David Stark Sketchbook: Building a Museum, One Line of Tape at a Time

Collaborating with our friends at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum on their National Design Awards is one of our favorite artistic challenges. Not only is the gang at the Museum all about innovation but it is especially fun to play to a group of our peers – ALL of the guests are as design obsessed as we are.

This year, the event moved from Cipriani 42nd Street to Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers, and a new space created a new context for our thinking. Since the Museum is now closed for expansion, we were challenged to bring the Museum to Pier 60. How did we do it? With tape.

In the center of our cocktail reception, we built a giant model of their fabulous building, the original Andrew Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue and 91rst Street. This was essentially a three dimensional drawing created entirely out of colored tape so generously provided by 3M.

And then we had MORE fun with tape. A free-standing wall presided in the other half of the reception space, inscribed with taped letters asking, “Design Is . . . ,” accompanied by a display of pens and rolls of brightly hued tape for the guests to draw and write with abandon. And they did.

To spark conversation, we created 5 additional tape installations that said with a wink and a smile, “Design Is Everwhere.”

Once in the dining room, the tape world expanded to embrace the table number as our hero of the evening. Exploring a variety of typography, scale shifts, and textures, that little necessity that HAS to be at every dinner and is generally not the focal point became ours in a big way, turning the dining room into a collage where the guests became part of the fun. At each place setting, instead of standard place cards, we wrote each guest’s name directly on tape rolls with Sharpie markers. You can imagine, after a couple of drinks, what kind of spontaneous “tape fun” occurred.

Photography by Susan Montagna.

A big thank you and congratulations to the Cooper Hewitt and to the winners and the nominees of the design awards. Design really is everywhere, and I know that telling you guys this is like preaching to the choir, but it is IMPORTANT. We can’t thank 3M enough for their support of the evening and for their commitment to design excellence, and personally, a warm, heartfelt thanks to the entire Cooper-Hewitt team who trust and allow our crazy schemes to grow and flourish. We salute you.

Xo

D.