SHED

Alexander Brodsky occupies the territory between art and architecture, heightening the meaning and broadening the spectrum of atmospheres through which a built piece of work can apprehend the mysteries of the human condition. His ability has lain in maintaining the integrity of his visions—from engravings to installations and architecture itself—allowing all of them to become a great quarry from which we can extract quality for our built environment. His projects are built using ordinary, even waste, material: the Rotunda was built with discarded doors; the Nameless Structure with discarded windows; the 95 Degrees
Restaurant with old timber; and the Cloud Café with plastic bags. His value proposal, though, goes well beyond being “green” or responsible with the environment. The power of the spark he ignites is directly proportional to the distance of the “almost nothingness” of the material condition and the “almost everythingness” of the resulting meaning. Fragile, close, intimate, and at the same time strong and evocative.
One could consider Brodsky’s work as the built version of one of the greatest contributions of Russian literature to humanity: the capacity to penetrate and make visible the human soul.