Next week, the world’s design and art communities will embark upon their annual five-day sojourn to Florida’s balmy climes to attend Design Miami (2 – 6 December). Now in its 11th year and bolstered by the city’s rapidly developing Design District, this year’s edition promises to be the most diverse to date. Among the week’s obligatory poolside parties and soirées, works by established and emerging designers from galleries across five continents will tempt buyers while a packed programme of installations, retail-driven projects, happenings and talks looks set to delight. We put this year’s must-see events on the map…
‘Terra Continens’ table by Karen Chekerdjian
Carwan Gallery Dedicated to internationalising Middle Eastern contemporary design since opening in 2010, the Beirut-based Carwan Gallery has been a key figure in promoting cross-cultural collaborations. Its Miami efforts focuses on one designer, Karen Chekerdjian, a pioneering design force who founded her design studio in Beirut more than 12 years ago. Presented for the first time on this side of the Atlantic, the works on view represent the best of Chekerdjian’s career and highlights her ability to experiment with unexpected materials.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab), www.carwangallery.com(opens in new tab)
‘Unbuilt’ models in Harvard GSD’s central studio space, Gund Hall, designed in 1972 by Harvard GSD alumnus John Andrews. Photography: Steven Brahams
Harvard Graduate School of Design As we first reported in our December issue (W*201), Design Miami tasked a student team from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) to devise its entry pavilion, marking the first time the fair has collaborated with an educational institution in such a significant way. The students, who are currently in their second year at GSD, tapped into the collective catalogue of unrealised projects from their peers to create Unbuilt, a canopy of hand-milled, pink foam models, which will be accompanied by an app for easy identification so as to ensure that each project and designer has its day.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab), www.gsd.harvard.edu(opens in new tab)
‘Anil’ chair by Zanini de Zanine, 2012
Espasso and Arte Club Jacarandá Flying the flag for Brazil’s plentiful creative contributions is a special exhibition of the country’s art and design offerings curated by Espasso and the Rio de Janiero-based collective Arte Club Jacarandá. With highlights including paintings by the iconic artist Carlos Vergara and the equally celebrated Carlito Carvalhosa, and furniture by Zanini de Zanine, Sergio Rodrigues and Claudia Moreira Salles, the exhibition paints a holistic portrait of Brazil’s collectible art and design scene. To top it off, the exhibition will be staged in the penthouse of the Shore Club hotel, which will officially be part of the Fasano family when it reopens in 2017.
Fasano Hotel and Residences at Shore Club, 1901 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach Open to the public 3 – 6 December and by appointment 7 – 31 December, www.espasso.com(opens in new tab), www.fasanoshoreclub.com(opens in new tab)
‘Model Art Pavilion’ by Gluckman Tang
Revolution Pre-Crafted Properties Taking collectible design to the next level is Revolution Pre-Crafted Properties, a limited edition collection of prefabricated living spaces (pavilions and homes included), brought to you by gallerist/collector Edward Tyler Nahem and real estate developer/collector Robbie Antonio. Conceived by Antonio, the project will feature contributions by more than 30 leading architects, designers and artists. The series launches in Miami with fully realised constructions of Zaha Hadid’s VOLU Pavilion and Gluckman Tang’s Model Art Pavilion.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab), www.revolutionprecrafted.com(opens in new tab)
‘Untitled’, by Laddie John Dill, 1971. Courtesy of the artist and Ace Gallery Los Angeles
LAX – MIA: Light + Space Amongst the numerous Art Deco hotels currently being rejuvenated in Miami is The Surf Club, located in Miami Beach. Soon to be reopened with a new Richard Meier design and operated by The Four Seasons, the property in collaboration with Fort Partners will host ‘LAX – MIA: Light + Space’, an art exhibition curated by Parallel, comprising architecture curator Terence Riley, architect John Keenen and art historian Joachim Pissarro. Focusing on Los Angeles’ Light and Space art movement of the 1970s and featuring works by DeWain Valentine, Larry Bell and Helen Pashgian, the exhibition will show how the movement’s ethos and aesthetics reflect the ideology behind Meier’s concept for the redesigned hotel.
The Surf Club, 9011 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach 1 – 12 December, www.thesurfclub.com(opens in new tab)
‘BMW’ rug by Seletti Wears Toiletpaper.
Toiletpaper, Gufram and Seletti We’d jump at any chance to step into the colourful, irony-soaked world of Toiletpaper, the provocative art publication from Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. The visual maestros will takeover the lounge at the Untitled art fair with new carpets from the Seletti Wears Toiletpaper collection, which makes its debut in Miami. The space will also be dressed with the brand’s iconic furniture produced by Gufram.
MoMA Design Store Granted that most of the art collecting does take place at the numerous fairs that sprout up in South Beach, a visit to the Delano Hotel is definitely in order, especially if you are an Andy Warhol fan. Thanks to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Design Store, the Andy Warhol Foundation has teamed up with The Skateroom – a collective that invites contemporary artists to create art on skateboards – on a limited edition collection of skate decks. Installed throughout the legendary hotel, there will be boards featuring 32 varieties of Campell’s soup cans, as well as triptychs with Gold Marilyn Monroe, Guns, Car Crash, Self Portrait and Detail of the Last Supper. Each will be available for purchase in limited quantities.
Delano South Beach, 1685 Collins Avenue, South Beach 30 November – 6 December, www.momastore.org(opens in new tab), www.delano-hotel.com(opens in new tab)
Design Miami’s identity has been conceived by illustrator Pierre Le-Tan this year
Design Miami capsule collection by Pierre Le-Tan While we’d all like to leave Miami with a work of art or a piece of collectible design, sometimes it’s just not the case. This year, however, worthy souvenirs come in the form of a collection of Design Miami merchandise featuring illustrations by Pierre Le-Tan. Depicting a range of Miami-related motifs, such as palm tress, Art Deco architecture and key lime pies in Le-Tan’s playful style, the offbeat range includes socks, umbrellas, scarves and bow ties. With offerings for both men and women, the 11-piece limited edition collection will be available at the fair’s new Market.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab)
Inspired by the sky’s degradé hues, New York design studio Snarkitecture will transform the exterior of one of Netjets’ signature private planes
Netjets and Snarkitecture The official partner of Art Basel for the last 14 years, Netjets is the only way we would fly to Miami if the choice were up to us. This year, the private jet company has recruited Snarkitecture to create an installation that will put its Signature Series Global 5000 aircraft in the spotlight. Staged at the Landmark Aviation private jet terminal in Miami International Airport, Snarkitecture will reimagine the jet’s exterior as a sight pilots flying at dawn or dusk usually experience: an ombré-tinted sky.
Landmark Aviation, Miami International Airport, 5700 NW 36th St, Miami 1 – 6 December, www.netjets.com(opens in new tab), www.snarkitecture.com(opens in new tab)
Site-specific poolside painting by Katherine Bernhardt at Nautilus hotel
Artsy and Sixty Hotels We first waxed lyrical about Sixty Hotels’ newest addition, Nautilus, fresh after it was given the Jason Pomeranc treatment. Now, the hotel group has teamed up with Artsy for a week’s worth of programming, ranging from performances and installations to a designer popsicle truck, naturally. Food aside, Artsy has commissioned the artist Katherine Bernhardt to create an original pool painting for the hotel, thus continuing a tradition of which David Hockney, Keith Haring and Pablo Picasso have all contributed to.
Nautilus, 1825 Collins Ave, Miami Beach 30 November – 6 December, www.artsy.net(opens in new tab), www.sixtyhotels.com(opens in new tab)
Render of ‘El Sol’ by Fernando Romero
Swarovski The Mexican architect Fernando Romero is the driving force behind El Sol, a statuesque geodesic structure composed of 2,880 custom-made Swarovksi crystals that will take over the company’s booth at Design Miami. Designed at a scale of one billion times smaller than the sun, the sculpture mimics the sacred geometry that the ancient Aztec and Mayan civilisations used to construct their pyramids, which were conceived to observe the skies – with the added benefit of modern technology, of course. The installation is made up of an intricate puzzle of precision-cut crystals, each individually coated in Swarovski’s Aurora Borealis coating. Lit from within, it will evoke the sun’s pulsating force to an inspiring degree.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab), www.swarovski.com(opens in new tab)
‘Fragments’ dining table by Lex Pott for The Future Perfect
The Future Perfect, Lex Pott and Calico Wallpaper A longtime stalwart of the New York design scene, retail platform The Future Perfect makes its debut at Design Miami this year with an immersive installation that showcases the work of the Dutch designer Lex Pott and Brooklyn-based Calico Wallpaper. The environment will present newly commissioned stone furniture by Pott against handpainted gradient wall coverings from Calico made using pulverised minerals and stones. The backdrops will also be painted live onsite, bringing a performance aspect to the exhibition.
White Cube Leave it to White Cube to veer off-piste, taking its Miami presence to a satellite venue for the first time. In addition to its booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, the international gallery pitches up in the Melin Building with a bewitching installation by the artist Larry Bell, a leading exponent of California’s Light and Space movement. 6×6 An Improvisation was first exhibited at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas from 2014-2015 and is made up of 30 glass panels that respond to changing light conditions at different times of day. The glass, which has been treated with a nickel-chrome finish, produces an effect that’s both dramatic and visually complex.
Suite #200, Melin Building, 3930 NE 2nd Ave, Miami 2 December – 9 January 2016, www.whitecube.com(opens in new tab)
Render of Fendi’s pavilion at Design Miami
Fendi Moving house is always a good opportunity to clear out the rafters. In Fendi’s case, its recent relocation to new headquarters in Rome’s historic business district at the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana – otherwise known as Square Colosseum – revealed a series of unrealised furniture designs envisioned by architect Guglielmo Ulrich for the district. Under Fendi’s watch, Ulrich’s designs for an S-shaped sofa, gold-capped lampshades and a rosewood table among others, have been beautifully brought back to life – almost 70 years after they were first conceived.
Design Miami, Meridian Avenue and 19th Street, adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach 2 – 6 December, www.designmiami.com(opens in new tab), www.fendi.com(opens in new tab)
Lambs wool blanket by Ella Kruglyanskaya (left) and tea towels by Peter Saville
House of Voltaire The London-based art charity Studio Voltaire brings its beloved pop-up retail concept House of Voltaire to the beaches of Miami this year. Armed with a new collection of specially commissioned homeware, accessories and clothing, House of Voltaire will move into a temporary home at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Miami Beach. Visitors can procure tea towels by Peter Saville; lambs wool blankets by the artists Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Ella Kruglyanskaya; and ceramics by the fashion designer Roksanda Ilincic. They will also be able to peruse other sought after projects, such as a limited edition silk top by Ilincic and Eva Rothschild and a photographic collaboration between Simone Rocha and Kim Gordon.
Daniel Libeskind wasn’t even supposed to be in New York. He was supposed to be in Dallas, Texas, for a symposium on urban issues—one of the countless conventions, colloquia, and festivals for which the architect has become a regular ornament over the course of his long career. Only two weeks prior, in early June, he had been in Venice for the city’s Architecture Biennale; before that, it was Manila; the week following, London. But on this very summery mid-June afternoon, Libeskind’s itinerant lifestyle had finally caught up with him, and he was laid low with a strep throat that had him recuperating at home in Manhattan.
“Corb said all you need to do to be an architect is to travel, draw, and read books,” said the designer, referring to the Swiss arch-modernist Le Corbusier. By that standard, Libeskind himself is an architect many times over. In addition to his near-constant globe-trotting, he’s an avid reader, fluent in English and Polish and literate in German and Italian, whose extensive home library (despite a recent cleaning) often lies in vertical stacks around the Tribeca apartment he shares with his wife, Nina. As for drawing, that was the very foundation of Libeskind’s practice when he first broke onto the design scene 36 years ago: his “Micromegas” sketches, begun in 1978, were a complex muddle of lines and forms, images of warped and rent space that confounded audiences at the time. “I thought of them as architectural drawings,” recalls the designer. “Many thought they weren’t.”
It would take over two decades to put paid to the skeptics, but with the completion of Berlin’s Jewish Museum in 1999, Libeskind proved that the radical approach developed in his works on paper could be translated into compelling built structures. “The break came with Berlin,” says Libeskind. The success of that project led to the commission of a lifetime—the master plan for the new World Trade Center in Manhattan—as well as to a host of major commercial and institutional clients. From museums in the Midwest to apartment blocks in Singapore, from a private home in Connecticut to a much-debated extension for the Royal Ontario Museum, Libeskind has expanded his practice into almost every branch of building. Far from being strictly a “paper architect,” he and his 100-person (worldwide) office, Studio Daniel Libeskind, are now one of the most prolific forces in the design world, a sought-after brand on par with such architectural headliners as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.
In Venice, however—amidst the endless bustle of off-site shows, national pavilions, and the buzz surrounding curator Rem Koolhaas’s featured exhibitions—Libeskind had been on hand to unveil something a little different. Or, more accurately, something a little familiar: a new set of drawings. “I don’t think of it as a return, since I’ve always drawn,” explains the designer. “It’s not as if I stopped drawing and then one day woke up and started again.” But besides being his first comprehensive, thematically linked series since the late eighties, “Sonnets in Babylon”—as the new collection is called—is also a departure aesthetically not only from Libeskind’s drawings of 30 years ago, but from any of the high-profile buildings that have emerged from his office in the ensuing decades. If history repeats itself, the “Sonnets” could mark the emergence of a new Libeskind.
The line connecting the architect’s early abstract sketches (not only the “Micromegas” but the early-eighties “Chamber Works”) to his big-budget buildings is a fairly clear one, and it carries straight through to the firm’s most recent commissions. Libeskind’s stopover in the Philippines, just before the Biennale unveiling, came on the occasion of the groundbreaking for the Century Spire, a new mixed-use high-rise in the capital city’s business-oriented Makati district. A fairly conventional vertical shaft rises for most of the Spire’s 60 storeys—until the very top, when suddenly the form splinters dramatically into three separate square volumes, two of them jutting at odd angles away from the tower. “I wanted to create something that has a different form of impact,” says Libeskind, and in this instance he’s done it using a geometry as striking as it is instantly recognizable: shards, fragments, and voids have long been at the heart of his architectural vocabulary. Especially when seen against the fairly tame Manila skyline, the Spire will read as an emphatic design statement in Libeskind’s distinct handwriting.
The birth of that signature style, as seen through the designer’s early drawings, came at an important moment in the history of contemporary architecture. By the late seventies, mainstream modernism had come to be considered confining, producing nothing but sterile glass boxes; the then-ascendant postmodernist trend, with its cheeky classical references, was entirely alien to Libeskind, who had studied at New York’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art under advocates of a more austere and intellectualized architecture, such as the determined outsider (and almost exclusively “paper” designer) John Hejduk. “Hejduk was my protector,” recalls Libeskind—a protector whose renegade instincts sometimes brought him into conflict with the rest of the faculty. Libeskind left Cooper with a high regard for Hejduk’s philosophi-cal approach, but also with a determination to build, and the combination left him somewhat stranded—uncomfortable working in the offices of other architects, but unclear as to what precisely he wanted to do differently. “I was determined to do architecture,” he says. “But I didn’t know when and how.”
Between fellowships and teaching posts abroad, Libeskind was able to patch together the makings of a career through the seventies and eighties, largely through the good offices of his wife, without whom, he says, he may not have made it through those lean years. “I always say up front that I would never do what I do if she wasn’t my collaborator,” says Libeskind. The two met, when Nina was 17 and Libeskind was 20, at a summer retreat in upstate New York for the children of Holocaust survivors. Libeskind’s mother and father had narrowly escaped death in the Soviet camps during the war, before returning to Poland and having their son; they next went to Israel, but eventually moved to the Bronx with then 13-year-old Daniel in 1959. Nina’s parents had immigrated to Canada before the war, but Nina had come with a friend whose parents had been in the camps. In a relationship now lasting nearly half a century, Nina has alternately supported and reined in her architect husband, acting as a check to his aggressive nonconformism. “When she first started working with me, I was nervous because she didn’t appreciate the drawings or what I liked,” says the architect. But it was precisely her non-architectural perspective that would prove valuable. “‘Why is this good?’ she’d say. We’d have a lot of fights, but in the end I sometimes decided she was right.”
Libeskind’s World Trade Center commission was one of many to which the architect brought a psychic charge. It had been a long time since architecture was believed capable of this kind of symbolic content; Libeskind was the one who brought it back.
Bringing Libeskind’s creative impulses into focus certainly helped sharpen his thinking as to how his vexed, intricate drawings could be made real. But Nina’s influence goes further still. “Her background was straight politics,” says the designer. “She understands things that I don’t.” The 12-year process of making his proposal for the Jewish Museum a reality, through political twists and turns that included the fall of the Berlin Wall, was perhaps only possible through Nina’s adroit political handling; she was an even greater asset during the fraught competition for Ground Zero and its long aftermath. That project, still very much under construction just blocks from Libeskind’s office in the financial district, has proceeded under unprecedented public scrutiny, requiring the studio to work in harmony with a host of other designers and countless bureaucrats and contractors. “You have to have a scheme that can garner consensus and that can be built and guided and developed,” says Libeskind—a far cry from the quiet, lonely work of drawing, sitting alone in his apartment or (as in the old days) in one room of the house while Nina looked after their now-grown children in another.
But whether in Berlin, Manhattan, or Manila, the link between the solo creative work and Libeskind’s public buildings is essential. Today, the designer claims his artistic work was and remains entirely unpremeditated—“All my drawings sort of arrive in my mind,” he says—and, indeed, the massed forms, wandering lines, and piled-up flotsam and jetsam of the “Micromegas” may just have been the musings of an underemployed architect still waiting for the big clients to come knocking. But the drawings also seemed to express something essential about the world as it transitioned from the 20th century to the 21st: a sense that the time was out of joint, that history itself was breaking up. The triumph of the Jewish Museum, and to no small extent the reason that Libeskind won the commission for the new World Trade Center, lay in his ability to bring a similar psychic charge to the buildings. In Berlin (as Libeskind himself explained to an incredulous German politician questioning the design), the front of the museum “has no door,” only an underground entrance that forces visitors to undergo an emotionally powerful progress from darkness to enlightenment. At Ground Zero, the tall buildings are ringed around the central void of the former Twin Towers site, evoking a feeling of absence and of community. It had been a long time since architecture was believed capable of this kind of symbolic content; Libeskind was the one who brought it back.
The fact that the architect has continued using the same manoeuvres—the same sharp angles, the same irregular shapes—throughout his burgeoning oeuvre has attracted a certain amount of criticism. A shopping mall is, after all, rather a different kind of a place than a museum to a near-vanished ethnic group, and even an institutional project like the Royal Ontario Museum has faced charges of being little more than a branding exercise, with Libeskind’s brash aesthetic commodified and used as a PR tactic. Certainly Libeskind’s trademark approach has proven altogether more adaptable (not to say more marketable) than any of his early skeptics might have believed. Robbie Antonio is managing director of Century Properties, the company behind the Makati Spire, and he has a keen eye for architectural talent, having recently commissioned a home from Rem Koolhaas. “We wanted to work with Daniel—it was a real aspiration for us,” says Antonio. For him, and for developers like him, a Libeskind project is a major feather in the corporate cap, a selling point especially in a city like Manila where global “starchitects” have yet to make an impact. Just recently, it was announced that Libeskind had been awarded the commission for the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa—a high-profile, $8.5-million monument designed to take on the angular shapes of the Star of David—that is a joint venture with photographer Edward Burtynsky. Indeed, Libeskind plainly relishes being first on the scene, and the challenges that come with that. But the realities of keeping up with a construction schedule, running an office, and appearing on panels in Milan with the likes of Marina Abramović can all be an impediment to developing as a designer. “Architecture has to change,” Libeskind maintains. “My architecture is changing.”
If Libeskind’s architecture is indeed to change and to grow, the time he’s set aside to produce “Sonnets in Babylon” may be crucial to that growth. As he stood in front of the new drawings in the Venice Pavilion at the Giardini della Biennale, the blown-up images arranged in backlit panels along the length of a curving wall, it was almost difficult to believe that the work was Libeskind’s. The free-floating objects of the “Sonnets” are more organic, more body-like than anything he’s done before. Sometimes they look like the sort of bio-machinery that might turn up in a David Cronenberg film; sometimes they look like the corporeal disjecta membra of a violent explosion. Each is accompanied by a gnomic title—“Before a Pylon: Wait,” “Three Real Denizens of the Deep”—that only compounds its mystery. What do they mean, and what do they portend for his future work? “I don’t really have an answer,” says Libeskind.
“I know these drawings have other spatial possibilities, and I’m now working on a couple of things that predate them but move on a similar trajectory,” he continues. “Drawing is something that leads you on—the drawing knows more than you do, in many ways.” It’s rare enough, in our increasingly computerized age, for a designer to remain invested in drawing at all, and that alone sets Libeskind apart. But what the new drawings suggest, provocatively, is that this architect may yet have another trick up his sleeve: a move away from the gestural, iconic work that’s come to dominate the field, toward something far stranger, more poetic. Not that Libeskind knows just when or how these drawings will percolate into his work. Along with his audience, he’s adopted a wait-and-see approach. “It takes an incubation period,” he says. “Today, architects are very busy. But it’s good to be patient.”
Revolution developed and intoruduced by real estate developer Robbie Antonio– ”revolution” is a collection of limited edition, pre-crafted properties, including homes and pavilions. The project unites over 30 of the world’s preeminent architects, artists and designers to create an exclusive series of prefabricated, livable spaces. With a network of cutting-edge technologies and cost-efficient production systems, Revolution is democratizing high-design and architecture by introducing designed spaces in exclusive collaboration with industry leading creatives. The first series of pre-fabricated pavilions have been launched including Zaha Hadid- Volu, Daniel Libeskind- The ReCreation Pavilion, Kengo Kuma-The Aluminum Cloud Pavilion, Sou Fujimoto- The Infinity Ring Pavilion, Ben Van Berkel- The Ellipsicoon Retreat Pavilion and other designers’ contemporary pavilions as well.
The core appeal of prefabricated structures is the freedom from location and construction constraints; however, the result is often monotonous, homogenous design. Revolution Precrafted Properties reinvent this model by creating unique, high-design spaces that transcend geographic borders and excite the senses. Revolution Precrafted Properties includes an exclusive group of the world’s leading architects, artists, and designers who collectively pursue the desire to make high-design attainable for everyone including; Ben Van Berkel, Sou Fujimoto, Zaha Hadid, SelgasCano, Kengo Kuma, Tom Dixon and many more and more collaborators to be announced in 2016.
The name of Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher’s design is ”Volu” that will take place at Design Miami 2015 as the first series of these pre-fabricated pavilions. Hadid & Schumacher design is a fusion of design, lightweight engineering, and precision fabrication. It is a result of tight integration of computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing. The strong silhouette of the pavilion, along with the careful coordination of features, materials, and colours is complemented by the bespoke design of the furniture.The design continues a rational, geometric production by embedding the tectonics of manufacture within the form itself. Design Miami 2015 will be held between December 2-6, 2015 at Meridian Avenue.
The distinctive design solution is driven by integrating computational geometry, analysis, optimisation, and fabrication.
Defined by sophisticated digital processes, the structure has been developed in such a way that its components are, at most, singly curved. Innovations including planar forming were computer programmed to integrate fabrication constraints into the design while enabling engineering feedback in an iterative delivery process.
This allows for comprehensive design development of complex and expressive form through the bending of flat sheet materials – a relatively simple process which produces very little material waste. This feature of the design assures the physical reproduction of the design from stock, flat, sheet material. The standardised material is bent into their final shapes taking advantage of ubiquitous manufacturing, cutting techniques enabling the fluid structural form with efficient production methods.
Comprised of a series of structural bands collecting at the spine and expanding overhead, the patterning of the pavilion’s structure and shade structures are guided by the varied structural loading conditions. Through analysis of the geometry under load, the pavilion’s topology is digitally re-crafted and optimised to remove unnecessary material, resulting in the lightest possible design solution. Unsurprisingly, this organic structural logic recreates the very same principles found in nature. It is presented in the limited edition.
Deborah Wilk rounds up the key lessons (and reminders for even the most knowledgeable insiders) from the 46th edition of the fair
The 46th edition of Art Basel began its pre-game on Monday with the private opening of the fair’s now beloved Unlimited sector, an exhibition of large-scale works curated by Gianni Jetzer of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The parade of VIPs included collectors Robbie Antonio, Richard Chang, Susan and Michael Joey Hort, Jill and Peter Krause, Beth De Woody, Ron Pizzuti, Alan Lo, and Donald Marron who mingled with artists and curators such as Andreas Gursky, the Beyler Foundation’s Sam Keller, the Guggenheim’s Richard Armstrong, Takashi Murakami, Lawrence Weiner, Gary Tinterow of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art director Philip Tanari.
The ensuing two days of previews witnessed the sort of sales that had dealers smiling when asked, ‘Have you been having a good fair?’ On the first day alone prices in the millions of dollars — which were willingly revealed — included an untitled 1957 oil on canvas by Joan Mitchell for $6 million from Cheim & Read; Marlene Dumas’sHelena, 2002, for $3.5 million, Sigmar Polke’sSkelett, 1974, for the same price, Bridget Riley’sAllegro Red, 2014, for $1.6 million from David Zwirner; and Thomas Schütte’s Vater Staat, dressed, 2010, also for $1.6 million from Mnuchin (the artist’s Grosser Geist Nr. 6, 1998, sold for $5 million at Skarstedt the following day).
Pace Gallery had reason to give thanks as its presentation of works by Robert Rauschenberg (honouring the gallery’s recent announcement of its representation of the artist’s foundation, along with Brazil’s Luisa Strina and Thaddeaeus Ropac of Paris) sold out entirely from prices ranging from $1 million to $450,000 to primarily American collectors and one lone Russian buyer. Similarly, five works from the Kitchen Table series by Carrie Mae Weems were sold to a major American institution by Jack Shainman on the second preview day.
By Friday, Christopher Wool’sPainting from 2009 sold for $5.5 million at Van de Weghe Fine Art and Hauser & Wirth reported the sale of Paul McCarthy’sWhite Snow Bambi (marble), 2013, for $2.8 million and Roni Horn’sUntitled (An otherwise unexplained fire in a dwelling inhabited only by women), 2014, for $1.25 million.
There were, however, plenty of notable lessons beyond the price tags, including these…
Art Basel is not an art supermarket
Contrary to reports that Art Basel is purely a commercial enterprise, the fair offers many opportunities for contemplation, spearheaded by its Unlimited offering. Despite the monumental nature of the gathered works (or perhaps due to their overwhelming size), the show sweeps up visitors, then grounds them in the serious business of viewing, thus bringing an enhanced sense of art’s profound power to the fair aisles next door.
‘It’s not a classic curatorial project in the sense that the curator works from proposals coming from the galleries as well as proposals he recruits from the galleries himself,’ says fair director Marc Spiegler. ‘This allows Unlimited to reflect a true art world zeitgeist because it shows both what the curator finds interesting and what the gallery is most passionate about.’
Organised by Jetzer for the last four years, the show now reads like a partnership between the curator, the fair, and the dealers all working in unison to demonstrate that gallery presentations are not simply a collection of objects for sale, but considered offerings of pieces that speak to the asethetic and philosophy of the gallery itself.
This has long been true in the booths of such storied dealers as Paula Cooper, Lisson, and the late Donald Young and is a concept that has become somewhat lost as the global art fair tour grows more extensive, and soaring prices command headlines.
‘Galleries have a history of promoting artists — and really a responsibility to them — which takes the form of exposing those who are unknown or little known by showing the work and carefully placing it so its historic value can grow,’ says Fergus McCaffrey. Jack Shainman puts it a bit more bluntly: ‘If you don’t believe in the work you’re presenting, then you can’t do much for the artist.’
It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission
In this same curatorial vein, Speigler holds a hard line with dealers on keeping booth configurations (which are submitted to event organizers for approval) static for the length of the fair. But with gangbuster sales, dealers have a hard time keeping works they believe are equally as good as those that have been sold stuck in their backrooms — or closets, as is fair parlance. (Rather than pieces stacked against the walls, these rooms are often as well polished as the booths’ public spaces and often hold secret allure for VIPs.)
‘We bring three tightly curated shows,’ says Janine Cirincione, director of Sean Kelly, which brought a team of preparators, who worked hard after hours shifting pieces. The scene was much the same at David Zwirner where gallery reps said the changes seemed nearly constant. Fergus McCaffery director Jesse Penridge adds, ‘When a piece drops out, a rehang gives us a chance to showcase a different object that might not have fit in the previous arrangement and the chance for viewers to see the remaining pieces in a new context.’
On the flip side, it’s nice to see the old school red dots, the marker on identifying labels that a piece has sold, more than a few of which were on ceramic works by Lucio Fontana in the booth of Karsten Greve.
The cache at Karsten Greve
Walking by Greve’s booth, few failed to be captivated by two fountains of patinated aluminum — one white, one black — by Louise Bourgeois (Fountain Couple, 1999/2000). ‘They’re part of Mr. Greve’s collection of works he purchased directly from the artist,’ says the gallery’s Maren Kirchhoff, who pointed to a veritable mini retrospective of 2- and 3D objects by Bourgeois. ‘It’s a chance for us to expose those who might only be familiar with her more iconic works to the depth of her practice.’ Of the Fontanas, Kirchhoff says, ‘all the ideas of the slash paintings were worked out in these earlier pieces. They illustrate the history.’
Such, she says, is also the case with a selection of spray-painted works on paper by David Smith, best known for his Modernist sculptures that riff primitive. Indeed, the formal investigations are clearly at play. While viewing them, the soft tinkle of Bourgeois’s water work brings talk back to her and the question of the cost required to take the piece home. ‘Of course, it’s for a very serious collector or a museum,’ smiles Kirchhoff. ‘But the price is only for Mr. Greve to say.’
After viewing Robert Irwin’sBlack 3, 2008, an elegantly lo-fi optical illusion composed of a series of room-size white sheer panels stenciled in the centre with a black square, in Unlimited, the collection of works in the booth of Denise Rene appears also to be by fellow light and space practitioners. But a closer look revealed many of the pieces to be by Agam and Jesus Rafael Soto.
‘We had the first show of Op Art,’ says director Denis Kilian, who flaunts a catalogue from a 1955 exhibition, entitled The Movement, featuring the aforementioned artists along with works by Victor Vasarely and kintetic pieces by Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Jacobsen, and Jean Tinguely (who has a museum dedicated to his work in Basel).
The mesmerizing offerings in this booth might have been the fair’s bargain with nearly all prices in the five- to low six-figure range. New to the fold is Pe Lang, whose delightful Moving Objects, No 1753-1754, 2015, small black rings bouncing along rows of white cable set within a shallow box that hangs on the wall — was on offer for a mere €35,000.
Of course, the hope is always that low prices for so-called undervalued work won’t stay low forever. In light of the soaring prices for works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, growing collector and institutional interest in street and graffiti art, and a resurgence of identity politics, conversation has swirled around the market potential of work by Keith Haring for several years.
Now, it seems the time for the AIDS activist has come. The morning of Art Basel’s Tuesday preview saw Haring’s Untitled (June 1, 1984) sell for $5 million at Skarstedt. The transaction came on the heels of the revered Keith Haring: The Political Line at San Franscico’s De Young museum last February as well as Skarstedt’s own Keith Haring: Heaven and Hell, which was up in New York throughout March.
Although the gallery is a champion of the artist’s work, it is not the official representative to Haring’s foundation, an honour that falls to Barbara Gladstone gallery. ‘It certainly started the fair out with a bang,’ says gallery director James Lavender. But seriously, are there any whimpers in Basel?
An art fair must is to view oneself in at least one of Kapoor’s curved, mirror-polished stainless steel wall pieces or peer into the depths of one of his richly pigmented hollows. In Basel, however, those who hadn’t had the opportunity to see the artist’s solo show at Lisson Gallery’s London outlet in April might have been somewhat taken aback by his new work.
At both Lisson and Gladstone Kapoor fans found themselves first surprised and then transfixed by conglomerations of silicon, resin, and pigment that appeared as painterly gestures of raw meat or muscles and sinew. ‘These works are another meditation on the perception and reflection of the body,’ says Gladstone Brussels associate director Maxime de la Brousse. ‘They’re also an homage to such imagery as found in works by Rembrandt and Francis Bacon.’
In other words, they are the very corporeal creations of the highly ethereal Kapoor. But lest fans feel the work is too tough, the £400,000 asking price at Gladstone might persuade devotees to learn to love it.
Stalwart conceptual practitioner Rirkrit Tiravanija offered up another of his homestyle dining experiences at Art Basel. Do We All Dream Under the Same Sky? hired cooks created the food in a make shift kitchen on the Messeplatz at the fair’s entrance and served hungry patrons a simple vegetarian curry dish. The catch? Diners were required the wash their own bowls as payment for the free meal.
The piece was enormously popular with food ‘selling out’ within an hour or two of being offered, and not only did participants willingly wash out their bowls, they stood in a particularly long line to do it.
Naturally those used to lunching after 2pm were disappointed to find the kitchen closed, but Documenta 14 curator Dieter Roselstrate had a friend in the trenches, who scored him a bowl just after the cut off of the cafeteria line. He gobbled his curry happily while chatting about his upcoming show of work by Kerry James Marshall, which he organised for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, along with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ian Alteveer, and Abigail Winograd of LA MOCA, all the while watching out for the car that was to take him to the airport.
When Roselstrate realised he likely wouldn’t have time to stand in the line to wash his bowl, he grew concerned. ‘I won’t have properly participated in the piece,’ he lamented. His friend reassured him by explaining he had brought the food, so the bowl was his responsibility. Apparently serving a meal in Basel is akin to saving a life in China.
The Monday opening of Unlimited was abuzz with excitement over the never-before-mounted installation of 86-year-old Marcia Hafif’s An Extended Gray Scale, 1973. Taking up 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, the work is a continuous line, set around four walls, composed of 106 22-inch square oil paintings, beginning with a white canvas, ending with a black one, and offering all the perceptible gradations the artist could possibly determine in between.
While the academic nature of the project is about as rigorous as a meditation on conceptual painting could possibly be, the visceral effect of the being in the centre of Hafif’s grand gesture doesn’t merely equal, but surpasses that of her contemporary Robert Irwin’s Black 3, 2008, across the floor.
Such an acknowledgement incites Hafif’s current New York representative, Fergus McCaffrey, to wax eloquently on Hafif’s current little-known status, a situation he is working hard to rectify having been introduced to her work by Viennese dealer Hurbert Winter. The situation even incited him to commit his thoughts to the page: ‘In examining the work of Marcia Hafif, it has struck me again how arbitrary recognition can be in the art world,’ he writes. ‘Factors such as gender, age, being in the right place at the right time, one’s name, the credibility of one’s dealer, and pure luck often appear to have greater effect on the reception of your artwork that the quality of the objects themselves. . . .
‘Thankfully, periodic revisions occur to admit overlooked members into the canon, but how much easier would it have been to shortcut the struggle and be born male . . . and be represented by Leo Castelli.’ But where Castelli — as well as his one-time wife Illeana Sonnabend, who represented Hafif for a short time in the late Seventies and early Eighties — failed, McCaffrey will likely succeed. Not only was An Extended Gray Scale a happening in Basel, it was on reserve with an American museum for $1.75 million by the fair’s close.
Today’s world is ever more globalized and increasingly interconnected—and that means the emergence of a new kind of multi-millionaire and billionaire with currency to spare (see The Top 10 Uber-Rich Art Collectors). Beyond their tendency to snap up properties of every shade, from penthouses to boats to businesses, this generation of tycoons, celebrities, and philanthropists are more regularly turning to another time-tested form of ritual consumption with a range of cultural benefits: art collecting. Be they heirs to Middle Eastern fortunes or young pioneers in the tech industry (see Meet 20 of the World’s Most Innovative Art Collectors), art collectors in the 21st century represent a demographic more widely varied than ever before.
To chronicle our times and these champions of the arts who hail from all corners of the planet and every possible background, artnet News has compiled the ultimate two-part list. Our roster of collectors features those who have been most active within the past 12 months and have shown a remarkable commitment to collecting.
We acknowledge that the lineup is heavily skewed toward male collectors based in the US, but beyond the usual suspects, we’ve done our best to cast a light on collectors you may not have yet heard about. We’re impressed by the number of influential women who made the cut (see The 100 Most Powerful Women in Art: Part One), as well as the marked contingent of younger Chinese men and women including Richard Chang, David Chau and Kelly Ying, Adrian Cheng, and Lin Han.
Some collectors are profiled in depth, while others, our “Collectors to Watch”—including emerging connoisseurs, those who are operating under the radar, and those who were once very active even if they’ve been quieter in recent years—are incorporated by name only.
Organized alphabetically, the index is the culmination of a three-month process that began with a poll of experts in the industry—including dealers, art advisers, and other insiders—and involved the efforts of staff and freelance writer Emily Nathan. (See Artnet News Top 200 Art Collectors Worldwide For 2015, Part Two).
We hope you find it useful!
Roman Abramovichand Dasha Zhukova (Russia) Moscow-born Dasha Zhukova opened the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in 2008 in Moscow (see Dasha Zhukova to Debut Moscow’s Rem Koolhaas–Designed Garage Museum June 12), and, with her partner Roman Abramovich (the owner of England’s Chelsea Football Club) she is now developing “New Holland,” a 19-acre island in Saint Petersburg, into a similar creative hub. Together, they recently bought the world’s largest collection of works by Ilya Kabakov (the priciest living Russian artist). Her collection is now legendary, containing thousands of mostly contemporary artworks. Her husband seems to prefer modern and Impressionist art, if auction records are any guide.
Robbie Antonio. Photo: Courtesy of Clint Spaulding/ Patrick McMullan.
Robbie Antonio (Philippines) Real estate developer Antonio’s Manila home was designed by Rem Koolhaas—the first residential commission the architect had taken on in 15 years—and it houses the Filipino collector’s private collection. His current obsession is a series of portraits of himself that he has commissioned from some of the world’s hottest contemporary artists (he has already paid $3 million for the two dozen that have been completed), including Julian Schnabel, Marilyn Minter, David Salle, Zhang Huan, the Bruce High Quality Foundation, and Takashi Murakami.
Bernard and Hélène Arnault. Photo: Courtesy of Billy Farrell/Patrick McMullan.
Hélène and Bernard Arnault (France) Chairman and chief executive officer of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Arnault is the richest man in France. His newest creation, the Frank Gehry–designed Louis Vuitton Foundation, opened in the Bois de Boulogne this past October (see As a Museum, Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris Disappoints), with commissioned works by the likes of Olafur Eliasson, Ellsworth Kelly, Sarah Morris, and Taryn Simon. His collection spans many thousands of contemporary and modern artworks.
Maria and Bill Bell. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Bill and Maria Bell (United States) Maria, the former head writer of CBS’s The Young and the Restless, a chair of the National Art Awards, and a former board co-chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), got her start collecting modestly priced George Hurrell photos, and has always favored the work of idiosyncratic contemporary producers like Francesco Vezzoli and Mark Ryden. Her husband Bill’s taste tends toward the more iconic, including works by Marcel Duchamp. Early in their collecting career together, the Bells were drawn to Andy Warhol, but, as they recently told the New York Observer, they wanted to look to more contemporary producers—and deemed Jeff Koons an appropriate choice. These days, they have amassed a substantial collection of works by Koons, along with many other mega names.
Peter Benedek. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Peter Benedek (United States) Peter Benedek, co-founder of United Talent Agency and one of Hollywood’s most powerful agents, began collecting art some 20 years ago, and has since filled nearly all the walls of his Brentwood home and his Beverly Hills office with works by some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art—from David Hockney and Gerhard Richter to Alex Katz, Milton Avery, and even Francis Picabia and Giorgio Morandi. He is reported to have purchased a John Currin nude long before the painter was a hot name, and an Alice Neel portrait of dealer Robert Graham—which he purchased at auction—still hangs in his office: “It’s great to have an agent looking at me every day,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
Debra and Leon Black. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Debra and Leon Black (United States) Owner of Apollo Global Management, Phaidon Books, and Artspace Marketplace, so-called “buyouts man” Black is reported to have a fortune of $5.4 billion. In 2012, he made waves when he purchased one of four existing versions of Edvard Munch‘s The Scream for $119.9 million—at the time, the highest price ever paid for a work of art at an auction.
Christian and Karen Boros. Photo: Courtesy FvF/ Wolfgang Stahr.
Christian and Karen Boros (Germany) In 2003, ad agency founder and publisher Christian Boros purchased a former Nazi air raid shelter in central Berlin, and transformed it into the Bunker, an 80-room exhibition space for contemporary art. Featured artists from Boros’s personal collection of some 700 works include contemporary stars like Elmgreen & Dragset, Sarah Lucas, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, classics like Olafur Eliasson (a Boros favorite, with 30 works in his collection), Franz Ackermann, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst, and Terence Koh, and even members of a new generation of Berlin-based artists, including Thea Djordjadze, Alicja Kwade, Klara Lidén, Michael Sailstorfer, and Danh Vo.
Norman and Irma Braman. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Irma and Norman Braman (United States) Since they began collecting in 1979—they fell in love with sculptures by Alexander Calder and Joan Miró at the Maeght Foundation in southern France, as the story goes—auto-industry magnate Braman and his wife Irma have built a veritable empire of modern and contemporary art. Dividing their residences among France, Colorado, and Florida, the couple helped establish Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2002, and they are now single-handedly funding the design and construction of South Florida’s newest major museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
Peter Brant.Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Peter Brant (United States) The owner of Interview magazine (which he bought directly from its founder, Andy Warhol), as well as Art in America and Antiques, and the creator of the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut (see Is the Brant Foundation a Tax Scam or an Art Investment Vehicle?), Brant is known for his blue-chip collection of primarily American art, though his recent acquisitions include Vancouver artist Steven Shearer. Brant made news recently when he purchased artist Walter de Maria’s 16,400-square-foot East Sixth Street studio and home for $27 million (see Peter Brant Paid $27 Million for Walter De Maria’s Old Studio); he has already hosted a show by Dan Colen in the space (see Peter Brant Hosts Dan Colen Show in Walter De Maria Studio), and many speculate that he will transform it into an exhibition venue.
*More Collectors To Watch: Paul Allen Basma Al Sulaiman Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin KhalifaAl-Thani Marc Andreessen Laura and John Arnold Camilla Barella Swizz Beatz Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft Robert and Renée Belfer Lawrence Benenson
Frieder Burda. Photo: Courtesy of Joe Schildhorn/ Patrick McMullan.
Frieder Burda (Germany) The son of a renowned German publisher and art collector, Burda bought his first picture, a Lucio Fontana, in his early 30s, and in 2004 he opened his Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden. The collection has now grown to include more than 1,000 works of art. Like his father, Burda focuses on established modern movements such as German Expressionism (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Max Beckmann) and Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning), and he has acquired a substantial collection of works by his German contemporaries, among them Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, and Gerhard Richter.
Richard Chang. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Richard Chang (United States) American-Chinese investment professional Richard Chang, the founder of the Domus Collection, is a trustee of the Royal Academy in London, a member of Tate’s International Council and its Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee, and a trustee of MoMA PS1 and the Whitney Museum in New York, where he is also co-founder and chair of the performance committee. Dividing time between New York and Beijing, he is considered key in bridging Western and Asian art; he often sponsors special projects, such as Beijing-based artist Huang Ran’s feature film The Administration of Glory in 2013 (which was selected for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014—see 31-Year-Old Artist Ran Huang Selected for Cannes’ Palmes d’Or), and Pipilotti Rist’s first exhibition in China, at the Times Museum in Guangzhou.
Kim Chang-il (Korea) Founder of the recently launched Arario Museum, Kim Chang-il is one of Korea’s top gallerists as well as collectors, and is also an artist. His collection began with an interest in contemporary and modern Korean artists, but, as reported by the Huffington Post, a visit to MOCA in Los Angeles in 1981 inspired him to expand his collection. His holdings now number around 3,700 pieces, and include work from Korean contemporaries as well as YBAs, members of the Leipzig School, and young artists from China, India, and Southeast Asia, as well as respected big-name artists from the West.
David Chau and Kelly Ying (China) Based in Shanghai, David Chau and his wife, Kelly Ying, acquired the bulk of their wealth from David’s fleet-management company, and estimate that they spend around $1.5 million annually on art acquisitions. Chau set up a $32-million art investment fund when he was 21, and is the financial backer of two galleries, Leo Xu’s and Simon Wang’s Antenna Space. He is also the co-founder, with Ying, of Shanghai’s newest art fair, Art021. Their personal collection is anchored by work by three young Chinese artists, Liu Wei, Xu Zhen, and Yang Fudong, as well as an extensive selection of video art.
Pierre Tm Chen. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s/ Andrew Loiterton.
Pierre T.M. Chen (Taiwan) Chen made his first purchase in 1976 while still a student—a wooden sculpture by Chinese artist Cheung Yee. It took him a year and a half to save up the funds to do so. Today, the computer engineer’s extensive collection features hundreds of paintings and sculptures by blue-chip artists including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Henry Moore, Les Lalanne, Antony Gormley, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Jeff Koons. He is currently most excited by Western contemporary art, and purchases rather emotionally: he is said to have bought an untitled Cy Twombly because it made him feel “calm” and a yellow Warhol Fright Wig because he found it “so fresh.”
Adrian Cheng. Photo: Courtesy of Larry’s List.
Adrian Cheng (China) One of the world’s youngest billionaires, Cheng is heir to a property-development fortune in Asia. He graduated from Harvard and has gone on to found the nonprofit K11 Art Foundation, which supports art villages in Wuhan and Guiyang, China; its collection focuses on international artists, such as Yoshitomo Nara and Olafur Eliasson, while Cheng’s own personal collection includes work by Chinese artists such as Zhang Enli. In 2012 Cheng was also invited to join Tate’s Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee.
Kemal Has Cingillioglu (United Kingdom) Son of Turkish financier Halit Cingillioglu, Kemal Has Cingillioglu serves as a member of the European advisory board at Christie’s. He made headlines this past year when he purchased Cy Twombly’s 1960s work Untitled (Rome) for $4.4 million at Christie’s.
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Venezuela and Dominican Republic) Phelps de Cisneros is one of the world’s most prominent collectors of Latin American art, and her trove contains some 2,000 works ranging across colonial, modern, and contemporary periods, along with ethnographic objects from the Americas. She sits on the board of MoMA, and London’s Royal Academy recently presented an exhibition of 90 works in geometric abstraction that were drawn from her holdings.
Steven Cohen. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Steven Cohen (United States) Billionaire former hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, who is reportedly worth some $11.1 billion, is said to spend 20 percent of his income on art, with a collection that famously includes a Pollock drip painting and Damien Hirst’s iconic shark piece, which he bought from Charles Saatchi for $8 million in 2004. In 2006, he offered to buy Picasso’s Le Rêve from Steve Wynn for $139 million, but Wynn accidentally put his elbow through the painting and the deal was off until last year, when Cohen finally purchased the painting, now repaired, for $155 million. He was also the secret buyer of the Alberto Giacometti sculpture Chariot in November, which he bought at Sotheby’s for a near-record $100,965,000.
Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz (United States) Carlos de la Cruz is the chairman of a $1 billion-per-year business empire that includes Coca-Cola bottling plants in Trinidad and Tobago and Puerto Rico. Along with his wife Rosa, he is known for staging state-of-the-art annual exhibitions that coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach. These were initially held in their private Miami residence, but are now staged at their eponymous three-story, 30,000-square-foot art space, which they opened in 2009. The couple is keen on acquiring works from across the wide range of contemporary American production, most recently purchasing pieces by Dan Colen and Nate Lowman.
*More Collectors To Watch:
Nicolas Berggruen Jill and Jay Bernstein Ernesto Bertarelli James Brett Jim Breyer Christian Bührle Monique and Max Burger Valentino D. Carlotti Edouard Carmignac Trudy and Paul Cejas
Dimitris Daskalopoulos (Greece) Beyond his vast collection of contemporary art, Greek food and beverage entrepreneur Daskalopoulos is a member of the board of trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Tate International Council, the Director’s Vision Council of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Leadership Council of New York’s New Museum. He is also a founding partner of the Whitechapel Gallery’s Future Fund. In 2014 he was honored by Independent Curators International (ICI) with the Leo Award, which celebrates a “visionary” approach to collecting. He is also a champion of the contemporary art scene in his home country, and recently founded a nonprofit, NEON, committed to bringing contemporary culture to everyone in Greece.
Zöe and Joel Dictrow. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Zöe andJoel Dictrow (United States) These long-time West Village residents, Zoe a former magazine advertising manager and Joel a former Citigroup executive, have lived in the same apartment for four decades, though they eventually purchased two neighboring apartments to accommodate their expanding art collection. They are known for their support of emerging artists, but their holdings include work by established producers like Gerhard Richter, Robert Gober, Cindy Sherman and Sarah Sze.
George Economou. Photo: Courtesy of Nicholas Hunt/ Patrick McMullan.
George Economou (Greece) The Greek shipping magnate has a predilection for paintings and drawings, particularly of the 20th-century German and Austrian persuasion, and he frequently purchases work by lesser-known artists, or minor works by big-name producers, from Picasso, Twombly and Magritte to Kees van Dongen. A prolific collector, he acquires between 150 to 200 works a year, and usually chooses to go through smaller auction houses and galleries based in Germany and Austria rather than Sotheby’s or Christie’s.
Alan Faena. Photo: Courtesy Patrick McMullan/ Patrick McMullan.
Alan Faena (Argentina) Argentina’s most successful hotelier and real estate developer, Faena is an avid collector of Latin American art. In December of 2015, he aims to debut his new exhibition space, a Rem Koolhaas–designed structure called the Faena Forum, opening in Miami.
Harald Falckenberg. Photo: via Wikipedia.
Harald Falckenberg (Germany) One of the world’s most respected art collectors, Falckenberg has received the Art Cologne Prize and the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award, and published numerous books on art. Known for his ability to stay ahead of the art market, he was among the first collectors to purchase works by now-major figures like Martin Kippenberger, Richard Prince, and Jonathan Meese, and his collection comprises over 2,000 pieces, shown in a 65,000-square-foot former factory building in Hamburg in collaboration with Deichtorhallen/Hamburg.
Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss.
Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss (United States) Real-estate developer Falcone and his wife Ellen Bruss live next door to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in a home designed for them by architect David Adjaye. In recent years they have become avid collectors of Mexican art, and their collection now includes works by Gonzalo Lebrija, Eduardo Sarabia, and Federico Solmi, as well as Denver artists Stephen Batura, David Zimmer, Adam Milner, Bill Stockman, and Mary Erhin.
Amy and Vernon Faulconer. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Amy and Vernon Faulconer (United States) Founded by oil and gas magnate Vernon Faulconer and his wife Amy, the Amy and Vernon Faulconer Collection contains painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation works made from 1945 to the present, with notable contributions by such artists as Cecily Brown, John Chamberlain, Francesco Clemente, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Bridget Riley, James Turell, and Kara Walker, among many others. Together with his friends and fellow Texan super-collectors the Rachofskys, the Falconers opened the Warehouse in 2012, in part to accommodate works that were too large for the Faulconer’s private home.
Howard Farber. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Howard and Patricia Farber (United States) The Farbers fell in love with the art of Cuba during a visit to the island in 2001, and have since created a stunning collection of some 200 pieces by artists including Belkis Ayón, Abel Barroso, Tania Bruguera, Los Carpinteros, Sandra Ramos, Duvier del Dago, Carlos Garaicoa, René Peña, and Rocío García.
Marilyn and Larry Fields. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Larry and Marilyn Fields (United States) Lawyer and former commodities trader Larry and his wife Marilyn, one of Chicago’s most prominent collecting couples, have amassed an array of some 500 objects from almost 300 living artists, 150 of which are installed in their private residence, and many of which have a political bent. The collection includes many pieces by African-American artists such as Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Mark Bradford, and Theaster Gates, whom they have been collecting in depth. Recent acquisitions include works by David Hammons, Jim Hodges, and Christopher Wool.
*More Collectors To Watch
Marie Chaix Michael and Eva Chow Frank Cohen Michael and Eileen Cohen Isabel and Agustín Coppel Anthony D’Offay Theo Danjuma Hélène and Michel David-Weill Antoine de Galbert Ralph DeLuca
Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman (United States) Fuhrman, co-managing partner of MSD Capital, studied art history and was recently listed by Business Insider among the most serious art collectors on Wall Street. He is a trustee of the MoMA, is a trustee of Tate Americas Foundation, is a board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and is founder of The FLAG Art Foundation in New York.
David and Danielle Ganek. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Danielle and David Ganek (United States) A former equity trader for SAC Capital and a trustee of the Guggenheim, Ganek and his wife, editor and novelist Danielle, have a sprawling art collection that includes work by Richard Prince, Diane Arbus, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, John Currin, and Mike Kelley. David bought his first work of art at the age of 17, and has since gone on to commission work from mega-hot contemporary artists such as Ed Ruscha, whom he hired to create a painting incorporating the word “Level” for the walls of his firm’s Greenwich headquarters in 2003.
Ingvild Goetz (Germany) Former gallerist Ingvild Goetz began to collect media art in the 1990s, and today she owns one of the largest private collections of video art and media works in the world. Her Goetz Collection, housed in a private museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron in Munich, is said to contain around 5,000 works of contemporary art—many of them by emerging artists and nearly half of them by women.
Ken Griffin. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Ken Griffin (United States) Chicago-based Griffin, who recently divorced his wife Anne Dias (a board member at the Museum of Modern Art, a trustee of the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum), has reportedly only ever sold one artwork from his collection. Head of the $20 billion investment firm Citadel, Griffin is extremely particular when it comes to acquisitions, and only buys masterpieces that he feels can hold their own alongside the few dozen pieces he already owns by Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Jasper Johns. (In 2006, he paid David Geffen $80 million for Jasper Johns’s 1959 painting False Start—a record price at the time for a living artist.)
Agnes GundPhoto: Owen Hoffmann/Patrick McMullan
Agnes Gund (United States) Beloved art patron Agnes Gund is practically New York’s philanthropist-in-chief; she once told the New York Times that she gives away “more money than I really have,” not only to art organizations but also to causes like sex trafficking and abortion rights. Her 2,000-work collection includes works by artists like Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Frank Stella, but she’s also known to collect female and black artists, including Lynda Benglis, Teresita Fernandez, and Kara Walker, and lesser-known artists like the Scottish Richard Wright, from whom she commissioned a mural on her dining room ceiling. Among her causes, too, is one that might groom the next generation of aspiring artists and collectors: Studio in a School, which she founded in the ’70s and which teaches art in under-resourced New York City schools.
Steven and Kathy Guttman (United States) Real-estate magnate Guttman’s collecting bug started when he would take his dog on walks in Washington, D.C., and check out the furniture in his neighbors’ houses—a practice which soon grew to include a penchant for buying everything from dressers, sofas, chairs, cabinets, and tables crafted by British and American folk artists to contemporary paintings and photographs. Today, he and his wife Kathy have a more than 500-piece collection of art including conceptual, LED, and wooden works by Andreas Eriksson, Jim Campbell, Analia Saban and Cheyney Thompson, among many others, stored among houses and storage spaces in Paris, New York and Maryland—including his $70-million, state-of-the-art storage facility in Long Island City, named “UOVO,” Italian for “egg,” in reference to the fragility of the space’s precious cargo.
Andrew and Christine Hall (United States) The British-born Hall, a former Citigroup trader and hedge fund manager who also dabbles in organic farming, and his wife, Christine, have a collection of postwar and contemporary art that includes works by Eric Fischl, A. R. Penck, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Franz West and Malcolm Morley. In 2012, they opened the Hall Art Foundation in Vermont, in exhibition partnership with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and they are working to organize a long-term installation of artworks by Anselm Kiefer from their collection. Most recently, the Halls have been busy converting a castle in Germany, the former home and studio of Georg Baselitz, into a museum that will open next year.
Lin Han (China) Although he has only been collecting for a few years, Han—who studied at a secondary school in Singapore before pursuing a degree in animation design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom —recently opened the M Woods Museum with his wife Wanwan Lei, in the middle of Beijing’s art district, to show off his personal collection of over 200 artworks. Lei studied arts administration at China’s Central Art Academy and Columbia University in New York; Han’s first art purchase was a Zeng Fanzhi painting in 2013, and he has recently purchased work by such artists as Tracey Emin, Kader Attia and Chen Fei.
Henk and Victoria de Heus-Zomer (Holland) Henk and Victoria de Heus-Zomer, who made their fortune in the cattle-food industry, began collecting art in 1989, when they moved into a new home and reportedly needed something “to fill the empty walls.” They have since anticipated many trends in the market—acquiring works by such artists as Zhang Xiaogang and Ai Weiwei long before the international art world took notice of them—and they have become avid collectors of other contemporary Chinese artists as well. Theirs is now one of the largest contemporary art collections in the Netherlands.
Grant Hill. Photo: Barry Gossag
Grant Hill (United States) Seven time NBA All-Star Grant Hill was first introduced to art by his father. For years he has been considered one of the world’s leading collectors of African American fine art, with a collection that includes work by Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Hughie Lee-Smith, John T. Biggers, Phoebe Beasely, Malcolm Brown, Edward Jackson, John Coleman and Arthello Beck, Jr. His collection was the source of a multi-city touring show “Something All Our Own,”which was seen in seven cities, including at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, his alma mater. Hill, who has amassed a major collection, remains an active collector and philanthropist.
Maja Hoffmann. Photo: Courtesy of Will Ragozzino/ Patrick McMullan.
Maja Hoffmann (Switzerland) Founder of the LUMA Foundation and daughter of Luc Hoffmann of the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceutical fortune, Hoffmann is a Tate trustee, and she sits on the boards of the Palais de Tokyo, New York’s New Museum and CCS Bard, to name just a few. In July of 2013, her Foundation was granted permission to transform a 20-acre former train station in Arles, France, into a new art campus, designed by Frank Gehry and slated for completion in 2018.
Erika Hoffmann-Koenige. Photo: Courtesy of the Hoffmann Collection.
Erika Hoffmann-Koenige (Germany) Collecting since the 1960s, Erika Hoffmann-Koenig moved to Berlin with her late husband Rolf, a property developer, shortly after German unification in 1990, and installed their collection of largely conceptual contemporary art in their private residence, which they set up in a former sewing machine factory. Occasionally open to the public, their international collection ranges across all mediums; it was founded with works from the Italian Arte Povera movement and the Zero group (their first purchase, in 1968, was a sculpture by the Greek artist Vlassilakis Takis), and also features a substantial collection of Soviet Constructivist works, as well as works by Blinky Palermo, John Bock, Lawrence Wiener, and Andy Warhol, among many others.
*More Collectors to Watch
Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian Beth Rudin DeWoody Leonardo DiCaprio Mandy and Cliff Einstein Eric Diefenbachand JK Brown David C. Driskell Mandy and Cliff Einstein Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg, Ginevra Elkann Tim and Gina Fairfax Dana Farouki
Michael and Susan Hort. Photo: courtesy of David Willems Photography.
Michael and Susan Hort (United States) One of New York’s most respected collecting couples (see Five Major Art Collectors Reveal Their Holiday Wish Lists)—with a reputation as bold patrons of young and emerging artists, some of whom do not even have gallery representation when the Horts begin buying—Susan and Michael Hort continue to install selections from their holdings of some 3,000 works between their four-floor Tribeca home and their rural New Jersey abode. For the past 13 years, they have opened their Tribeca space to a select crowd of VIPs and art aficionados during Armory Week (see Want a Peek Inside the Exclusive Hort Family Collection?); curated by Jamie Cohen Hort, their daughter-in-law (married to their son, Peter Hort, who together are a notable young collecting couple), the viewings feature works by artists ranging from the likes of Cindy Sherman, Thomas Houseago, and John Currin to practically unknown talents, and can bring up to 3,000 visitors per day. The Horts continue to champion the arts through their own personal collecting and through their Rema Hort Mann Foundation, a nonprofit they set up in honor of their late daughter.
Guillaume Houzé. Photo: Courtesy of Bertrand Rindoff/ Getty Images.
Guillaume Houzé (France) Heir to his family’s chain of Galeries Lafayette department stores, Guillaume Houzé has been presenting artwork in La Galerie des Galeries, a space within the flagship branch, since 2005, along with his grandmother. His own collection includes works by Cyprien Gaillard, Wade Guyton, Tatiana Trouvé, Ugo Rondinone and David Noonan, and he is planning to open a permanent art foundation in Paris’s Marais district in 2016.
Wang Jianlin (China) The president of the Dalian Wanda Group, one of China’s largest real-estate developers—with a reported fortune of some $18 billion—Jianlin is currently battling entrepreneur Jack Ma for the title of richest man in China. He recently purchased a Picasso painting, Claude and Paloma, for $28.2 million (see Are Chinese Collectors Driving Global Art Market Rebound?).
Dakis Joannou. Photo: Courtesy of Yiorgos Kaplanidis.
Dakis Joannou (Greece) Greek-Cypriot billionaire industrialist and founder of the DESTE Foundation of Contemporary Art in Athens (as well as its outpost on the island of Hydra), Joannou has been assembling a blue-chip collection of contemporary art since the mid-1980s. Although his enormous holdings cross genres, periods, and geographies, including Baroque figurines, Cypriot antiquities, couture, drawings, and modernist furniture, his more contemporary interests include the work of such artists as Andro Wekua, Seth Price, Tauba Auerbach, Haim Steinbach, William Kentridge, and Pawel Althamer, among others.
Alan Lau (China) A member of the Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee at Tate London and of the board at nonprofit art space Para Site in Hong Kong—and a fixture on the art-conference circuit—Lau is one of the most influential Asian art collectors active today. He started collecting under 10 years ago, and his vast collection of Asian and Western art includes names like Nam June Paik, Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Lee Kit, Tsang Kin-Wah, Kwan Sheung Chi, Chow Chun Fai, Tozer Pak, and Olafur Eliasson, among others. (Lau also made the cut for artnet News’ 2014 list of Most Innovative Art Collectors.)
Joseph Lau (China) With a fortune recently estimated by Forbes at $4.3 billion, Chinese real-estate investor Joseph Lau started collecting more than 30 years ago, and is celebrated for his collection of modern and contemporary art, especially for his Warhols. He is best known for having purchased a 1972 iconic portrait of Mao by Warhol for $17.3 million at Christie’s New York in 2006; and Paul Gauguin’s Te poipoi (Le matin) (1892), which he bought for $39.2 million at Sotheby’s in November 2007.
Raymond Learsy and Melva Bucksbaum. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy (United States) Washington, D.C.–born Bucksbaum—who originally wanted to be an artist—and her second husband, former commodities trader Raymond J. Learsy, are best known for collecting contemporary art, but their collection includes everything from Peter Paul Rubens to James Rosenquist. The couple recently purchased The Hunting Party by Rosa Loy and Neo Rauch, and they are always adding to their collection of works by Laurie Simmons, a shared favorite. Bucksbaum is the patron behind the Whitney Museum’s Bucksbaum Award, which gives a $100,000 grant and a Whitney solo show to one lucky winner in each Whitney Biennial (see Zoe Leonard Wins Whitney’s Bucksbaum Award With Her Giant Camera Obscura).
Agnes and Edward Lee (United Kingdom) A principal in the London-based real-estate portfolio Princeton Investments, which has an estimated worth of $96 million, Edward Lee and his wife are quiet but avid collectors who like to take risks. They tend to favor edgy contemporary work by international producers such as Wilhelm Sasnal and Jim Hodges.
Aaron and Barbara Levine. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Aaron and Barbara Levine (United States) “A lot of people think conceptual art is a bunch of baloney,” Barbara recently told the Wall Street Journal, confessing that her taste has always been for more minimal art, while her husband, Aaron, has a predilection for Abstract Expressionists and Social Realism. Barbara and Mr. Levine, a personal-injury lawyer, live among four floors of photographs, books, drawings, sculptures, videos of performances and other creations by the likes of Robert Barry, On Kawara, Christopher Williams, and Marcel Duchamp, of whom they own 25 works.
Adam Lindemann. Photo: patrickmcmullan.com
Adam Lindemann (United States) New York collector and entrepreneur Adam Lindemann, known for the sassy insider column he penned for the New York Observer, has said that his introduction to the art world came through a former girlfriend, Cornelia Guest, who was a close friend of Andy Warhol. He founded uptown gallery Venus over Manhattan (see Adam Lindemann’s Venus Over Manhattan To Open in Los Angeles) and his wife, Amalia Dayan, co-founder of Upper East Side gallery Luxembourg & Dayan, live in a house designed by David Adjaye.
Eugenio López (Mexico) Mexican fruit-juice heir López—a trustee and vice chair of MOCA in Los Angeles—founded the largest private museum in Latin America, the Museo Jumex, in 2013, as a place to house selections from his personal collection (see Museo Júmex Appoints Julieta González Chief Curator and Interim Director in Aftermath of Hermann Nitsch Fiasco). He began to collect 20 years ago, initially buying historical pieces of 1960s art, then concentrating on Mexican and international work of his own generation, the ’90s. Designed by David Chipperfield, the museum houses some 2,000 works of López’s 2,700-piece collection, including many by American and European masters ranging from Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg to Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
Susan and Leonard Feinstein Nicoletta Fiorucci Friedrich Christian (“Mick”) Flick Josée and Marc Gensollen Alan and Jenny Gibbs Noam Gottesman Florence and Daniel Guerlain Paul Harris Barbara and Axel Haubrok Alan Howard
MANILA, Philippines – Century Properties Group Inc. managing director Robbie Antonio spoke before the well-attended “Forbes Asia Forum: The Next Tycoons – A Generation Emerges” on June 11 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong.
Antonio participated as a speaker at the forum and joined the panel, ‘Making your mark’. The panel focused on how next generation tycoons traditionally take the reins of their family companies by being responsible stewards of their past generation’s accomplishments. Yet their success is oftentimes measured by their bold and ingenuous strategies to launch into new directions and expand their family businesses through fresh avenues of growth.
As Century’s head for brand collaborations, Antonio conceived and orchestrated the company’s real estate project tie-ups with global brands including Donald Trump, Armani, yoo inspired by Starck (of John Hitchcox and Philippe Starck), Paris Hilton, Missoni, Daniel Libeskind, Versace, Armani Casa and Forbes Media.
At the forum where Antonio was the lone Filipino speaker among Asia’s top new-generation business leaders, the young entrepreneur addressed questions such as how these leaders can apply the lessons learned from the old guard, develop their own passions and execute their own visions. On the panel, Antonio shared his experiences in growing the company that was founded by his father, Century Properties chairman Jose E.B. Antonio.
Robbie Antonio said that he started getting involved in the family business as early as 12 years old.
“Dinner conversations were about the family business. I was led to construction sites by my father with my three other siblings, who are also very much involved (now) in executing the vision that my father has,” he shared at the forum.
Antonio had his “baptism of fire” when he worked in the highly-competitive real estate business in New York. There, under the Antonio Development, he worked on acquiring an assemblage of property to develop the Centurion, a luxury apartment building on 56th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
“New York City is probably the most complex real estate market in the world. We saw a site that we liked in the Plaza district, which was a sought after piece of land. Proving to the seller that it is a financeable deal and trying to outperform these very well entrenched developers was a challenging task,” he said.
Antonio knew he had to differentiate with other major towers even amongst the best location. He secured I.M. Pei, with Pei Partnership Architects, to design the Centurion. Pei’s first ground up condominium project in the world was completed in 2009.
He added, “I had to very entrepreneurial, learn the ropes of a new culture, meet the players, and compete against them.”
“The reason I did that (founding a development company in New York) was two-fold: I wanted to stay in the development business because that’s what I knew. I also wanted to do something entrepreneurial and really prove to myself that I could do this and try to have my own ideas; inject my own creativity,” he added.
The US financial crisis hit during this time. Antonio said he knew right then, that it was a good time to go back to Manila.
He told the forum audience: “The Philippines is the fastest-growing economy in Southeast Asia. So I wanted to go back home and lead a professional management team and help my siblings and my father, and try to create an impact in the country.”
Exploring fresh avenues
Partnering with respected names in the real estate, architecture, and design fields is a strategy that the third Antonio scion and Century pursued to gain product differentiation from other established real estate companies. He believes that partnering with the experts will elevate living experiences for Century’s residential projects, and at the same time highlight the ability of Filipinos to execute global ambitions.
“Five years ago, I went to the board and earmarked our major differentiating points, predominantly to bring some important brands to development,” he shared. “I wanted to give that lifestyle that these luxury companies embody and that the end users are eager to have, and bring the West to the Far East.”
He used his connections in the fashion, luxury, design and real estate world to do just that. One of the earlier partnerships that Century announced in 2010 was with Versace Home, for the amenity interior design of Milano Residences. The following year, Antonio got the nod of style icon and entrepreneur Paris Hilton to design the Paris Beach Club, the key amenity of Azure Urban Resort Residences.
More major brands followed. Century signed a licensing deal with the Trump organization for the residential building Trump Tower at Century City. In previous interviews the young Antonio related that he first met with Ivanka Trump, and worked for two years through site validation visits in Manila and business plan discussions before he finally closed the deal with Don Jr., Eric and Donald Trump.
Interior design partnerships were also forged with MissoniHome for Acqua Livingstone Residences, and with the iconic French designer Philippe Starck and British real estate entrepreneur John Hitchcox of yoo inspired by Starck for the Acqua Iguazu residences.
Century’s more recent collaborations are with Armani/Casa and the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind for the 60-storey residential-office building Century Spire; and with Forbes Media LLC, with which Robbie proposed the idea to build the first Forbes-branded building in the world—in Manila. Hence, the Forbes Media Tower at Century City, Makati was announced in late 2013.
Respecting the old guard
While Robbie underlined the importance of introducing new ideas in the forum, he likewise stressed the value of respecting the legacy and wisdom of his father, who started Century Properties in 1986 with just a handful of employees.
“I wake up every day reminding myself that I did not start this company, so I am very respectful of that… I am an employee. But I also want to innovate. I want to pioneer. I want game-changing ideas,” he said.
Antonio believes that it helps to have a very strong family support system.
“We see each other every day. Their presence and mentorship (are) there,” he said, referring to his father and three brothers who also hold key positions in the company.
Antonio believes that acknowledging the wisdom of one’s elders is vital in being in the family business.
“I think no matter how smart you think you are, there is one thing that you can’t expedite—and that is wisdom. So when you are not sure, go ask someone. This could be your father, a mentor or someone who has gone through that experience before. I inherited a company that has gone through four cycles. We have seen the booms and busts. You learn from those scars. If you are bruised, that is how you become a better person and a better manager. Thankfully, we learned a lot from that, and those experiences can be bestowed from one generation to another,” Antonio concluded.
A powerhouse team, made up of the world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind and the luxury interior design studio Armani/Casa, embark on an ambitious venture with Century Properties.
Visit the showroom at Pacific Star Building
The light of the afternoon sun revealed an unobstructed view of the Makati skyline from the fifth floor of the Century City Mall. The event hall brimmed with anticipation as the ambassador Joey Antonio took to the stage. Launching Century Properties Group, Inc.’s (CPGI) latest project, Antonio shared an invaluable message from the recent World Economic Forum held in Manila: “The Philippines has been identified as the Tiger of Asia.”
“Here we are,” continued the founder of CPGI, “Celebrating the groundbreaking of an iconic building that will be forming the skyline in the Philippines.” The Century Spire will stand in 2018, a functional sculpture from Studio Daniel Libeskind – the architectural maven behind the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Ground Zero in New York, among others. The 60-storey tower takes on a distinct design, blossoming at the top of the building like a flower, crystalising residential and office spaces in geometric shapes. The venture marks the last of eight towers by CPGI in Makati city.
Daniel Libeskind, Giorgio Armani, Robbie Antonio
The architect Daniel Libeskind himself was in Manila to share in this milestone, even expressing his observation of the city as an example of the global competition of growth. “What makes a great city is what I saw today,” he said, “I went to shake hands with young architects from the schools in the Philippines. You could see their bright eyes, their ambition. The fact that the world is opening up to create something more than just buildings.”
A one-bedroom model displaying Armani/Dada kitchen amenities and Armani/Casa furniture and design
The interiors of Century Spire bring the unprecedented collaboration of another renowned firm, Armani/Casa. Under the artistic direction of Giorgio Armani, Century Spire will be the studio’s first project in the Philippines. The common areas like the grand lobby, library, swimming pool, and fitness areas are among the sections of the tower that Armani/Casa will design. The 500 residential units also have upgrade options to integrate furnished luxury amenities such as the Armani/Dada kitchen line and the Armani/Roca bathroom line.
For inquiries, visit the fully-furnished and designed show flats located at 4/F Pacific Star Building, Sen. Gil Puyat cor. Makati Avenue, Makati City. Appointment is required.
Some of the world’s most iconic names in architecture and design are turning their attention to the Philippines. Giorgio Armani, the houses of Versace and Missoni, Philippe Starck and John Hitchcox, and Daniel Libeskind are all doing projects in the country.
This is thanks in part to the efforts of Robbie Antonio, managing director and head of international collaborations of Century Properties Group—a real estate firm that is best known for its upscale projects like Essensa East Forbes in Taguig.
Robbie Antonio pursued partnerships with these iconic designers and brands for Century Properties.
The partnerships with Versace Home and MissoniHome have resulted in the two iconic design house’s home brands to interior-design Century’s Milano Residences and Acqua Livingstone, respectively. The outcome has been nothing less than fabulous—with each of the fashion house’s design aesthetics clearly imprinted in the interiors of the buildings.
Yoo inspired by Starck, the company founded by French designer Philippe Starck and British property developer John Hitchcox, meanwhile, is designing the Acqua Iguazu building. The exclusive sky deck, aptly called the Cielo, is something to behold with its Wonder Bar/Library, Dining Area, Movie Room, Pool and Lobby done in signature Starck style: sensually-engaging and intellectually-stimulating.
Last year, Robbie Antonio added another feather to the Century cap by successfully sealing a partnership with no less than two of the biggest names in international design—Giorgio Armani through his home and interior design brand Armani/Casa and award-winning architectural designer Daniel Libeskind.
Giorgio Armani needs no introduction as he has, for decades, been one of the leading names in fashion design and his Armani/Casa extends his classy, sophisticated aesthetic into home and living products. Libeskind, meanwhile, is best known for his one-of-a-kind architectural designs of several museums in Europe and North America and residential and commercial projects in different parts of the globe. He, too, is best known for winning the reconstruction design competition of the World Trade Center in New York.
In bringing these big names to the Philippines, Robbie Antonio and Century Properties are further enhancing the country’s image as the next luxury residential destination in Southeast Asia.
Daniel Libeskind is a master architect. His works are visually arresting, full of life and interesting geometrical dynamics. From the amazing Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany to the elegant and bendy Reflections at Keppel Bay in Singapore, Libeskind has crafted striking, unforgettable buildings that define an age.
Giorgio Armani is a master designer whose specialty is distinctive fashion and home interiors. Armani/Casa, the interior design branch of Armani, has created numerous memorable interiors all over the world, from the Maçka Residences in Istanbul to the World Towers in Mumbai.
Both designers come together on one of South East Asia’s newest luxury residential towers: Century Spire in Makati, Philippines. And behind this branding masterstroke is Robbie Antonio, managing director of Century Properties.
“Daniel (Libeskind) and Giorgio (Armani) are legends,” Antonio says. “They interpret space with a distinct and precise vision.”
With Libeskind, Antonio was excited for an architectural statement – something iconic that would put the city firmly on the map. He got it in Libeskind’s unique interpretation of a spire.
“When most people think of a spire, they think of a needle-shaped roof,” says Antonio. “Daniel Libeskind is the opposite. He comes up with his own interpretation. That’s why Century Spire is what it is. It’s something different.”
True enough, rather than taper off into a thin pinnacle Century Spire does the opposite and blossoms out like a flower.
“The design is so bold and sleek we wanted to partner with an interior design firm that would do justice to the amazing external design. Armani/Casa perfectly fit the bill.”
Spire’s interior designs look right at home in the building. The pool, juice bar and other amenities exhibit warm, smooth colors that exude a streamlined and classy vibe.
“It’s a wonderful marriage of form, features, and function,” says Antonio. “We’re really excited to bring the Libeskind and Armani/Casa experience to Metro Manila for people – both local and foreign – to behold and enjoy.”
Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements. —Elizabeth II
This is a condensed version of the speech I gave at the “Baby and Family Expo Philippines 2013,†which opened on Dec. 6 at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia (MOA) Complex, Pasay City. It was the organizer and Philippine STAR reader David Abrenilla, the chief executive officer of Mediacom Solutions Inc., who suggested that my speech discuss “Mastering the Harmony of Family Wealth.â€
A few years ago at the Makati residence of billionaire Endika Aboitiz, SGV Group founder Washington SyCip told me that we ethnic Chinese are talented and natural entrepreneurs, but in the past our forebears failed to build enduring family businesses that lasted more than three generations.
SyCip told me that in the Philippines, only the ethnic Spanish Zobel family of Ayala Group and the Aboitiz family of the Aboitiz Group have succeeded. Now, many families are planning or preparing transitions in their business groups, such as the Henry Sy, Gokongwei, Andrew and Mercedes Gotianun, Manny Villar, David Consunji, Joey Antonio and other families.
According to the Family Firm Institute, a research group based in Boston, only 30 percent of family-owned businesses are still operating by the second generation, only 10 percent lasts to the third generation, and three percent survives to the fourth generation.
In the US, more than 80 percent of all businesses are family-owned, but only 30 percent get successfully passed on to the second generation and statistics show that only 13 percent are successfully transferred to the third generation.
In recent years, I have had the opportunity to assist in resolving two bitter family feuds, each involving business clans with billion-peso assets. I assisted the first family by inviting Davao businessman James Gaisano to be the mediator, and he succeeded after one year.
The second family feud I helped untangle was that of my paternal great-grandfather’s first cousin, which had already lasted for half a century. I stumbled into this family feud because I had been doing research on our family’s two-century entrepreneurial history here in the Philippines.
Here are some of my suggestions to build multi-generational family wealth, based on my research and studies of business families past and present:
•Do not spoil children or heirs. The Waterloo or ultimate failure of not a few “rags-to-riches†entrepreneurs and professionals, even celebrities, was their having insulated their children or heirs from the harsh realities and complexities of life by spoiling them. Spoiling kids will weaken them.
Do you notice that in families and throughout world history, so many of the successful entrepreneurs, professionals and good leaders are those who have undergone crises or struggled with disadvantages?
• Teach kids the value of money. Parents and family elders should early on communicate with children your values about money, why and how to save it, how to make it grow, and how to spend it wisely. Make kids understand that it is not easy to earn money, so money shouldn’t be wasted.
• Educate and train children and heirswell. Invest in the best education and also hands-on training for children and other heirs. Make kids work first in other corporations as part of their training. Giving your kids a good education is more important to future family wealth than just giving kids money.
• Be fair to everyone. Life is not fair; not all children or grandchildren have equal talents, natural intelligence, drive or interest in the family business, but under the law all should have equal shares of the family wealth.
Whether as kids or adults, children, nephews, and grandchildren should be treated fairly to prevent emotional baggage and animosities that might erupt into future family squabbles. Those who work should be given more, out of fairness, but the reasons should be explained clearly to other relatives.
• Promote tradition or a culture of meritocracy. Choose the leader and other managers of the family business based on qualifications, abilities and also commitment to the family business, not based on seniority or even gender. When not enough family members are available, hire non-family professionals. Have performance reviews for all, relatives or not.
• Write down or institutionalize rules for the family business. It is ideal to write down and institutionalize the basic rules and core values that will guide your family in terms of the business or wealth management. For example, set a rule on the role of in-laws, which some families favor and others do not.
• Prepare for clear succession early. A lot of family businesses have patriarchs who do not plan for the future and die unexpectedly, thus creating chaos, bitter internal quarrels or results in weak leadership in the next generation. Have estate and succession planning done early on and clearly, even family trusts.
• There should be only one boss and he or she should have authority. This rule of having only one boss is true whether for family businesses or non-family businesses. Based on my research, many patriarchs just appoint a son to be the boss of the family business but didn’t give the chosen heir the adequate additional stocks or shares to back up his authority, so in the long-term future the other kids or kin can gang up on the boss and take him out.
This was the case with my late father, who inherited the mantle of leadership over the family sawmill business from my grandfather, who died young. However, dad only had an equal percentage of shares as his one eldest brother, seven younger half-brothers and half-sisters, plus cousins who three decades later ganged up to oust him after an acrimonious legal battle, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.
• Separate the personal from the business. Whether in finances, vehicles, and resources, make it clear that personal needs or expenses should come from family members’ salaries or incomes and should not be sourced in an unlimited manner from the family business. This is one way to avoid abuses, misunderstandings, waste and dissipation of the family business resources.
• Plan the long-term future of family investments. There should be long-term and strategic planning on how to preserve family wealth, which is different from the continuity of the family business. Top investment bankers and lawyers should be consulted; all options here and abroad should be studied thoroughly.
