Steve Wilson, Founder, 21c Museum Hotel, talks to Cities x Design about philanthropy, collecting art, regenerating a city center and why he chose to open an art hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.

Andy Warhol’s creative approach challenged the boundaries between art and design and ingeniously introduced multi-disciplinarity into the arts. He merged it all in his career: from advertising to illustration, photography, film, music, and sculpture.

By embracing creativity as a whole and by collaborating with the most inspired talents, Andy Warhol showed that commercial art (which we like to refer to in this project as ‘design’) acts as a mirror to the world we live in and can serve as interesting social study content.

Andy Warhol’s fame began with his illustration work for established brands like Tiffany’s , Columbia Records and Harper’s Bazaar to name a few. His success as a commercial artist eventually pushed him towards visual experiments that captured the American way of life shaped by consumerism, materialism and celebrity culture.

A personal favorite at the Andy Warhol Museum are the “Time Capsules”: cardboard boxes that he filled with everyday objects, photos, letters, and other collectible items, from 1974 onwards. The Museum today holds over 600 Time Capsules in their archives and gallery spaces.

The few capsules on display are fascinating from a creative and anthropological perspective as they intimately reveal the random complexity of Warhol’s existence and the beautiful designs of everyday life. Our visit to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh showed us that life is art, art is design and design is life.

Full Pittsburgh City Report

The Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum complex that includes  19 museums, 17 of which are located in Washington D.C. One can look at it as a cluster of varied architectural buildings or a giant display of over 136 million objects, artworks and specimens. Visitors have free access and usually make the effort to walk the long distances from one building to another – the Smithsonian website clearly advises people to wear comfortable shoes before a visit.

Due to our limited schedule, we narrowed our visit to the National Museum of the American Indian (pictured above). We were initially attracted to its controversial postmodern design which was previously referred to as “native by design” by the National Geographic magazine. The building was designed by several Native American architects – Douglas Cardinal, a Blackfeet Indian; Johnpaul Jones, a Cherokee/Choctaw; Ramona Sakiestewa, a Hopi, Donna House, a Navajo/Oneida, and Lou Weller, a Caddo Indian – and its construction was assisted by a Native American Design  Collaborative known as the Table Mountain Rancheria Enterprises.

The museum has an exterior cladding of Kasota dolomitic limestone that give the building the appearance of a stratified stone mass that has been carved by wind and water. The interior is unfortunately more conventional and consists of dark gallery spaces generously filled with over a million artefacts.

A temporary exhibition called Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America caught our attention. By looking beyond the traditional representations of Native American culture, this show reflects indigenous culture in a 21st century context. We learned that skateboarding has inspired many Native American youths to start their own companies and build community-based skate parks in the United States. By fusing design, graphic art, filmmaking, and music through skateboard culture, those individuals are affirming their identity within contemporary American society, perhaps to also show that their heritage is vibrant and alive.

The National Building Museum was a surprising find in DC. The building is an adapted re-use of the former US Pension Bureau Headquarters, a building inspired by two Italian models. The exterior is a red brick semi-replica of the Michelangelo-designed Palazzo Farnese, an imposing palace located in Rome. The interior, on the other hand, boasts an open arcade gallery space inspired by the Palazzo della Cancelleria, a renaissance style palace of the sixteenth century.

This museum is a place where architecture and the built environment are put into perspective rather than simply put on show. Their past exhibitions include topics such as recycling, green houses, the places where we live, New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, or design for public spaces. Our first viewing was the Washington: Symbol and City exhibition, a very dense collection of images and texts documenting the architectural and social history of the capital from its conception to the twentieth century. This exhibition raises questions about the effects of urban planning on social well-being and highlights the capacity of design to connect all aspects of everyday life including transportation, housing, commerce, energy, and institutions. In a separate modern gallery space was shown Green Community, an interactive and playful display of sustainable best practices from around the globe. Waste management, land conservation, technologies, mass transit systems were amongst the priority issues at stake. Their award-winning interactive installations successfully engage the viewer to consider sustainability on a personal, global and community level.

Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Andy Warhol, home to Carnegie Mellon University and Heinz tomato ketchup. The triangle-shaped downtown area is situated at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers that form the beginning of the Ohio River. Bridges and hill views make this city rather unique. Unlike other American cities, Pittsburgh has kept a very strong sense of authenticity that is reflected in its vintage storefronts, diners, and industrial buildings.

The presence of Carnegie Mellon is a competitive advantage for the city in the fields of science and culture. The university’s School of Design offers an innovative program that blends science, technology and the arts and is one of the few American institutions that offers a Ph.D in design research.

As the former base of Richard Florida (author of The Rise of the Creative Class and former Carnegie Mellon Professor), Pittsburgh is today still pursuing and working towards neighborhood redevelopment projects that are based on quality of life and local creative skills that can generate unique retail and dining experience. Lawrenceville is an example of a mixed-use district that seeks to attract young creative entrepreneurs by offering affordable work/live spaces.

The Design Center at Philadelphia University is located at the former private residence of Goldie Pailey (mother of CBS founder, William Pailey). The house borrows from California’s mid-century modern architecture. Even though the house has been converted into a gallery, the interiors have been kept intact. It features a beautiful 50’s kitchen with original appliances – that serves as a meeting room, closet spaces and bathrooms, including one that is being used as a site-specific installation room filled with light bulbs. Some vintage cabinets and drawers have been turned into mini fiber galleries by designer Todd Oldham  (pictured above). In fact, there is not a single space that is not creatively occupied at the Design Center. It is a real cabinet of curiosities.

Lace in Translation (pictured above) is the latest exhibition at the Design Center. Dutch design studios Demakersvan, Cal Lane and Tord Boontje were given access to the Quaker Lace Company’s collection to re-interpret the pieces and produce something new. The results are original pieces of contemporary furniture, garden sculptures and interior objects that reflect the delicate complexities of lacing.

Minneapolis is a city with an impressive industrial history that has been able to rediscover itself through creative thinking. In the late 19th century its riverfront led the world in flour production with four important mill factories on the banks of the Mississippi river. When the industry moved to Buffalo, NY, in the 1930’s, the district evolved and the city was left with vacant industrial buildings until the City drew a Historic Mills District Master Plan in 1998 to regenerate its riverfront district. Since then, new residential neighborhoods have been built, the Stone Arch Bridge has become a section of the Grand Rounds Scenic Bike Ways, the Mill City Museum tells the history of flour milling,  and the old Pillsbury mill factory is in the process of being redeveloped as a mixed use housing and commercial complex. In addition, new architecture such as Jean Nouvel’s Guthrie Theater, work as intelligent design assets for the new riverfront.

(Picture clockwise from top left: Guthrie Theater, “Spoonbridge and Cherry” by Claes Oldenburg, Hennepin Ave. Bridge, Mill City Museum)

It did not take us too long to realize that the Walker Art Center is a very different kind of museum. Our first Walker experience took place as we got out of the car and walked through the parking garage surrounded by experimental sounds. The Walker stands out because it uses and integrates design in a museum environment in order to create experiences: physically with the 2005 facilities extension by architects Herzog & De Meuron, visually with the in-house communication design team responsible for the look and feel of exhibitions and publications, and conceptually with exhibitions questioning the role of design in society, past and present (one recent show that particularly caught our interest is Worlds Away, a study on suburbia and its impact on modern America).

How does the Walker achieve such level of excellence in design? Well, the creative team sitting backstage is rather unusual: since 1980, a small number of young graphic design fellows are selected each year to work with the design director. Keeping the design work in-house is a money-saver and integrating fresh minds is a good way to explore unseen territories and experiment on new grounds. We wonder why more museums aren’t adopting this innovative approach.

Some locals in Omaha think that their city is of one of America’s best kept secrets and want to keep it that way. Others wish that more people stopped in Omaha (instead of just flying over it) because there is more to the city than Mutual of Omaha, Omaha Steaks and Warren Buffett: Omaha is also a creative incubator and the Silicon Prairie of the region.

Omaha is a small city made of contrasted districts in the downtown area. The real surprise for us was to discover the Old Market District after a long drive from Colorado. The Old Market is authentic and delivers an old Western charm that can no longer be found in a majority of American cities.

Omaha seeks to bring its population back on the streets and revive the city center. Inspired dining venues such as M’s Pub or The Boiler Room are local favorites in the area and prove that restaurants that blend design with fine food are an integral part of a city’s appeal. A number of affordable urban living developments surrounding the market are attractive alternatives to suburban neighborhoods.

The world renowned Bemis artist-in-residence center (pictured above), set up by Ree Kaneko in the early eighties has had considerable influence on the creative character of Omaha and helps to diversify the local population (we spotted a couple of young Japanese artists struggling to order steaks at M’s Pub). The recently opened Kaneko Center is another initiative that explores new creative possibilities for Omaha (see our blog post and video), and we heard that a new design school may also be seeing the light of day in a few years time.

Call + Response is an exhibition that questions the realm of design, craft and art through the works of designer-makers and educators from Oregon. In this show craft is shown as a highly conceptual practice that can play a role in society and also holds hidden cerebral qualities. Amongst the various themes some include: environmental responsibility, artistic processes and historical contexts.

Clockwise from top left: Sam Morgan, Studio Gorm, Heidi Schwegler, David Eckard.

Call + Response is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland until October 31 2009.