Jerome Haferd & K Brandt Knapp

Jerome W Haferd’s and K Brandt Knapp’s project, Curtain, was selected by a jury of architects and artists through an open Call for Proposals that invited emerging architects and designers to speculate on contemporary interpretations of the folly. Curtain is composed of a series of frames of slender wood posts, arranged in a 25-square grid defining a volume of space 25 feet wide on each side, with a trangulated roof canopy that varies in height from 8–13 feet. The vertical and horizontal planes that make up the volume are draped with a “curtain” of white plastic chain. Fixed in some places, hanging free in others, the white chain creates “rooms” that viewers can occupy, offering changing spatial experiences within the outline defined by the wooden framework. The title of the piece alludes to the material quality of the chain as it reacts to breezes off the East River as well as a word play on the architectural “curtain wall”, a non-structural facade that hangs off the frame of a building.