What’s Happening: The decommissioned power station, which earned its nickname after squatters threw underground raves there in the early aughts, was recently overhauled as the expansive new digs for Powerhouse Arts.

The Download: It’s fitting that New York City, often referred to as Gotham, would have its very own Batcave. Situated at the edge of Brooklyn’s perennially polluted Gowanus Canal is a red-brick industrial building once home to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company’s central power station. The six-story structure was decommissioned in the 1950s when steam power became obsolete. It was completely abandoned within a couple decades, causing its roof to give way and plants to sprout in its interior. Then the squatters arrived, blanketing its walls with graffiti and throwing all-night raves that earned the site its infamous nickname.

Seeing potential in the derelict building, philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz purchased it in 2012 and has since invested more than $180 million through his foundations to steward its transformation into a community-focused contemporary arts hub. He formed the Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation—since renamed Powerhouse Arts—and enlisted PBDW Architects and Pritzker Prize–winning firm Herzog & de Meuron to overhaul its cavernous interior. They quickly got to work decontaminating the property from toxins leached from the canal, which the EPA designated a Superfund site.

After a decade-long revamp, Powerhouse Arts officially opened this past week. The venue will offer state-of-the-art fabrication facilities for ceramic, print, and public art, as well as space for events and education. Eric Shiner, the venue’s newly appointed president and former director of Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, developed the offerings in dialogue with local artists who spoke to the struggles of maintaining a studio in an increasingly costly city. Many have already decamped to the Hudson Valley to find spacious digs at cheaper rates. Powerhouse will “amplify those voices,” he says, likening it to Warhol’s Silver Factory, “a place where creative energy, innovation, and joy intermingled to create a vibrant arts ecosystem.”

Keeping the wheels turning won’t come without challenges. Rechnitz stepped away from the board last year after the building was completed to pursue an “organic farm project” upstate. Powerhouse hopes to be fully self-sufficient in five years, but will rely on a mix of fees for studio spaces, venue rentals, and philanthropy to stay afloat. The first two might come easily—the printer Luther Davis temporarily rented studio space there in 2015 after his shop, which collaborates with artists like Glenn Ligon and Amy Sherald on more than 300 projects per year, was forced out of his Brooklyn warehouse. He described the space as “a glorious gift,” even as construction was underway.

Programming will likewise be a gift to the community. To celebrate the opening, Powerhouse commissioned a six-hour performance by artist Miles Greenberg, who will create a bright orange lagoon where participants will battle one another like video game avatars. Its public art fabrication team assisted with producing Charles Gaines’ giant ship artwork on Governors Island. An exhibition of final projects by MFA students at Brooklyn College will grace the lobby until June 21. “As fabrication shops disappear from the city,” architect Jacques Herzog says, “the building will serve local artists and the community for generations.”

In Their Own Words: “Once artists see what we can make here, how we train and mentor the next generation of artists and makers, and how we welcome our neighbors to be a part of the organization’s evolution,” Shiner says, “I hope the answer to this question of ‘why the arts needs Powerhouse Arts’ will become even more apparent.”

Surface Says: Powerhouse is in great company with Worthless Studios as two vital new hubs affording Brooklyn artists space to realize their ideas.

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“As soon as you walk into our Melrose Avenue bungalow, you feel the carefree sophistication of whimsical Europe mixed with the theater and pizazz of West Hollywood,” says Marissa Hermer. Having cut her teeth under Ian Schrager across various hospitality concepts in London and New York, the co-owner and operator of Olivetta packed her bags for L.A., where she and her husband have been based for the past six years.

Situated on WeHo’s Restaurant Row, the rich interiors were imagined by Tom Parker of Fettle Design, outfitting each convivial dining space with jewel-toned leathers and velvets, and bright, airy spaces like the sunroom, which evokes a Spanish courtyard. The dimly lit barroom is popular with the nightcap crowd thanks to sultry touches—a mohair wall, for instance—and master mixologist Melina Meza’s innovative concoctions like the Dirty Martini with bleu cheese-infused dry vermouth, or a vibrant tequila-based drink composed of unusual ingredients ranging from rainbow carrot to jasmine honey.

Chef Laurie Hudson’s coastal European menu captures the spirit of being on holiday while highlighting locally sourced ingredients. “Our culinary ethos is letting the ingredient shine,” Hermer says. “It’s not what we can add to a dish, it’s what can we take away? It’s that simple and that arduous.” For example, the grilled branzino, a simple dish with lemon and olive oil, is reinvented by zesting and boiling the lemon three times to perfume the dish with the aroma.

This past spring, Lisa Perry debuted the private East Hampton sanctuary for women artists, showing works by a standout slate of talents including Mitsuko Asakura, Anna Karlin, Mary Little, Nina Cho, and Natalie Munk. On May 27, Onna House will open for its sophomore season with “Pearls, Pills, and Protests,” a group show featuring artists Jerelyn Hanrahan, Kelly Tapìa-Chuning, Lulu Varona, and Michele Pred.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and its implications for women’s health and safety, each artist finds a distinct way to reclaim archetypes of womanhood, from Hanrahan’s colossal pearl necklace to Varona’s embroidery, Pred’s Mifepristone and Misoprostol sculpture, and Tapìa-Chuning’s hand-felted “truisms,” which reverberate with irony and absurdity.

Last week, New York’s design community gathered at Beverly’s to celebrate the launch of Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s new Coral Collection with Parisian brand La Romaine Editions. An array of the colorful, amphora-like vases—each hand-blown at a heritage furnace in Biot, France, out of bubble glass—were artfully displayed throughout the boutique in a vivid installation imagined by Sunfish NYC. Guests sipped Yola Mezcal and Ghia out of Jacobsen-designed glass cups, shopped the vases, and spilled out onto the sidewalks.

When was it? May 19

Where was it? Beverly’s, New York

Who was there? Pauline Vincent, Alex Tieghi-Walker, Peter B. Staples, Natalie Weinberger, Ellen Van Dusen, Danny Kaplan, Oliver Haslegrave, Dana Arbib, Tammer Hijazi, and more.

It’s easy (appropriate, even) to feel disdain for the design fair circuit: too many fairs, too bloated in budget, too meager in individuality. To escape our cynicism, we accepted an invitation to get lost during New York’s biggest art fair weekend. Of course, Puerto Escondido, the idyllic surfing community and home of Bosco Sodi’s Casa Wabi art foundation on Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast, is hardly some hinterland. But it’s also home to the Mexico Design Fair launched in 2021 by architect Carlos Torre Hütt and sited in two locations that couldn’t be further from the usual corporate event spaces, including those, like Zona Maco, which have led to Mexico City’s increasing prominence in the design community.

Located in historic Richmond, Virginia, McKinnon & Harris is the leading manufacturer of high-performance aluminum outdoor furniture for estates, gardens, and yachts. The brand’s master craftspeople practice old-world metalworking techniques paired with cutting-edge technology.

Surface Says: McKinnon & Harris crafts furniture to endure, outperform, and outlast all others. Each piece can remain outdoors year-round, even in the most aggressive environments.

Presentedby, Mexico City’s latest sneaker store, is putting architecture first.

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