Creative interaction: this new museum for showing and producing digital art forms a provocative addition to an urban neighbourhood in the heart of New York

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

Based in New York, Eyebeam is a non-profit organization established to provide access, education and support for artists, students and the public in the emerging fields of computer-generated and digital art. Due for completion in 2006, Eyebeam's Museum of Art and Technology will provide extensive production and exhibition spaces for artists boldly navigating the various currents of new media. The outcome of a year-long invited design competition, the new building will be located at Eyebeam's current interim exhibition and education space at West 21st Street in Chelsea. Participating firms were selected on the basis of their depth of engagement with contemporary artistic culture and after a protracted three phase competition, Diller Scofidio were awarded the commission.

Their involvement seems particularly apt, as their work draws on our increasingly image-fixated culture to mine seams of illusion and artifice. The pulsating Cloud structure at Yverdon-les-Bains (designed for the recent Swiss Expo, AR September 2002) was not only technically highly sophisticated, but a provocative commentary on the vapid culture of architecture as spectacle. (There was literally nothing there.) This project is more substantial and explores the functional and spatial duality of making art and viewing it.

The building is based on the simple notion of a pliable ribbon that separates and defines production (workshops and ateliers) and presentation (museum and theatre). The ribbon undulates from side to side as it climbs vertically from the street and with each change of direction enfolds alternate production and presentation spaces. It also brings together the building's residents (students, artists, staff) and the building's users (museum visitors and theatregoers). The arrangement of alternating zones requires each group to pass through the other's territory while moving between levels. The ribbon is a double-skinned concrete envelope with a technical space sandwiched between layers. Modular panels permit easy access to the interstitial space for rewiring and servicing exhibitions.

The relationship between spaces and users becomes more complex when a loop of ribbon is sheared in half and slipped into alignment with a level above or below. This different alignment allows a production space to infiltrate a presentation level, and vice versa, juxtaposing technical processes with their effects, the prosaic with the poetic, blurring distinctions between the act of creation and the act of viewing.

The interwoven production and presentation zones each have their own distinct physical requirements. Production spaces need an even distribution of natural and artificial light for day and night work, while the exhibition areas require a high degree of light control and sound isolation.

This effectively creates two buildings -- one filled with light and one that can be darkened. The levels of these two different buildings appear to be shuffled together like a deck of cards, their contrasting qualities dramatically manifest on the main street facade. Residents and visitors observe one another as they move fluidly through the building, sometimes on parallel paths separated by transparent walls, sometimes crossing paths, sometimes merging and sharing spaces. In its spatial and material drama, the building is intended to evoke the openness and unorthodox spirit of the Eyebeam organization itself.

Architect

Diller Scofidio, New York

Project team

Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro, Deane Simpson, Dirk Hebel, Joshua Bolchover, Alfio Faro, Reto Geiser, Gabriele Heindel, David Huang, Dieter Jansen, David Ross

Associate architect

Helfland Myerberg Guggenheimer

Structural and services engineer

Ove Arup NY