A research and design studio. It applies architectural thinking to domains beyond.

1. Selected Projects
—Spring 2019
OCD
OFFICE FOR CULTURE
AND DESIGN

2. Office for Culture and Design is a
research and design studio. It applies
architectural thinking to domains beyond.
Our work focuses on fertilizing architecture
and design with intelligence from a wide
variety of disciplines, it manifests as
cultural and commercial spatial identities,
new possibilities of content-production,
stage and scenography for fashion, film,
music and live performances, curation and
production of exhibitions and installations,
creative and art direction, publishing
and new formulations in the relationship
between culture and the designed space.
NYC, CPH

3. Projects
A prelude to The Shed
A robust machine for
experimental exhibitions
12th Gwangju Art Biennale
Acne Studios West Hollywood
Thomas Schulte Galerie
CMYK
Disobedient Bodies
Greta Grossman at ArkDes
MOT International
Attila at The Metropolitan Opera
Alina Szapocznikow at
The Hepworth Wakefield
A Collection of Irregular Vases
A Collection of Endless Chairs
4
7
12
19
22
24
26
30
33
38
42
48
50

4. 4
A steel-topped structure that can accommodate
a diverse array of programming, from lectures,
screenings, dance performances to rap concerts.
Our interest was in how to bring architecture
closer to human scale and how to mobilize
human capacity. We wanted to create something
that played off The Shed’s mission, without
being something of a cheesy architectural
facsimile. At some point we realized the
answer was right inside the question. We
tried to create a space for The Shed, so why
don’t we just look at a shed as a solution?.
The Prelude pavilion expands: its plywood walls
are in fact 38 individual seating modules that
can be rolled away to accommodate diverse
programming needs throughout the day.
Each is upholstered in quilted black leather
and features a profile inspired directly by
Mies van der Rohe’s classic Barcelona chairs.
We wanted something that was comfortable
to contrast with this very hard industrial
thing, something inviting and pleasant.
A prelude to
The Shed
New York
—2018

7. 7
Made primarily from steel, this multi-level
structure is described by the museum as “a
robust machine for fast-changing, experimental
exhibitions.”
A new exhibition space within one of its lofty
galleries, featuring wire mesh surfaces, a huge
round window and a ramp winding round its
exterior – a space better suited to presenting
small-scale exhibitions, a small gallery space for
faster, cheaper, more experimental exhibitions
and curatorial projects.
While its muted tones of white and grey blend in
with its surroundings, OCD decided to exposed
utilitarian structure making a bold statement. The
structure features a visible framework of struc-
tural I-beams and a corrugated steel roof, which
is raised up to allow light to enter from above.
The ramp begins by the gallery entrance and
wraps the entire exterior. With a balustrade made
from simple textile mesh, it passes across the
centre of the round window and finishes at a
balcony that stretches along the full length of the
structure, giving visitors the opportunity to view
exhibits inside the gallery from all angles.
A robust machine
for experimental
exhibitions
ArkDes, Stockholm
—2018

12. 12
Reflecting the 12th Gwangju Biennale’s theme
of Imagined Borders, the Gwangju Biennale
Foundation invited OCD to design a pavilion
to host and launch two new international
programs to facilitate exchange and look at the
history of the Biennale from new perspectives
and explore the founding principles of the
Biennale; democracy, human rights and
peace through “fluid architecture.”
The 12th Gwangju Biennale, for the first time,
hosted a series of Pavilion Projects beginning
with three leading international art institutions
to connect the Gwangju region to a wider
arts community: The Gwangju Civic Center,
Mugaksa Temple in Seo-gu and the Leekangha
Art Museum in Yanglim-dong, Nam-gu.
12th Gwangju
Biennale: A Forum
for International Art
Exchange
Gwangju,
South Korea
—2018

19. 19
An Acne Studios store on 8920 Melrose
Avenue in West Hollywood that is all light,
space, art and design.
The pavilion style single store building has a two
wall facade almost fully in glass, allowing the city
to see inside the space, as if an open plan gallery.
The space was designed uniquely for the Melrose
Avenue location just as the rest of the Acne Stu-
dios stores, which all have a different character.
At the centre of the store is a specially commis-
sioned large-scale sculpture by artist Daniel
Silver. Abstract shapes of stern, blackened
aluminum create the framework for Silver’s fabric
cut outs of double-faced wool cashmere, which
hang draped over the structure.
The idea stems from simple constructions, such
as improvised shelters, but OCD together with
Silver have moved further, combining his own
sculptural aesthetic applied to cut fabric, with a
more mechanical style. One is able to enter the
installation, as it also functions as fitting rooms.
Acne Studios
West Hollywood
Flagship
Los Angeles
—2018

22. 22
Since 2006 Galerie Thomas Schulte has been
seated in the nineteenth-century Tuteur House
in Berlin-Mitte. The landmark tripartite display
window of the gallery’s nine-meter-high Cor-
ner Space was added to the building in 1913 by
Hermann Muthesius, a famous early pioneer of
German architectural modernism and founder of
the Deutscher Werkbund.
An interior renovation project that is at its archi-
tecture core a platform for pioneering interna-
tional artists in Berlin’s emerging
art scene.
Over the years, Galerie Thomas Schulte has
exhibited with such cutting-edge artists as Bas
Jan Ader, Richard Artschwager, Alighiero e Boetti,
Daniel Buren, Chuck Close, Helmut Federle, Mi-
chael Heizer, Rebecca Horn, Magdalena Jetelová,
Johannes Kahrs, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounel-
lis, Sol LeWitt, Mark Lombardi, Roxy Paine, Pipi-
lotti Rist, and Robert Smithson.
Thomas Schulte
Galerie
Berlin
—2017

24. 24
We are continually involved in questions
of how simplicity can be extracted from
complexity and international discourses on
art and the wider world of exhibitions.
After an invitation by Kunsthaus Bregenz in
Bregenz, Austria, we decided to addresses
the question of the fundamental conditions of
artistic production. We used the CMYK color
model —the technical basis for modern color
printing, as our point of departure for KUB
Billboards. The abbreviation CMYK stands
for the color components cyan, magenta,
yellow, and key, the black component for
color depth, from which depending on the
percentages, any color can be represented.
We created a series of billboards from zero
and one hundred percent for each of the four
basic components of CMYK. At zero percent
each of the CMYK components result in the
color white, whilst one hundred percent of
each produces the colors blue, red, and yellow
respectively. As the sum of C, M and K without
Y the last billboard shows a saturated black.
CMYK, simplicity
extracted from
complexity
Kunsthaus Bregenz,
Austria
—2017

26. 26
JW Anderson at The Hepworth Wakefield is a
major exhibition curated by Jonathan Anderson.
The exhibition brings together a diverse range
of figurative sculpture by artists including
Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti,
Barbara Hepworth, Sarah Lucas, Henry Moore
and Magali Reus and places them in direct
dialogue with iconic fashion pieces by designers
such as Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rei
Kawakubo, Helmut Lang and Issey Miyake.
Working closely with Jonathan Anderson and
Andrew Bonacina, OCD were responsible for the
spatial design alongside 6a architects, with the
aim of create a completely integrated exhibition.
The approach is precise, placing full focus on both
the mastery of each work and also their shared
relationships. Intimacy between information
and reader is created while keeping the works
on display open for interpretation and impact.
Disobedient Bodies:
JW Anderson
curates The
HepworthWakefield
Wakefield, England
—2017

30. 30
To give the deserved and renewed importance
to the work of Greta Grossman the concept
of the exhibition design was built upon
one main idea: Grand Perspectives. We
translated this idea with the use of the
beautiful full space at Arkitekturmuséet as
a grand room in a castle or dancing ball.
The exhibition was built with the use of different
materials, colors and expressions, the displayed
objects are rather dark (dark wood and stones).
As a contrast, to make the work of Grossman
more visible, we have worked consistent with
two materials and color throughout: white
lacquered sheets of aluminum, paper and white
color, referencing the work of an architect does
derives from the paper. The set design could
be seen as an un-drawn drawing. All the metal
surfaces are treated as they were thin sheets
of paper. The desk tops are proportioned from
the sizes of the A4-system. The supporting
structure to the table tops are made like paper
card houses. The exhibition is made to travel
and can easily be flat packed and reinstalled.
A major
retrospective on
the work of
Greta Grossman
ArkDes, Stockholm
—2016

33. 33
A renovated Georgian house that became an
independent space and curatorial project in itself,
Mot International Brussels was a spatial project
in which fantasy in terms of architecture was
really important. The result was an exhibition
space that was simultaneously an art exhibition
and conventional property vending to host
works from artists such as Jeremy Deller, Liam
Gillick, Martin Creed, Martin Kippenberger,
Simon Patterson, Sarah Lucas, Matthew
Collings, Matthew Higgs, and Mark Wallinger.
MOT International:
A gallery beyond
the white box
Louise Avenue,
Brussels

38. 38
The Metropolitan Opera 2012's production
of Verdi's Attila describes the moment in
history where an old world, an antique world
is collapsing and something new is rising out
of the rubble of the old . . . Verdi's vision . . .
basically, [is] based on two images. On one
hand is the rubble, is the destruction, is the
destroyed world, that OCD took very literally,
even more literally than Verdi probably did,
and [the other] is nature, represented by wild
nature, very strong powerful nature . . . a forest
that was both real, scary, symbolic, magical
mystical . . . this romantic moment that you
find some times in art, in paintings, where the
wood is used as a wild energy that at the same
time is something which promises hope.
Attila: The
Collapsing of the
Old and Rising
Of the New
The Metropolitan
Opera, New York
—2012

42. 42
This exhibition highlighted how the artist’s
work developed from classically figurative
sculptures to her later ‘awkward objects’,
which are politically charged and overlaid
with Surrealist and Pop Art influences.
The exhibition featured more than 100
works created between 1956 and 1972
including drawings, photography and
sculpture, incorporating Szapocznikow’s
characteristic use of cast body parts,
many of which she transformed into
everyday objects like lamps or ashtrays.
Szapocznikow radically re-conceptualized
sculpture, as an imprint not only of memory
but also of her own body, related to her
traumatic experiences during the Second
World War as a Polish Jew, imprisoned for
over 10 months in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen
and Theresienstadt concentration camps.
Alina Szapocznikow:
Human Landscapes,
a re-conceptualised
retrospective
The Hepworth
Wakefield, England
—2017

48. 48
A limited collection of irregular glass objects.
These exclusive pieces were produced using a
method where minimalistic clear heavy glass
vases have been melted into new and individually
unique shapes.
A Collection of
Irregular Vases
New York
—2016

50. 50
The outcome of a workshop conducted by OCD
at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for which a set of
design "dogmas" became the guiding to produce
a collection of chairs using a single roll of steel
as the only material for its construction.
A Collection of
Endless Chairs
New York
—2017

52. NYC
45 Broadway #2 Brooklyn
CPH
Frederiksborgvej 4 1th 2400
Tel 1 917 719 1592
officeforcultureanddesign.com
OCD