New Work: Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce is the iconic luxury automobile, representing the finest in British engineering since the company’s founding over a century ago in 1904. Pentagram’s Justus Oehler and his team in our Berlin office were commissioned by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, now part of the BMW Group, to develop the theme and create the overall look and feel for the Rolls-Royce exhibition stand at Europe’s most important car show, the IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung) in Frankfurt. Oehler’s solution for the brief was to create a gallery-like environment that showcased the exquisite craftsmanship of Rolls-Royce and brought to life the spirit of its manufacturing.

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Daniel Weil’s ‘Making Time’ on View at Sotheby’s

A unique collection of extraordinary clocks by Daniel Weil are currently on display in a selling exhibition, Making Time, in the Wemyss Gallery at Sotheby’s New Bond Street, London. The exhibition is open daily from 9.30am to 4.30pm until 13 January.

New Work: Saks Fifth Avenue Holiday Windows

Terron Schaefer, group senior vice president for sales and marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue, approached Pentagram to design the holiday window displays at the store’s New York flagship. The idea needed to connect snowflakes and bubbles—motifs which had been used previously—and give the store a way to display its merchandise.

Pentagram’s Harry Pearce and Naresh Ramchandani and their teams came up with a concept that divided the Saks store into two worlds, the subterranean world of the bubble makers and the imaginary world of the snow makers who inhabit the roof of the building. Connecting the two is a curious little girl called Holly who whilst shopping in Saks on Christmas Eve with her parents finds a door which allows her into both worlds. First she visits the cave full of fantastic machines operated by ‘beautiful people in beautiful gowns’. She then rides a bubble produced by the machines, which takes her to the roof where she meets the yetis that make the snow.

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Michael Gericke on Jury for U.S. National Mall Design Competition

Quick Link: Michael Gericke on Jury for U.S. National Mall Design Competition

Daniel Weil’s ‘Last Folio’ on View in Indiana

Last Folio, the exhibition of photographs by Yuri Dojc, designed by Pentagram’s Daniel Weil, is currently on show at The Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University in Bloomington. It will remain in Indiana until 1 October, the latest venue in a tour that has taken in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; the European Commission, Brussels; and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

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‘Design for a Living World’ on View in Chicago

This summer Design for a Living World, the landmark exhibition presented by the Nature Conservancy and designed by Pentagram’s Abbott Miller, has traveled to the Field Museum in Chicago, where it remains on view through November 13.

Design for a Living World was co-curated by Miller and Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the show debuted in 2009. The exhibition commissioned 10 designers from the fields of fashion, product and industrial design to develop new uses for sustainably grown and harvested materials from a specific place where the Conservancy works. The participating designers include Yves Béhar, Stephen Burks, Hella Jongerius, Maya Lin, Christien Meindertsma, Isaac Mizrahi, Ted Muehling, Paulina Reyes from Kate Spade, Ezri Tarazi and Miller himself. Locations include endangered ecosystems in Australia, Micronesia, China, Mexico, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Alaska, Idaho and Maine. The resulting designs demonstrate that by choosing sustainable materials, designers can actively contribute to the advancement of a global conservation ethic.

In addition to co-curating and participating in the exhibition, Miller and his team at Pentagram designed the exhibition and its companion book and website. The exhibition is designed to travel and the modular scheme originally installed at Cooper-Hewitt’s Carnegie Mansion in New York has been adapted for the Field Museum. The installation includes a new piece by Meindertsma inspired by the Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois.

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New Work: Celebrating 100 Years and 60 Million Artifacts

On May 23 the New York Public Library celebrated the 100th anniversary of its landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Pentagram’s Michael Gericke and his team have designed Celebrating 100 Years, the library’s centennial exhibition, a presentation of 250 astonishing artifacts that highlight the collections and history of this remarkable institution.

With over 60 million artifacts in its holdings, the New York Public Library is one of the world’s great libraries, but it is different from its peers—places like the British Library and the Library of Congress—in that it is not a national institution, but rather a municipal library conceived as a repository of knowledge for the citizens of New York. (The library is nicknamed the “People’s Palace,” and it is the only institution in the world that always makes its collections accessible to the public.) The library has its roots in the Astor and Lenox libraries, which were combined in 1895 with the Tilden Trust and found a new home in the magnificent Beaux-Arts building now known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, built in 1911 and recognized for its beloved marble lions, Patience and Fortitude.

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New Work: ‘Last Folio’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

‘Last Folio’, an exhibition of photographs by Yuri Dojc at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, is an exhibition and an experience designed by Daniel Weil.

Yuri Dojc’s haunting photographs document what remains of the once-vibrant Jewish culture of prewar Slovakia: ruined synagogues, destroyed sacred texts, decaying graveyards. Weil designed the exhibition as both a celebration and a memorial. As he puts it, the experience is intended to unfold, on a beautifully lit stage, as theatre—a play in which the visitor is not part of the audience, but is an actor.

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Pentagram to Collaborate on National Museum of African American History and Culture

Pentagram is excited to announce that we are a member of the exhibition design team led by Ralph Appelbaum Associates for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Daniel Weil: Returning to the Light

From June 2004, I spent five and a half years designing the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Archeological Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. When the wing was opened in July this year, to great acclaim, I felt proud and very privileged to have been part of the renewal and elevation of a great museum to world class status.

Returning there in November allowed me to see the wing from the point of view of a visitor - to experience the unique chronological narrative in its galleries. And what I saw most clearly was the story of light. The light of Jerusalem is the major protagonist in the Archeological Wing’s experience, as the journey of this unique history goes from dark to light, triggering the emotions of the visitor.

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