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 $125 - $175 per square foot ($1,350 -
$1,850 per square meter)
