanese American sculpture artist Isamu Noguchi, and is considered to be one of the artist’s greatest achievements in itself. Housed in a converted 1920s industrial building in Long Island City, it was the first museum in the United States to be established by a living artist for the display of their own work. In transforming the former photoengraving plant into a museum, Noguchi helped pioneer the metamorphosis of the neighborhood into the vibrant arts center that it is today. The two-story Museum contains approximately 27,000 square feet of exhibition space, and is widely known for its distinctive outdoor sculpture garden. As a whole, it provides an intimate, reflective space in which one can experience the range of Noguchi’s work, with a comprehensive selection of sculpture in stone, metal, wood, and clay, as well as drawings, models for public projects and gardens, stage sets, furniture, and his Akari light sculptures.
Noguchi Museum
Cultural Institution
The Up Studio
Nestled in the heart of the rapidly evolving neighborhood of Long Island City, the UP Studio is a full-service architecture, interior, and brand design studio that serves as a home base for experimentation, collaboration and discussion with a diverse team of architects and designers. When the studio moved from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, founding partner John Patrick Winberry and his team saw Long Island City as a young, growing neighborhood with a strong community of creatives that provided a great opportunity for growth in an area that was still ripe for change.
Going by the belief that “every design has a story to tell,” the firm is passionate about the design process that is often conceived and conceptualized in their LIC studio space. The space, stationed in a restored automotive warehouse in Long Island City, is marked by a large, new, black box floating inside an old, white industrial space. The composition makes way for a sizeable front entryway, while the day-to-day workspaces are playful and filled with material samples, sketches, and art books.
The Up Studio
Studio
Tracie Hervy
