Avery Library is pleased to announce that we have digitized almost 3,000 slides selected by James Wines from the SITE architectural records and James Wines papers which were donated in 2020. These slides are now available through JSTOR.
Wines co-founded S.I.T.E. (Sculpture In The Environment) in 1970 with his colleague Alison Sky. The archival collection is composed primarily of documents produced by James Wines for SITE, including project files, sketches, and marketing materials. It also contains a rich collection of photographs and slides documenting the firm’s projects along with audience interactions with those projects, as evidenced by the images for Best Products, Inc. and the 1986 World’s Fair in Vancouver.
SITE projects blur the line between installation art and architecture. They are often tongue in cheek as in this design for the SWATCH store in Nantucket with mannequin legs suspended from the ceiling (below). But the firm also explored serious topics like climate change and often incorporated greenery into the fabric of the buildings. The digitized slides represent a wide range of projects from multiple decades of S.I.T.E’s work and demonstrate the breadth of their artistic and architectural achievements.
