Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The milled glass and "shocking Ferrari red" walls coming to the Bowery; "like a beacon"



There's plenty of activity at 257 Bowery, just a wee south of Houston, these days. The Times checks in today on this future home of the Sperone Westwater gallery. The world-renowned Norman Foster is designing the eight-story "sliver of a building," as the Times notes.

Sliver, eh? So "Foster’s solution was a giant elevator, measuring 12 by 20 feet, that would not only transport art and visitors from floor to floor but serve as an exhibition space as well." And they talk to the man himself.

While the elevator could fit up to 240 people, only a few are expected to occupy it at a time. It will move more at a rate of 50 feet per minute, rather than the more typical speed of 150, to allow time for people to admire the art inside.

[Th]e elevator will have the same polished concrete floors and white walls as the stationary galleries, and it will be possible to park it on one or another of the floors to extend its space.

Because the building will be sheathed in milled glass and the elevator exterior walls colored a shocking Ferrari red, the moving gallery will be visible from outside, a "dynamic element of the facade inside this translucent tube," Mr. Foster said.

[Gallery co-founder] Angela Westwater sees this feature as "like a beacon, like a lighthouse," she said.


And the Times had the following photos:





For further reading on 257 Bowery:
Jeremiah's Vanishing NY (A look back at what used to be here...)
Curbed
BoweryBoogie
The Observer

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