URBAN MICRCOCOSM THE MUSEUM OF THE IMAGE

Harvard GSD - Spring 2021 Option Studio ‘Intuition and the Machine’ Instructor: George Legendre Team: A.G.Loayza, G. Guida.

From research on Manhattan’s urban configuration together with computational design processes, this project explores a Manhattan micro-geography, a reinterpretation of the city, to accommodate the Museum of the Image.

Our project pursues a microcosm of NY by reenacting the formal and experiential characteristics of Manhattan: creating a city within the city conformed by controlled art spaces and open urban ones.

Using the ‘Slat’, computational tool provided by the studio, combinations of linear spatial configurations in which the program can be inserted were tested. Bays and Interstitial spaces, major elements of the ‘slat’, are placed on site aligned to a set of parameters and including the project program.

From machinic to intuition, this project establishes a Manhattan micro-geography where each layer, bay and interstitial space frames a new dialogue with present day art, here framing a parting view of the East River.

This Euclidean reading of Manhattan recognizes the HORIZONTAL calling for homogeneity, and THE VERTICAL calling for the heterogeneous experience.

The design process relies on 4-steps that combines ‘intuition’ and ‘the machine’ to integrate these conceptual and programmatic intentions. The result is 5 profiles containing the program and behaving as an extension of NY.

OUTCOME DIAGRAM: ASSEMBLAGE OF BAYS AND INTERSTITIAL SPACES

The massing consists of 16 meters wide bays packed with the program in rooms and shaping a profile. In between, 4.5 meters wide interstitial spaces connect the bays. North-south walls are proposed to enclose this spatial logic and differentiate bays from interstitial spaces.

These spaces are functional connectors between each bay

BAYS: offerings N-S visuals or large exhibition rooms. From the bays it is possible to perceive other events behind the adjacent lateral spaces. Natural light and large size rooms are prioritized

INTERSTITIAL SPACE: Interstitial spaces are pauses between the solid nature of bays. They are of lighter and translucent materiality. The thinner proportion is suitable for light intrusion and linear circulation towards the upper or lower level.

L01 - GROUND PLAN In plan, the ground level reveals the linear organization of rooms, broken by the two public axis coming as an extension of the city grid. Visitors can access the multiplicity of rooms from the street level as the temporal exhibitions, media hall exhibits or the library.

The lower plan functions as a connection between the three plots of the museum. It contains immersive exhibitions in two bays in the blue here (point). It gathers public program as cafeteria, galleries, and workshops open to courtyard at the east. A connection to the park across FDR drive is also possible from here.

When stepping back, the entire massing reveals a landscape, offering new visual connections to NY, which vary in altitude and width.

Each bay creates angled views towards the river, and each interstitial space permits a direct line of site.

The height of every major room varies, and in some cases extends directly to the highest point generating a visual interplay between exhibition spaces and workshops on upper floors

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