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Mark Foster Gage

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American architect
Mark Foster Gage
Born (1973-11-22) November 22, 1973 (age 51)
Omaha, Nebraska
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Notre Dame (1997), Yale University (2001)
OccupationArchitect
PartnerJarron Magallanes
PracticeMark Foster Gage Architects
BuildingsPenkridge Hall, Shropshire England
ProjectsTower on West 57th Street, New York City
DesignOutfit for Lady Gaga
Websitemfga.com

Mark Foster Gage (born November 22, 1973) is an American designer, theorist, writer and founder of Mark Foster Gage Architects in New York City. He is a tenured Associate Professor and former Assistant Dean at the Yale University School of Architecture where he has been on the faculty since 2001. His academic expertise at Yale is in the field of aesthetic philosophy. He has also been a design contributor for CNN. In 2022 he created the Mark Foster Gage Foundation, a private charitable organization that funds efforts to improve the built environment through supporting innovative architectural research, education, publications, and projects.  

Background and education

Gage holds a B.Arch. with a second major in Art History from the University of Notre Dame and a M.Arch. from Yale University. Gage spent his years as a student surrounded by some of the most notable architects of the twentieth-first century. He was a protegee of Robert A. M. Stern and studio assistant to Frank Gehry.

Career

After completing his graduate studies at Yale University in 2001, Mark Foster Gage joined the university’s faculty where he currently holds positions as a tenured Associate Professor of Architecture and an Assistant Dean in the Yale School of Architecture. There he teaches graduate-level design courses and seminars on subjects including aesthetics, innovation and the process and implications of architectural decay.

In 2002 Mark Foster Gage founded Gage / Clemenceau Architects with his former Notre Dame roommate, Marc Clemenceau Bailly. In 2012 he reorganized the firm as Mark Foster Gage Architects - a practice dedicated to creating buildings that blend new technologies with novel design practices which place emphasis on aesthetics. Gage was described as "the Most Prolific Architect of Buildings That Don't Exist" in the title for a Surface Magazine article on his work and career, a light-hearted jab the architect takes no offense to. Gage often speaks to the fact that the vast majority of his and his firm's designs go unconstructed, treating the unbuilt as proof that the twenty-first century field of architecture must reexamine its core values. In a 2012 press interview with Designers & Books, conducted to promote his then recently published book Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts for Architecture and Design, Gage refers to himself as being "old-fashioned" due to his beliefs on the relationship between architectural form and symbolic meaning. Gage makes a thinly veiled critique of ‘starchitect’ Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City when asserting in the same interview that "some of our most celebrated architectural projects are celebrated for reasons that have nothing to do with the building itself—rather, they represent a bird or some other conceptual idea. My book is aimed at challenging the dominant practice of only justifying our work conceptually, in abstract terms."

Gage has been referred to by "The Spectator" magazine (London), as "the most decoratively radical architect at work today." His most recognized projects include his 2015 proposal for 41 West 57th Street, a 102-story skyscraper that a developer requested, which drew wide attention; however, the developer never built the structure. His firms diverse output also include an outfit for Lady Gaga, logo designs for the Biden/Harris Presidential Campaign (2020), and the Elanan Capella and Treyam Equinox resorts in the Middle East.

Gage actualizes his thoughts about the need to challenge abstraction as the pinnacle of good design through a practice he refers to as kitbashing. Kitbashing typically refers to model train enthusiasts who combine parts from multiple model train kits to create their own unique train; Gage, however, employs the term to refer to the process of combining basic and unrelated figures into cohesive adornments for his buildings. Gage's designs are created by compiling 2-D and 3-D images which he and his team find through simple Google searches which he thinks of as a kind of recycling process: giving the images the team kind's new life in his designs.

Gage proposed and designed the original Times Square Valentine's Day heart in 2009; a design competition for the Times Square heart has since become an annual event.

Gage's work has been exhibited in numerous museums internationally including the MoMA, The Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The National Gallery of Art in Japan, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Frac Centre-Val de Loire in France, The Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City, and Venice Biennale, Beijing Biennale, and Prague Biennale. His work has been featured in most major architectural publications as well as Vogue, Newsweek, Fast Company, Wired, USA Today, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Surface, and a recent twenty-five page feature in A+U. Television coverage of his work has aired on PBS, Fox, and MTV, and he was recently the subject of a documentary segment on the Travel Channel China's program 'Go as Far as You Can' which focuses on international innovators in creative fields.

Gage also writes about architecture and design in both academic and popular formats- including books, magazines, and journal articles.

Projects and proposals

Proposal for 41 West 57th St, New York City, New York (2015)

Also referred to as the Khaleesi Tower, 41 West 57th St is the most famous of Gage's designs. If completed the tower would stand at an imposing 1,492 feet tall, housing ninety-one residential units across 102 stories. Retail stores, a two-story ballroom, and a restaurant would inhabit a sky lounge located on the sixty-fourth floor. Visitors would not be confined to the indoors, however, as four cantilevered balconies would allow individuals to emerge from the sixty-fourth floor lounge and overlook Central Park.

The location of the proposal is especially interesting with regard to its exterior due to the development of the surrounding area. The Khaleesi Tower, if constructed, would be one of many luxury residential towers built in Midtown Manhattan, referred to as Billionaire's Row. While the press described the Khaleesi Tower as a "sumptuous crust of carved and gilded forms," an "acid fever dream," and "what might happen if Michelangelo was brought back to life and commissioned to design a skyscraper," the surrounding towers, like Rafael Vinoly’s 432 Park Avenue and Roger Duffy’s 252 East 57th Street have been skewered for their simple designs. Gage himself explained that his design for the Khaleesi Tower was an attempt "to try to find a cure for the bland and featureless modern glass-box structures that you find in nearly all cities worldwide."

Nicola Formichetti Store, New York City, New York (2011)

Foster Gage has designed a series of retail stores for fashion designer Nicola Formichetti in New York City, Hong Kong, and Beijing, which showcased selected outfits from Lady Gaga. This series of projects led to his later collaboration with Formichetti on both an outfit for Lady Gaga and a line of cosmetic products for MAC Cosmetics which were sold internationally.

The Nicola Formichetti Store, a pop-up shop constructed for the 2011 New York Fashion Week, utilizes "hundreds of robotically carved mirrored facets" to create a space to display many of the fashion pieces Nicola Formichetti designed for singer Lady Gaga.

Books

  • On the Appearance of the World: A Future for Aesthetics in Architecture. University of Minnesota Press, 2024.
  • Speaking of Architecture. Interviews about Practice, Discourse, and What Comes Next. Oro Press, 2022.
  • Mark Foster Gage: Architecture in High Resolution (monograph). Oro Press, 2022.
  • Mark Foster Gage: Projects and Provocations (monograph). Rizzoli Press, 2018
  • Designing Social Equality: Architecture, Aesthetics, and the Perception of Democracy. Routledge, 2018
  • Aesthetics Equals Politics: New Discourses Across Art, Architecture and Philosophy. MIT Press, 2019
  • Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts for Architecture and Design. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011
  • Composites, Surfaces and Software: High Performance Architecture, with Greg Lynn. Yale School of Architecture, 2010

References

  1. "Mark Foster Gage - A Traditional Reflection On The Architecture Of The Future". 4 September 2018.
  2. "Mark Foster Gage". www.architectmagazine.com. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
  3. "Mark Foster Gage designs elaborate skyscraper for New York". Dezeen. 14 December 2015.
  4. "Mark Foster Gage". Yale faculty bio. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  5. Gage, Mark Foster (2020-05-19). "Can Gothic architecture radically change our skylines?". CNN. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  6. Gage, Mark Foster (2020-11-16). "How robots could save one of the world's most unusual cathedrals". CNN. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  7. Foundation, Mark Foster Gage. "Mark Foster Gage Foundation". Mark Foster Gage Foundation. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  8. "ABOUT". MFGA 080219. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
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  10. "Gage / Clemenceau Architects". Architizer. 2010-11-16. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  11. "Bailly & Bailly | Seattle Architecture Firm". www.baillyandbailly.com. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
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  13. "Mark Foster Gage is the Most Prolific Architect of Buildings That Don't Exist". SURFACE. 2019-12-13. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  14. Architecture that Challenges your Concept of Reality | Mark Foster Gage | TEDxMidAtlantic, retrieved 2021-04-08
  15. Mark Foster Gage. "Gothic architecture: Can the 12th-century style radically change how we build today?". CNN. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  16. "Author Q&A with Mark Foster Gage: Aesthetic Theory". Designers & Books. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  17. Meades, Jonathan (2019-04-25). "What next for Notre Dame?". The Spectator. Retrieved 2020-07-01.
  18. Tucker, Emma (14 December 2015). "Mark Foster Gage Proposes". de zeen. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  19. Mafi, Nick (14 December 2015). "New York City's Latest Proposed Skyscraper Is Not What You Would Expect". Architectural Digest. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  20. "Imagine If This Ornate 102-Story Tower Rose On 57th Street". CurbedNY. 15 December 2015. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  21. "Helsinki Guggenheim Museum". MFGA 080219. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  22. Lee, Jennifer (10 February 2009). "The Pulsing Heart of Times Square". New York Times. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  23. Johnson, Sara (13 February 2014). "6 Years of Times Square Valentines". Architect. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  24. "MoMA PS1". MFGA 080219.
  25. "Figuration in Contemporary Design". The Art Institute of Chicago.
  26. "Impossible Architecture | 2020 | Upcoming | Exhibitions | NMAO：The National Museum of Art, Osaka". Archived from the original on 2019-08-13. Retrieved 2019-08-13.
  27. Holt, Emily. "Nicola Formichetti's Pop-Up Shop". Vogue.
  28. "Beyond Glass and Steel". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 2019-08-14. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  29. Swanson, Carl (December 28, 2017). "9 Top Architects Share Their Dream Projects to Improve (or Save) New York City". Intelligencer.
  30. "a+u 2017:05 - Emerging Architects in USA | Architecture and Urbanism (a+u)". a+u Architecture and Urbanism Magazine.
  31. "有多远走多远2016-19_旅游网视". tc.hnntv.cn.
  32. Tanaka, Yukari (January 29, 2019). "Impossible Architecture: Another History of Architecture". The Japan Times.
  33. "WRITINGS". MFGA 080219.
  34. Gage, Mark Foster (2017). "Speculation vs. Indifference". Log (40): 121–135. JSTOR 26323878.
  35. "W 57th Street Tower". MFGA 080219. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  36. "Mark Foster Gage's "Khaleesi" Skyscraper Isn't Quite as Shallow as It Seems". Metropolis. 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  37. staff/ben-yakas (2015-12-12). "Photos: "The Khaleesi" Is The Acid Fever Dream Skyscraper Proposal NYC Deserves". Gothamist. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  38. "Michelangelo-on-a-Skyscraper: Mark Foster Gage's proposal for Manhattan tower". www.tfod.in. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  39. Mark Foster Gage. "Gothic architecture: Can the 12th-century style radically change how we build today?". CNN. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  40. "Lady Gaga Stylist Nicola Formichetti on His Pop-Up Shop - Fall Preview 2011 -- New York Magazine - Nymag". New York Magazine.
  41. UK, Harper's BAZAAR (August 25, 2011). "First look at Gaga's stylist, Nicola Formichetti's pop-up shop". Harper's BAZAAR.
  42. "Nicola Formichetti Concept Store at Lane Crawford Hong Kong". Architizer. August 30, 2012.
  43. Capon, Laura (February 28, 2018). "MAC is releasing a panda-themed makeup collection". Cosmopolitan.
  44. Holt, Emily. "Nicola Formichetti's Pop-Up Shop". Vogue. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
  45. "Nicola Formichetti NYC". MFGA 080219. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
  46. Gage, Mark Foster (2024). On the appearance of the world: a future for aesthetics in architecture. Forerunners: Ideas first. Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-5179-1728-9.
  47. Gage, Mark (December 13, 2023). Speaking of Archtiecture (1 ed.). New York: Oro Editions. pp. all. ISBN 978-1957183183.
  48. Gage, Mark Foster; Harman, Graham (2022). Mark Foster Gage: architecture in high resolution (First ed.). Novato, CA: ORO Editions. ISBN 978-1-954081-49-9.
  49. Gage, Mark Foster; Stern, Robert A. M.; Eisenman, Peter (2018). Mark Foster Gage: projects and provocations. New York Paris London Milan: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-6209-2.
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