The Studio Gang-designed Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation is approaching completion in New York. Set to open on May 4, 2023, the project is the latest addition to the city’s American Museum of Natural History and is described by the firm as “a fluid landscape that heightens visitors’ sense of discovery and wonder.”
The scheme has been designed to improve the functionality and visitor experience of the museum campus, creating a new accessible entrance at Columbus Avenue. The building forms thirty connections with ten different buildings, while also providing new exhibition, education, collections, and research spaces. The project broke ground in 2019 following permit approval in 2016.
Described by Studio Gang as “akin to a porous formation shaped by the flow of wind and water,” the center is anchored by a central, five-story atrium. The arching space was constructed using shotcrete, where structural concrete is sprayed directly onto digitally modeled, custom-bent rebar cages. In addition to the elimination of formwork waste, the technique was chosen to achieve a seamless, visually-continuous interior surface.
From the atrium, visitors will explore the center through a circulation flow of bridges and vaulted openings. Attractions within the building include an insectarium and butterfly vivarium that houses interactive exhibits, a five-story Collections Core holding 3 million scientific specimens, and an expanded research library.
“The architecture taps into the desire for exploration and discovery that is so emblematic of science and also such a big part of being human,” Studio Gang founder Jeanne Gang has said about the scheme. “When you step into the Gilder Center, you immediately feel a sense of wonder. You can glimpse the different exhibits and see how to move between them. The building invites you on a journey toward deeper understanding, sparking your curiosity and helping you find the amazing organisms and knowledge inside.”
Outside, the building’s envelope is finished in Milford Pink Granite cladding, which combines with deep-set windows and shade trees to passively cool the building during the summer. The center also includes an irrigation system and native, adaptive vegetation to support local wildlife, while rounded windows use bird-safe fritted glass to prevent birds from colliding with the surface.
News of the scheme’s opening comes soon after Studio Gang completed a high-rise housing project in Amsterdam as well as the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. The firm is also involved in the multibillion-dollar expansion of Chicago O’Hare International Airport, which was given final approval by the FAA late last year.
9 Comments
Yuck.
Fred flintstone approves.
There's always something amiss in their projects. Something went awry somewhere in the execution of a perfectly sound concept. Here, it looks like the flat glazing messes up the flow of the shotcrete geometry.
A Potpourri of cave like references works well inside but I am not so sure about the outside. Directly carrying the interior form outside, or, casing the interiors in a Miessian box would have saved the day. The first option would be very doable with shotcrete. Second, well, they are from Chicago;)) But of course, executive boards, project overlords, and others...
That's interesting, Orhan.
The façade is the one part that I think looks good since the formal language of the interior does come out to the street a bit, but it gets clad in a much more refined and considered material (and expensive) than the interior's shotcrete. This adds texture and complexity to what is otherwise a very direct translation of the metaphor they are using.
The interior reads as a very direct (and clumsy) metaphor "It's a cave" and it certainly feels like it. The façade they are saying "it's a building inspired by geology" and the result is much more enjoyable and interesting as architecture.
This is my fundamental problem with this studio's work - the biophilia and naturalistic metaphors are too direct, too obvious, and too clumsy. The ideas never seem to gestate into capital A Architecture or add complexity and layers that enrich their design and experience (as buildings.) It is only about the metaphor.
Buildings inspired by nature or buildings inspired by geology, but where is the Architecture?
If some kind of vines were allowed to completely overtake the exterior, that would be a good thing.
I feel that pretty universally.
“a fluid landscape that heightens visitors’ sense of discovery and wonder”
The interior, monstrous and funky, is anything but natural and bears no relationship to what is contained and how it might be organized. It will overpower exhibitions. Instead of inspiring wonder it does the opposite: it gives me the creeps.
If the novelty does lead to crowds, I wonder how long that will last. And it looks like the design prevents any substantial rearrangement in the future.
In the rendering the walls are painted white, but there will have to be dark areas that set a mood. In Plato's allegory of the cave, we are supposed to leave the cave and enter the light of understanding. Here, we are perpetually stuck in the cave.
This is, after all, a museum.
I do like Orhan's idea of a Miesian box enclosure, however.
Another way to put it is that the Studio Gang design is just plain simplistic and clunky. I could go for something on the order of Jakob + MacFarlane's news HQ in Lyon. This is light, suggestive, and genuinely complex, and it doesn't force a metaphor. It does what buildings and museums are supposed to do, contain with predictable regularity yet opens up that order with vast, varied exploration. Orhan's Miesian shell put this in mind.
https://www.dezeen.com/2015/10/16/jakob-macfarlane-euronews-headquarters-architecture-lyon-france-neon-green-facade/
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