CENTRO DE ARTES NADIR AFONSO
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION WITH ART
Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso Museum
BOTICAS, PORTUGAL
Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso literally and figuratively breaks new ground in Portugal. Divided into two distinct but connected parts, the new sustainable museum merges landscape and architecture into a bifurcated sustainable building consisting of an urbane cultural structure facing the newly built municipal building and a green-roof park covered below-grade exhibition hall facing the rolling hills adjacent to Boticas. The urban face of the building includes a double-height entry hall and a one-hundred-seat auditorium that contribute to the civic stature of this growing Portuguese town. The exhibition space, embedded in the hillside and covered with a sustainable planted green roof park, functions as a connection to the more pastoral section of the town. The below-grade exhibit hall and surrounding outdoor court are carved out of the natural hillside.
Strategically located at the intersection of a newly built national highway, the new 20,000-square-foot sustainable museum can also serve as an anchor for additional development within the adjacent region. The museum is poised to become a global destination that will expose the art of Nadir Afonso to a much larger audience for it has the potential to serve as a cultural and economic engine to drive the growth of both the local and regional economy.
DERFNER MUSEUM
The Derfner Judaica Museum
RIVERDALE, NEW YORK
The design for the 5000 square foot Derfner Judaica Museum located at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York establishes a sophisticated prototype for the design of cultural institutions in the era of the aging, urbane, baby-boom generation. It is a forward-thinking yet humane environment comprised of accessible spaces that are architecturally comfortable, curatorially comprehensible and technologically equipped to meet the needs of both the current and future elderly. The urbanity of the Derfner Museum allows boomers to experience the intellectual stimulation typical of the Manhattan art scene within their own immediate surroundings.
POETS HOUSE SOHO
Poets House Soho
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Our renovation of Poets House, a library and learning institution for all voices of poetry, enlarged the scale at which this non-profit organization operated. The unusual design element which was dear to the hearts of the organization, was the use of poetic text written into the architecture. Poetry took on a spatial quality in that fragments of poems are inscribed on the walls… hidden in secret corners and embedded in the metaphor of 1000 origami cranes in the children’s poetry room
POETS HOUSE BPC
Poets House at Battery Park City
BATTERY PARK CITY, NEW YORK
Former United States Poet Laureate and founder of Poets House once wrote, “I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through it and see the world.” The LEED Gold home for Poets House, a 70,000 volume library in Battery Park City, speaks to its founder for its physical transparency beckons all people and voices of poetry to come inside. Such elements as the double height glass entry incorporating an oval glass exhibition space, the children’s library and the indoor/outdoor auditorium, with its operable glass wall that opens directly to the adjacent park, serve as a beacon to invite the community to enter.
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
Brooklyn Public Library Highlawn Branch
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The design of the renovation of this 7200 square foot branch library capitalizes on a change in the prevailing national attitude about public libraries. Freed by the computer from the mundane task of collecting fees, checking out, and processing books, librarians can now personally engage their readers. Seeing this as an opportunity to inject an animated aesthetic into this multicultural, working class community, our design reflects this new found energy. The new Highlawn establishes the library as an intellectual hub, floating somewhere between a research site, Starbucks, and a neighborhood drop-in center.
CHARTER SCHOOL RENOVATION
Staten Island Community Charter School
STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK
The Staten Island Community Charter School, a community-based, community-focused, community-run K-8 school, was founded by local parents, grandparents and educators. Unique to Staten Island’s North Shore, it is a voice of the vision of the community. Of utmost importance in all of the work for the school was that our designs amplified the SICCS mission of encouraging hands-on learning that empowers a mosaic of multicultural children en route to becoming global citizens.
PRE-FAB LEARNING LANDSCAPE
A FLEXIBLE LEARNING SOLUTION
Pre-Fab Learning Landscape
STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK
Lacking space for required additional classrooms, the challenge for this New York City Community charter school was to create a hybrid design that would provide quality spaces for learning that were flexible, removable, cost-effective acoustically quiet and aesthetically delightful. The final resolution entailed relocating athletics to the school exterior and re-purposing the school gymnasium into a Pre-Fab Learning Landscape. The Pre-Fab Learning Landscape is a sustainable, flexible and easily constructable.
