Division of labour - interior design of the gallery and offices of the Van Alen Institute

Architectural Review, The, July, 1999

Renovation and remodelling of offices in a New York loft has yielded a public domain both spacious and elegant, and secluded private space.

The Van Alen Institute is an admirable organization devoted to improving public architecture and schemes for urban renewal. Development of the New York waterfront is a particular focus of the Institute's attention. To promote its causes, the Institute sponsors competitions, exhibitions, forums, websites and workshops. It has had considerable success in finding futures for derelict industrial buildings and historical sites under threat, and has been instrumental in bringing together the various authorities and funding agencies.

The elegant renovation of its offices and gallery (by Lewis. Tsurumaki. Lewis) at 30 West 22 Street was completed in time for an exhibition of entries to a competition entitled 'Design Ideas for New York's East River' - a competition intended to stimulate discussion about the fate of one of the city's most vital arteries.

The space was an existing loft, with windows at each end, on north and south. With a modest budget at their disposal, the architects were asked to indicate separation between private offices and public gallery, to organize space in a clear and logical way, and to make it flexible. They have complied by concentrating the offices down the west side of a central service core so as to leave an immense L-shaped gallery, and by employing a variety of devices which encourage multiple uses and readings of space.

Having stripped the loft of previous accretions, the architects created one uninterrupted length of wall that runs the full depth of the building and forms the long wall of the gallery. The south part of it can be divided off and turned into a lecture theatre by means of a sliding door drawn out of the partition wall and suspended from an industrial steel track. The outer side of the door is plastered in keeping with the main walls of the gallery, but the inner south side is lined with silvery acoustic panelling to match partition walls. As well as providing acoustic privacy, the panelling is a convenient pin-board .for exhibits; carried into the private office domain, the material has been used to divide desks.

At the north end, the director's office is divided from the gallery by a storage wall, and from other offices by full-height translucent panels that allow light through while maintaining privacy. Two of them pivot and when open the room becomes an extension of the general office.

Division between private and public is clearly demarcated by office walls and more informally by design of the reception next to the director's office at the north end. A broad and continuous ribbon of steel begins as the reception desk and folds down to form a threshold. Folded up again, and fed into the body of the storage wall dividing director's office from gallery, it becomes a slender pivoting table that can be drawn out for gatherings or pushed back when not required.

Architect

Lewis. Tsurumaki. Lewis

Photographs

Jeff Goldberg/Esto