John DeFazio, AIA
Architect
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John DeFazio, AIA
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Client: Tourneau Stores In 1997, I started working in collaboration with Ira Sanchick of Levi, Sanchick Associates in New York, on a series of stores for the Tourneau watch company. The first project was for their flagship store, the Tourneau Time Machine, at 57th Street and Madison Ave, New York. At that time I was still weaning myself away from hand drawing and venturing into PowerCADD. (Levy Sanchick utilizes "that other cadd" program). Since then I've become more confident in my PowerCADD & WildTool skills and L&S have had no problems with my translated documents. |
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Tourneau Time Machine Tourneau's flagship store -- Tourneau Time Machine -- is located in the base of the former IBM building in New York. An open truss stretches across the dark facade carrying a series of clocks representing the time zones of great cities of the world. Executed in stainless steel and translucent glass, this "Machine Age" tracery juxtaposes the dark elegance of the IBM building facade like a silver and pearl necklace of a urbane women in black evening dress. A huge clock hovering over the store's main entrance indicates New York time. Its day and date dials give it the character and visual scale of a over scaled watch; its sweep second hand implying the rush of the city. |
| Superimposed against the abstract disc of the New York clock outside, looming over the entry, is a working period "skeleton church clock". Layered like an diametric illustrative model , this axonometricly "exploded" clock is the central metaphor of the interior. The curved, counter-curve geometry intrinsic watchworks is used to both unite a difficulty shaped space and to further fragment it, to create a sense of indeterminacy and infinite expansion. |
| The Cubo-Futurist murals, the inspired by G. Murphy's 1927 painting, "Watch", extends this geometry beyond the confines of real space into an illusionary one. |
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