Portfolio at NYU

Posted 04.16.03
Headspace

By Elizabeth Varnell

A box of white fluorescent light illuminates a lone coffee table and occasional table in the center of a stark concrete floor. An eerie green glow surrounds DB-1 and DB-2, Dakota Jackson's latest creations made of starfire glass fused with yellow laminate and wrapped in translucent PVC skin. Innovation in creeping into Jackson's traditional repertoire. As interior design is increasingly visible in urban scapes, Jackson is creating a new environment that merges his designs with the streets of a downtown Manhattan neighborhood.

Dakota Jackson creates innovation through layers. His designs fuse creative disciplines from architecture to experimental dance to French structuralist thought. Dumb Box, the designer's new experimental SoHo space—both real and virtual—is devoted to the interplay between materials and methodology.

Dumb Box, perched between a garage and an old warehouse on Mercer between Grand and Broome, is neither a retail space, nor a gallery, nor an instillation space. It's a destination, a convergence of ideas. The concept evolved from an ongoing dialogue between Jackson and architect Peter Eisenman about how spaces could be made indifferent. The architectural firm ShoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli—known for its work on the Museum of Sex—who designed Dumb Box, describe the structure as a system of logic, a methodology, or a flexible organism that responds to external conditions. A fitting space for Jackson, a philosophy major born into a family of magicians.
The American designer envisions a constant crossover between design, fashion, music, architecture, dance, and fine art. "We will invite groups to set up forums and symposiums and other artistic endeavors. I see this space as almost a nonprofit arm of the company, a space unique in this country, similar to what Vitra is doing in Europe," Jackson says. While Dumb Box shows his new furniture collections and design ideas, it may also serve as a gallery, performance area, and conference space, simultaneously.

The new SoHo space brings Jackson back to a neighborhood he frequented since the 1970s, when he worked with choreographers Laura Dean and Trisha Brown, and artist Rebecca Horn. In those days cheap rent attracted artists to the area's oversized lofts. Huge steel sculptures and dense layered paintings were products of the old industrial spaces just blocks north of Canal Street. "We would live, perform, work, gather, and exhibit in the industrial spaces where we created art," Jackson says. He hopes to instill a similar sense of plasticity in Dumb Box.

The space showcases Jackson's most avant garde designs while LCD monitors link his manufacturing facility in Long Island City, the company's website, the uptown showroom, and assorted internet design sites. "This connection between designs, production sites, and showrooms is about dissolving boundaries," says Jackson. "The Dumb Box interactive monitors show the collaboration throughout the stages of production. It's a link between the factory and the street." One can view stages of the renowned Library Chair's production (involving high-tech computer numerically controlled robotic production), learn how factory workers honed their skills, and access design archives, while simultaneously sitting in the finished product.

But Dumb Box is much more than a commercial showroom. It is an environment for the exchange of ideas. The space recalls the Los Angeles Herman Miller showroom designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1949. The Eames multifunctional space facilitated the fusion of creativity and commerce. It was a gallery and showroom for furniture, yet it was first and foremost a space for artists to gather.

To facilitate an open, public environment, Jackson disregards interior constructs in Dumb Box. The space—initially open 24 hours daily, until city regulations forced Dumb Box to adjust it's operating hours—boasts few innate characteristics and is designed to morph in relation to its content at any given moment. Exterior doors are being replaced with a glass front to foreground the interaction between the building and the street. Glass-covered dioramas at eye-level along the walls reflect the "fifth wall," a 11x20 foot screen with continuously looping layers of video projections, created by Jackson. "I'm interested in the impact of the architecture on the street," Jackson says. "The film projections are personal expressions of my interests—they show the arbitrariness of conversation, the manipulation of surfaces and layers." A fusion actualized in the DB-1 and DB-2 laminated glass tables.

Dumb Box film projections feature everything from Rem Koolhaas designs to snippets of Godard films to Jackson's personal photographs. But design is always at the core. "The idea," Jackson says, "is to develop a critical forum for design, linking tradition with innovation." Over 25 years ago, Dakota Jackson established his trademark: the blending of simple materials to create innovative textures. Now he's blurring the ideas and theories behind design concepts to create what he calls, "nondefined space."