Harries Heder

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Description

Mags Harries and Lajos Héder formed Harries/Héder Collaborative in Cambridge, MA in 1990 and have worked together on over 25 major public commissions since then. We came to this collaboration from the different worlds of art and architecture. Mags brought her experience as a sculptor, teacher, and previous work creating public art. Lajos, besides being an artist, was trained as an architect and has worked on community projects, urban design, site planning, architecture, and construction. Our focus, however, is the same: to activate public space through art. For each project we collaborate fully in the development of our designs and ideas, drawing on our separate skills and areas of expertise. We create public places that have on-going practical use as well as strong metaphoric significance. We focus on water, energy, transportation and other physical and performance elements that connect people and communities. Our work has been recognized for many local and national awards. We attribute a large part of this success to partnership with community members, engineers, landscape architects, architects, and other artists. Mags Harries’ public art projects have received national recognition and have won many awards. She observes the small things that, like DNA, reveal all that is important to know about a place. She uses surprise and sometimes humor to energize public places and communities. Her early projects Asaroton and Glove Cycle have become icons of the Boston area. Mags frequently designs her work with landscape materials and responds to environmental issues. She has an increasing interest in water and city scale elements of infrastructure, pathways and connections. Many of her temporary projects involve community participation and social action, including: Winding Down the Charles, where the passers by helped to physically wind the length of the Charles River into a ball, Speed of Light, which she organized with her students to create a twenty-mile bicycle ride to bring attention to the planned new transportation ‘Urban Ring’ around Boston and One Legged Table , an artwork which catalyses dialogue on climate change. Mags teaches courses on sculpture, installation, and public art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She is chair of the Cambridge Public Art Commission and is on the Board of First Night Boston. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo shows at national and international institutions. Download Mags Resume Lajos Héder has spent his career designing and building public places for active community use. He believes that art derives from the specific place where it happens and from common interests in sunlight, water, sex, food, friendship, and stories, not so much from other art. Lajos’ strengths are the understanding of urban scale and activity; visualizing architectural spaces from drawings; and fitting art into the process of design and construction. Besides his public artwork he has designed many downtown pedestrian plans and 6 completed artists’ live/work communities.

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