I-Beam Design

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a happy, healthy, peaceful and creative 2026.

Merry King Kong Christmas and warm wishes for a peaceful 2025 from SITE +. I-BEAM.

Over the past year, we have been archiving SITE’s collection of drawings, models and ephemera. During this process, we found fond memories, like the King Kong Christmas Party in 1976.

The concept for a King Kong Christmas began with Suzan’s childhood crush on King Kong. All she wanted for Christmas - was a King Kong doll. Well, no one could locate such a thing, so Alison Sky set about making one. A year later, King Kong came to life, anatomically correct, with all his fingers, toes and teeth carefully sewn by Alison who declared it was time to trim an Empire State Building tree. So, we made King Kong cookies, biplanes, and Fay Wray punch, and invited our friends to join us in a celebration of love, architecture and apes. Andy Warhol brought his dogs to the party and Gordon Matta-Clark had everyone dancing till the wee hours.

You can read more about the party in Rita Reif’s NY Times article in the Timescapsule. If you were there, or know someone who was, please feel free to share your memories with us.

Thanks to the Canadian Center for Architecture for sharing the original King Kong Christmas invitation by James Wines with us. It is part of the Gordon Matta-Clark Archive. Gordon was a dear friend and colleague, whose creativity and generosity were emblematic of SoHo’s resourceful and inventive spirit during the 1970s.
Kong