At Future Green Studio, viewing the city through diverse lenses is critical to our active engagement and the enrichment of our design sensibilities. Research into the historical layers of our city and the overlooked art references which we walk past and live alongside, provide glimpses into a NYC’s cultural past and clues to how artists have historically interacted with our city. Earlier this spring, the FGS design team had the privilege of taking a guided ‘Art Walk

http://www.artwalk.city/

’ tour through SoHo, a New York neighborhood steeped in the complex layers of land use, occupation, art and architecture - many times hiding in plain sight.

The SoHo Art Walk showcased incredible art works on the street such as the carved sidewalks by sculptor Ken ‘Rock’ Hiratsuka, unassuming “Subway Map Floating” by Francoise Schein, magnificent cast iron buildings that were former warehouse spaces later occupied by artists such as Donald Judd and Gordon Matta-Clark and gallery visits to incredible installations by land artist Walter de Maria. A dive into SoHo’s historical narrative reveals the reoccupation of an industrial wasteland by artists in the 60s, 70s and 80s that catalyzed SoHo to be a hub of our contemporary counterculture. Relics of its past life however, are still ever-present, revealed through its material, stylistic and spatial repertoire.