Storefront Library by Abruzzo Bodziak Architects: 2018 Best of Year Winner for Installation Project

Promoting discourse about the built environment is the mission of the nonprofit Storefront for Art and Architecture, which launched the New York Architecture Book Fair this year to bring designers and readers together. Programming included an exhibition, “Architecture Books: Yet To Be Written,” installed by Emily Abruzzo and Gerald Bodziak. Working with Storefront’s iconic facade by Steven Holl Architects and artist Vito Acconci—featuring panels of concrete aggregate that rotate to open the space to the street—Abruzzo and Bodziak remained undaunted. They and graphics consultant Pentagram “set the stage for an exhibition shaped by public participation and dialogue,” explains Abruzzo, who is also a critic at the Yale School of Architecture.

A survey conducted by Storefront identified books on subjects ranging from Le Corbusier to Nordic buildings. At the start of the two-month run, a few of those titles went into bookcases in painted MDF that Abruzzo and Bodziak had attached to the four largest facade panels, which swung over the sidewalk, and placed throughout the 990-square-foot interior. Volumes were added as time passed, but the shelves always remained sparsely populated, leaving metaphorical room for the books yet to be written. At the show’s end, two interior bookcases became a permanent bookstore. Others went to architects who were former students of Abruzzo and to Storefront supporters.

Project Team: Michael Cohen; Jacqueline Hall; Yasemin Parlar

> See more Best of Year Project Winners from the December 2018 issue of Interior Design