WAITING ROOM
LOT-EK
March 5th, 2020 - June 5th, 2021
LOT-EK is an award-winning architectural design studio based in New York and Naples, Italy. Founded in 1993 by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, LOT-EK has been involved with commercial, institutional and residential projects globally. In 2014, their piece APAP OpenSchool, Anyang, Korea (2010) was acquired by MoMA and included in their exhibition “Conceptions of Space: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Architecture,” and can be seen in the newly reopened MoMA’s permanent collection.
LOT-EK has conceived and executed exhibition design and site-specific installations for major cultural institutions and museums, including the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center and the Guggenheim. The studio has achieved high visibility for its sustainable and innovative approach to construction, materials and space, through the adaptive reuse (“upcycling”) of existing industrial objects and systems not originally intended for architecture.
Works from three distinct series are integrated into the Waiting Room space. STACK/CUT explores the geometric fluidity of the shipping container as an architectural building block. The material base for these “alphabets dreaming of potential volumes and spaces” (Todd Alden) are upcycled and intricately laser cut cardboard panels, exhibiting a commitment to minimalism via subtraction and repetition. URBAN SCAN is an image based archival project that indexes LOT-EK’s innovative, research based practice. 50-page legal pads are repurposed to organize selections from their image archive. The handmade books catalog a collective memory retrofitted into LOT-EK’s symbolic and logical interjections into habitat, infrastructure and urban space. LITESCAPES is a series of light objects that continue the studio’s elevation of the ubiquitous object. Three light works of molded, colorized latex sit austerely illuminated. Their densely packed yet ordered geometric forms suggest a model for a city center or complex. The source of the mold is Guiseppe’s “first electric toothbrush,” yet another example of LOT-EK’s power to design provocative objects from provocative sources.
This exhibition of works coincides with a large-scale public works exhibition in Domino Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn in collaboration with the artist JR.