The Sperone Westwater gallery by Foster + Partners architects.

The Sperone Westwater gallery by Foster + Partners architects opened in New York earlier this week, featuring a moving exhibition space that connects the floors of the gallery.


The 12 by 20 foot moving gallery allows visitors to travel between floors or can be fixed at a chosen level to extend the static exhibition spaces.

The milled glass facade of the gallery dampens noise from the street and controls the temperature and light admitted to the gallery spaces.

Photos are by Nigel Young.
Here’s more from Foster + Partners:
Sperone Westwater gallery opens on the Bowery

Sperone Westwater celebrates the opening of its new gallery on the Bowery in New York with an inaugural exhibition by Argentinean artist, Guillermo Kuitca.

Nearly 35 years after its conception, Sperone Westwater continues to exhibit an international roster of prominent artists working in a wide variety of media. Its new building, designed by Foster + Partners, doubles the exhibition area and pioneers an innovative approach to vertical movement within a gallery setting.

Responding to the compact 25 by 100 foot site, one of the features of the project is a 12 by 20 foot moving gallery, which connects the upper four exhibition floors and allows visitors to move gradually between levels. It is a prominent feature along the Bowery, visible from the street, its gentle pace contrasting with the fast-moving traffic. At any given floor, the exhibition space can be extended by parking the moving room as required, with an additional elevator and stairs providing alternative access.

The gallery offers a range of exhibition spaces, which vary in proportion and ambience. The design incorporates a double-height, 27-foot high exhibition space at street level, with a sky-lit gallery, a mezzanine floor, a sculpture terrace overlooking a park, and private viewing galleries on the fourth and fifth floors.

A setback at the sixth floor marks the location of the gallery’s administrative offices. Works of art will be stored primarily in the basement, while a library is located at the top of the building, below the mechanical floor.


The milled glass facade that houses the moving room acts as a buffer zone, protecting the building from extreme temperatures and acoustically insulating the gallery spaces.



Norman Foster commented:
‘The concept for Sperone Westwater represents both a response to the Bowery’s dynamic urban character and a desire to rethink the way in which we engage with art in the setting of a gallery. The moving gallery animates the exterior of the building and creates a bold vertical element within.’



‘Like a kinetic addition to the street, it is a lively symbol of the area’s reinvention and a daring response to the Sperone Westwater’s major program. I hope that artists will be inspired by the gallery’s new spatial and structural possibilities.’

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Pavilion in Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago.

Architectural filmmakers Spirit of Space have created this video of a pavilion situated in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, designed by US architects Studio Gang.


Click on the symbol in the bottom right of the video player above to view the movie in full-screen HD.
Can’t see the movie? Click here.
The movie shows the construction of the bent-wood lattice structure, the installation of fibreglass shells to the top of the pavilion providing shelter and its various uses throughout day and night.

Studio Gang Architects also designed the boardwalk surrounding the 19th century pond, improving the water quality and habitat for the local wildlife and creating an educational nature trail.

The new pavilion is used as an outdoor classroom, for yoga sessions and other activities.

Here a little more from Studio Gang:
South Pond
Lincoln Park Zoo
Chicago, USA

The project transforms a picturesque urban pond from the 19th century into an ecological habitat buzzing with life.

With the design’s improvements to water quality, hydrology, landscape, accessibility, and shelter, the site is able to function as an outdoor classroom in which the co-existence of natural and urban surroundings is demonstrated.

A new boardwalk circumscribing the pond passes through various educational zones that explicate the different animals, plants, and habitat found in each.

A pavilion integrated into the boardwalk sequence provides shelter for open-air classrooms on the site.


Inspired by the tortoise shell, its laminated structure consists of prefabricated, bent-wood members and a series of interconnected fiberglass pods that give global curvature to the surface.



Architect: Studio Gang Architects
Owner: Lincoln Park Zoo
Status: Completed 2010

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The de Young museum by Herzog & de Meuron in San Francisco, CA. Columbia University

The de Young Museum by Herzog & de Meuron - GSAPP Digital Craft Animation from Emily Menez on Vimeo.




Herzog & de Meuron
de Young Museum
San Francisco, California

Constructed of warm, natural materials, including copper, stone, wood and glass, the new de Young blends into and complement its surroundings.

 

Founded in 1895 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the de Young Museum, damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, was closed to the public on December 31, 2000.
The new de Young replaces the former facility on the same site, returning nearly two acres of open space to Golden Gate Park by reducing the footprint 37 percent.

Historic elements from the former de Young, such as the sphinxes, the original palm trees, and the Pool of Enchantment, have been retained or reconstructed.

The dramatic copper facade is perforated and textured to replicate the impression made by light filtering through a tree canopy. The copper skin, chosen for its changeable quality through oxidation, will assume a rich green patina over time that will blend gracefully with the surrounding environment.

The educational department is housed in a 144-foot tower that spirals gently from the ground floor and aligns at the top with the grid formed by the surrounding neighborhood.

The building is threaded with a series of courtyards that draw visitors and the landscape into the museum’s interior. The main entrance leads through a courtyard paved in Yorkshire limestone.

The exterior is encircled by ribbons of windows that reflect the landscape and allow park visitors glimpses of the art within the museum, while simultaneously providing museum visitors views of the park. A public observation floor offers panoramic views of the entire Bay Area.

Broad staircases lead from the double-height interior lobby to the open, expansive galleries, paved with honeyed colored hardwood, that houses the museum’s diverse collections of world art.

Total area: 293,000 square feet
Completed: October 2005
Photographed by Thomas Mayer
Client: de Young Museum
Primary Designers: Herzog & de Meuron
Principal Architects : Fong & Chan Architects
Landscape Architects: Hood Design
Herzog & de Meuron Team:
Project Architect: Ascan Mergenthaler
Project Manager: Jayne Barlow
Fong & Chan Team:
Project Manager: Nuno Lopes
General Contractor: Swinerton Builders
Project Manager: Mike Strong
StructuralEngineers: Rutherford & Chekene
MEP: Ove Arup Group and Partners
BookThe de Young in the 21st Century
A Museum by Herzog & de Meuron
By Diana Ketcham
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

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Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum by Zaha Hadid

Here are some new images of the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum designed by Zaha Hadid for Michigan State University, which has been given permission for construction to begin.

The three-storey building will be clad in glass and metal pleats.

The project will include 18, 000 square feet of exhibition space, an education centre, museum shop, visitor café and staff offices.

Construction will begin in March 2010 and is due for completion in 2012.







It will be constructed from steel and concrete with an aluminium and glass exterior. Construction will begin later this year and is due to be completed in 2010.
Below is a press release from the university about the winning project:
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Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid’s design selected for MSU’s Broad Art Museum
“This truly is an example of how one man’s great vision can be a reflection of an entire state’s future. Creating a new art museum that will stimulate learning and creativity will, in turn, help grow Michigan’s economy and enhance our quality of life.”
—Jennifer M. Granholm, governor, state of Michigan
World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid of London has been selected as the winner in the design competition for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Hadid joined the Broads at two public events today where MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon announced the winner.
“With today’s announcement of Zaha Hadid as the architect of record for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, we take one step closer to bringing this extraordinary project to life,” Simon said. “We were fortunate to have the work of many world-class architects submitted for the competition but Ms. Hadid’s design truly captured the spirit of what this iconic building will represent to MSU’s campus and the greater mid-Michigan community that will benefit from its presence in the area.”
The announcement is the culmination of a competition that began in June 2007 when the Broads gave a gift of $26 million to help fund the new museum, which will focus on modern and contemporary art. The other finalists were: Coop Himmelb(l)au (Vienna and Los Angeles); Morphosis (Santa Monica, Calif.); Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects, PC (New York); and Randall Stout Architects, Inc. (Los Angeles).
When completed, the Broad Art Museum at MSU will be Hadid’s first building on a university campus and her second completed project in the United States.
“I am absolutely delighted to be building the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University,” Hadid said. “Art Museums are centres for the exchange of ideas, showcasing the art that feeds the cultural life of the community. I believe we can create buildings that evoke original experiences, inspire people and make them excited about new ideas. The sculptural folds of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum’s design and enigmatic qualities of its steel and glass surface follow a coherent formal logic, offering a sense of unlimited possibilities.”
The 41,000 square-foot building will comprise three levels, including a basement. It will be constructed of steel and concrete with an aluminium and glass exterior and be adjoined by an expansive outdoor sculpture garden to the east. The museum will stand on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Farm Lane at the Collingwood campus entrance.
The museum will include more than 18,000 square feet of space for the following collections: special exhibitions; modern and contemporary art; new media; photography; works on paper; and the permanent collection – encyclopaedic (pre-1945). Additional space will include an education centre, museum shop, visitor café and gathering space and staff offices.
Groundbreaking for the museum is planned for fall 2008 and completion of the project is expected in 2010.
Hadid, founding partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and is internationally known for both her theoretical and academic work. In addition to the Pritzker Prize, her work has received numerous awards from the world’s most prestigious institutions, including the Mies van der Rohe Foundation of European Architecture; the American Institute of Architects; the Royal Institute of British Architects; the Royal Academy of Arts; the International Olympic Committee; the Austrian Commissions for Science and Art; Columbia University; and Yale University.
Some of Hadid’s best-known completed projects include the Vitra Fire Station and the LFone Pavilion in Weil am Rhein, Germany; the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome, London; a tram station and car park in Strasbourg, France; a ski-jump and Nordpark Cable Railway in Innsbruck, Austria; the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio; the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany; the Hotel Puerta America interior in Madrid, Spain; the Ordrupgaard Museum Extension in Copenhagen, Denmark; the Phaeno Science Center, Wolfsburg, Germany; and the Maggie’s Centre, Fife, Scotland.

Zaha Hadid has won a competition to design the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

The museum will exhibit modern and contemporary art, and will be adjoined to a sculpture park.

The building will be on three levels, including a basement, and will have 18, 000 square feet of exhibition space. There will also be an education centre, museum shop, visitor café and staff offices.

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Liberty Harbor. Brunswick.

Virtual tour of mixed use development in Brunswick, GA.

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The Broad. Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro have unveiled their design for a new Los Angeles museum for The Broad Art Foundation.





This 24-foot-high space is fully flexible to be shaped into galleries, according to the curatorial needs of each installation or exhibition.

Visitors exit the exhibition space and descend back to the lobby through a winding stair through the vault that offers behind-the-scenes glimpses, through viewing windows, into the vast holdings of the Broad Collections and the foundation’s lending library operations.

“Our goal for the museum is to hold its ground next to Gehry’s much larger and very exuberant Walt Disney Concert Hall through contrast,” Diller said.

“As opposed to Disney Hall’s smooth and shiny exterior that reflects light, The Broad will be porous and absorptive, channeling light into its public spaces and galleries. The veil will play a role in the urbanization of Grand Avenue by activating two-way views that connect the museum and the street”.


Called The Broad, the three-storey museum will incorporate gallery space, a 200-seat lecture theatre multimedia gallery, public lobby and museum shop, plus archive, study and art storage space.





The building will be wrapped in a honeycomb facade that will be visible from the sky-lit top floor gallery.

The Broad Art Foundation Unveils Museum Designs
Philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad and architect Elizabeth Diller today unveiled the designs of The Broad Art Foundation, a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.
Designed by world-renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the three-story museum features a unique porous honeycomb “veil” that wraps the building and is visible through an expansive, top floor sky-lit gallery that will be home to great works of contemporary art drawn from the 2,000-piece Broad Collections.
The Broads also announced a 12-member board of governors and the inaugural programming for the contemporary art museum, to be called “The Broad.”
“Today, we celebrate another important milestone – the creation of a new museum 40 years in the making,” said Eli Broad, who was flanked by more than 200 city and county officials and community leaders as he revealed the designs for The Broad at a press conference at Walt Disney Concert Hall. “Grand Avenue is the cultural district for this great region of 15 million people. No other city in the world has such a concentration of visual and performing arts institutions and iconic architecture in a three-block radius. Edye and I can think of no better home for the public art collections we have assembled over the past 40 years.”

Located across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad will also serve as the headquarters for the foundation’s worldwide art lending library. In addition to paying for the building, the Broads are funding the museum with a $200 million endowment – larger than the combined endowments of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and MOCA. Joanne Heyler, the director/chief curator of The Broad Art Foundation, will also serve as director of the museum.
Featuring almost an acre of column-free gallery space, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, a ground floor multimedia gallery and a public lobby with display space and a museum shop, the 120,000-square-foot project will also include state-of-the-art archive, study and art storage space that will be available to scholars and curators who want to research works in the collection and borrow artworks for their institutions through The Broad Art Foundation.

Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key components of the building: public exhibition space and the archive/storage that will support The Broad Art Foundation’s lending activities. Rather than relegate the archive/storage to secondary status, the “vault,” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below, while its top surface is the floor of the exhibition space.
The vault is enveloped on all sides by the “veil,” an airy, cellular exoskeleton structure that spans across the block-long gallery and provides filtered natural daylight. The public entry to the museum will be on Grand Avenue and will complement the landscaped plaza to the south that is part of the Grand Avenue Project’s master plan. The museum’s “veil” lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby with a bookshop and espresso bar. Visitors will then journey upwards via an escalator, tunneling through the archive, arriving onto 40,000 square feet of column-free exhibition space bathed in diffuse light.

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Mashouf Performing Arts Center. San Francisco. Michael Maltzan Architecture

City Center for the Arts Michael Maltzan Campus Awarded the 2009 Rudy Bruner .

 The new performing arts center will house SF State theater programs, music, dance and electronic arts and communication media.

The integration of a variety of academic and performance spaces, the building is marked by a unique set of theaters and courtyards - the creation of a permanent platform for multidisciplinary collaboration. Studies, workshops and curricular areas are grouped around the central volume of theaters, interlinked by roads which point the project of the courtyards in the center.

San Francisco State University unveiled designs for the Performing Arts Center Mashouf, a 242.150 square feet of state of the art facility that will transform the teaching of creative arts and performing arts at SF State and the entire region.

 A waveform of the activity, the building is a symbol for the College, reflecting the different academic programs it houses. The Mashouf Performing Arts Center, designed by Los Angeles, Michael Maltzan Architecture, aims to inspire creativity and promote continuing artistic collaboration between the programs through expanded performance and educational spaces for students, as well as provide a space for the top of organizations performing arts region.

The building anchors the southwest corner of the campus of San Francisco State University is set to an iconic presence in the largest city and cultural community.
“We knew we needed to build a new classroom space, but we also wanted a calling card to solicit partnerships with public arts institutions. It needed to be an iconic building, and we had a real mandate to look for someone very forward-thinking about the arts and nonprofits in general,” shared Kurt Dawn, Dean of the College of Creative Arts.

As the day turns to night, lights up the glass building perimeter with activity, transmitting the pulse of creativity and inner life.

 Source Throughout Boulevard, the building elevators, creating a big entrance. layered public, academic performance and spaces reinforce a sense of connection among students, teachers, amateur and community theater.
A 1,200 seat opera style theater is planned within the first phase of construction, and four smaller theaters will follow in two additional phases. The total 242,000 sqf Mashouf Performing Arts Center will also include programs for drama, dance, music, and broadcast journalism.
The $250 million performance education center is anticipating LEED Gold certification, hoping to break ground by 2013. This ambitious Art Center will first require 18.5 million to begin the first phase of construction (the school has already raised $12 million), and would like to complete all phases of construction within a nine year period.
 Source Throughout Boulevard, the building of lifts up, creating a big entrance. layered public, academic performance and spaces reinforce a sense of connection among students, teachers, amateur and community theater.

 The 300-seat Recital Hall Music offers a dynamic space for musical performance, the perfect extension of the surfaces that surround the public, with artists at its center.

 The 1,200-seat theater supports a number of activities including music, theater, opera and dance, as well as serving as a forum for public debates and panel discussions.

The dynamic shape of the balconies of the theater fosters a sense of individual privacy, while knitting together public and artist.

 Little Theatre offers an intimate atmosphere, where performer and audience share a single space bounded by arched seats rising from the floor of the stage and rolling up the network.

A series of ramps to facilitate universal access as the building collapsed, reinforcing the sense of connection and exchange among the diverse population and building various programs.
(Photos: Michael Maltzan)

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