Columbia University students collaborate on stillspotting nyc

The Guggenheim Museum in New York has collaborated with students from Columbia University on a new exhibition called stillspotting nyc: manhattan.

Students from the spatial information design lab at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation are creating a working blueprint of the specific ’stillspotting’ areas around the city that pinpoints stress flow, population density, agitation, noise, and calm.

Dense traffic, construction and commerce, the struggle for mental and physical space, and the anxious need for constant communication - be it in person or more often through our personal gadgets - can be tough on the senses.

Stillspotting nyc is a two-year multi-disciplinary project that combines urban experiences, public education programs, and means of escape, takes the Guggenheim’s architecture and urban studies programming into New York’s five boroughs.

Additionally, composer Arvo Pärt and architecture firm Snøhetta have collaborated on a tour of Lower Manhattan that explores the special relationship between space and silence. 

Every few months ’stillspots’ are identified, created, or transformed by architects, artists, designers, composers, and philosophers into public tours, events, and installations.

Students in the MFA program in the photography, video, and related media department at the School of Visual Arts are also creating video studies of the visual, aural, and sociological ecology of the urban landscape.

This is the project’s second edition – for the first one Pedro Reyes created Sanatorium in Brooklyn.

Stillspotting nyc: manhattan is on from 8 to 11 and 15 to 18 September 2011 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, US.