STORES
Wood, MDF, melamine, extruded aluminum, steel, macroform
plastic, extruded polystyrene, hardware
Over the past four years, Things That Fall has opened nine
separate retail sites, mostly on the European continent. Our
stores are modular and therefore capable of being transported
and set up almost anywhere. This allows the products on display
in any one store to be uniquely sensitive to their respective
communities.
BRUGES, BELGIUM
Our 13-square-meter store in Bruges is located in the Werfplein,
a working class neighborhood along the northern arc of the
city's central district. The store specializes in seasonal
accessories and apparel. According to Donelle Woolford, the
store's grand opening presentation of classic, hooded yellow raincoats
was an unqualified success. "People are responding very positively
to them," said Woolford. "Because if it's raining—which it
often is in Belgium—you can get a raincoat. And if it's not
raining, you're so happy it's not raining that the sight of
something so far from your mind as a bright rubber raincoat
is really quite pleasing. So it's a win/win situation." The
Bruges store is made of steel and Macroform plastic,
a German product known for its structural integrity, shimmering
translucency and light weight.
VILLEURBANNE, FRANCE
In Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon noted for its museums and
restaurants, TTF has opened a 9-square-meter Do-It-Yourself
Annex. The DIY Annex is devoted exclusively to the DIY coffin,
a trendy design object that is the result of subtle alterations
to standard IKEA components. The DIY Annex affords customers
a hands-on opportunity to test drive the DIY coffin, either
by assembling the product from scratch or by reclining in
a recently completed model. Says Joe Scanlan, "The French
are notoriously self-sufficient and introspective, so the
DIY Annex appeals to them greatly. They seem to enjoy the
self-determination that the Annex allows, and yet they also
seem to appreciate the existential dilemma that comes with
the opportunity to assemble your own coffin." The Villeurbanne
store is made of construction grade timber, plywood and high-traffic industrial carpeting.
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
Ikon Gallery in beautiful Birmingham, England, is the gracious
home to our 150-square-meter Pay Dirt Processing Plant. The
plant is dedicated to the reproduction of Pay Dirt, a manmade
potting soil that is comprised of derelict materials collected
in Birmingham and then merged, refined and repackaged in eye-catching
6-liter bags. Having entered the plant as a chaotic pile
of postconsumer data, Pay Dirt exits the plant as two beautifully
conceived brands: Ikon Earth for general purpose gardening,
and Black Country Rock for gardeners who are also fans of
David Bowie. (Before becoming Bowie's lead guitarist and penning "Black Country Rock," Mick Ronson was a resident of Hull and the town's municipal gardener.) The Birmingham region is known as "the black country" due to its industrial history and the distinct air quality that has resulted from it.
As such, the Pay Dirt Processing Plant's reproduction of waste
material is similar to the role that art museums play in the
production of contemporary culture. As Steve Canal Jones stated
in an interview with BBC 5, "There's nothing cynical about
a museum being a site for making luxury-grade potting soil.
That's pretty much what museums do: take stuff from the world,
refine it and repackage it, and then sell it back to us for
our own benefit. Pay Dirt is no different. In fact, it offers
a bonus—even if you don't want to accept it as art, you can
still grow dahlias or tomatoes in it." The Pay Dirt Processing
Plant is constructed of MDF, enamel paint, sheet metal and
hardware cloth.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
In Vienna, TTF facilitates a 14.5-square-meter modernist learning
center, or "Miesian Gymnasium," in the heart of the city's
museum campus. The learning center is just steps away from
the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Museum
of Modern Art, and the Wiener Secession. In keeping with Vienna's
affection for pious architects—from Rudolph Schindler and
Adolph Loos to Richard Neutra and Hans Hollein —the Miesian
Gymnasium offers for consideration the elegant formal principles
of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the German architect who turned
Loos' local complaints into a global aesthetic.
Mies's ideology—which is visible in everything from prefab
housing to war memorials to "box stores"—has had a lasting
impact on our culture. The question getting a workout in the
Miesian Gymnasium, however, is whether Mies van der Rohe's
relevance today is based on his formal principles or on the
ruthless economy of means those principles have inspired.
For all his exquisite proportions, material fetishes, technical
innovations and attention to detail, it could be argued that
Miesian austerity survives today not because it is beautiful
but because it is profitable.
The Miesian Gymnasium adheres to this argument. However much
Mies might be spinning in his grave due to all the buildings
being designed according to the size of a sheet of plywood
multiplied in every direction, we cannot deny that his rejection
of ornament and his commitment to rectilinearity has been
transformed by the likes of IKEA and Home Depot into a rationale
for making everything as similar and interchangeable as possible.
Not because that approach to design is aesthetically appealing,
nor because it is a technical marvel, but because it is the
cheapest way to make as many things as possible.
In this spirit, the Vienna learning center is built entirely
out of interchangeable, modular parts. Once designed, the
Miesian Gymnasium can be built and shipped the world over,
with no variation or loss of quality. Of course, there can
be no gain in quality, either. That is the price of standardization,
however efficient it may be. The Miesian Gymnasium is made
from MDF, melamine, extruded aluminum, polyester and screws.
PARIS, FRANCE
Last Spring, TTF opened an 11-square meter "Buy American"
boutique in the city's 3rd arrondissement that specializes
in redefining what it means to be an American. Not the kind
of American we have come to loathe in the past few years,
but the thoughtful, doubtful, introspective kind of American
who has been temporarily excluded from public discourse.
Commentators are lately fond of saying that America has become
a Hobbesian state in reference to British philosopher Thomas
Hobbes who, in his signature work, Leviathan, proposed that
war is the natural condition of man. In some respects this
observation is true; two decades of corporate and governmental
animosity has created an atmosphere of perpetual contestation
among the citizenry of the United States: against the world,
against each other, against the driver in the next lane. Being
competitive at all times toward every person you encounter
has become the preferred mode of behavior. If you are not
preemptively trying to get ahead of others, then they are
probably getting ahead of you.
In such an aggressive state of mind, knowledge becomes a hindrance.
No person can claim to be truly knowledgeable without admitting
that their knowledge has limits, is subject to doubt, and
is therefore vulnerable to attack. The more sophisticated
the knowledge, the more vulnerable it is. Knowledge is weakness.
On the other hand, any person who claims to be faithful suffers
neither limits nor doubts. Their willful ignorance in the
face of overwhelming opinion or scientific fact only serves
to strengthen their faith. The more blind the faith, the more
powerful it is. Faith is power.
Thus, in the current social environment, traits that should
be the basis of human knowledge—curiosity, skepticism, reason,
humility—are portrayed as signs of weakness because they
demonstrate a lack of faith. To be reasonable or skeptical
is to be an unbeliever, and not believing is the work of traitors
and evildoers. Consequently, the United States has devolved
into a Darwinian society whose only salvation is faith in
God, a paradox that would be funny were it not so hostile
and disengenuous.
By contrast, the Buy American boutique features goods that
represent everything that America is not. The boutique is
an act of appropriation, an attempt to leverage hatred for
this moment in history by transforming it into love for dissent.
Yes! It's reassuring to know there are still people who refuse
to comply. Yes! It's comforting to know there are people who
are congenitally unable to be bellicose and profitable and
dull. Yes! It's encouraging to know there are products being
made that are poetic and thoughtful and underwhelming. Yes!
They're here and they need our financial support. Yes! Buy
American. Yes.
PARIS, FRANCE
Due to popular demand, our second store in Paris is a bricks
and mortar version of our website.
Since September 11, 2001, it has become ever more apparent
that "things that fall" present unrivaled opportunities for
emotional manipulation, economic profit, and political gain.
Whether world leaders, stocks prices, Martha Stewart, or the
World Trade Center, each thing that falls marks a downward
motion that inspires widespread speculation about its eventual
rise. It is a kind of blood lust. Not for tragic events in
themselves, as Andy Warhol's Disaster Paintings proposed,
but for the profits to be made after a tragedy has taken place.
This reflex has become so natural to American culture that
its media, its citizens, its politicians and its stockbrokers
all desire things that fall solely for the gains that are
certain to follow. Even Robert Smithson, the great pure saint
of American Art, understood that re-organizing entropy into
containers for display (and sale) was not only a way to make
his thinking legible to the average person, but also to profit
from it.
The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called this drive
"creative destruction." According to his theory, capitalism
cannot advance without perpetually destroying itself and then
profiting from its own resurrection. In practice, a simple
demonstration of creative destruction is "short selling,"
the stock market tactic in which a stock is sold with the
intent of driving its price down, all the while being fairly
confident that the stock is valuable and will eventually rise
again. When the stock hits what is believed to be its short-term
bottom, it is repurchased at the lower price so as to better
profit from its long-term rise. Simply put, short selling
forces the stock down only to profit from it going up again.
This is America in a nutshell. This is why we love snowflakes,
teardrops, flower petals, dirt, silence, brightness, architecture,
the World Trade Center, dictators, love, words, packages,
angels, handles, sleep, celebrities, priests, coffins, airplanes,
politicians, stocks, factories, ashes, skies, gazes, axes...
I had a job in the great north woods,
working as a cook
for a spell,
but I never did like it all that much
And one
day the axe just fell.
Marcel Broodthaers, who was about as un-American a person
as I can think of, once famously wondered if he, too, could
sell something and succeed in life. His revelation, like ours,
can be attributed to the observation that categories, when
pushed to the extreme, collapse on themselves and reveal the
folly of their knowledge, their order, their reliability.
We hope to do for things that fall what Broodthaers did for museums, eagles, atlases. Death! Destruction! Tragedy!
Entropy! Decay! They're all here. And they're all for sale. Things
That Fall.
Stores built to suit worldwide
Prices range from $125ë$175 per square foot ($1,350 - $1,850
per square meter)
