嵌入历史的临时艺术空间

Firm： HTAP Architects

Type： Cultural › Gallery

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2015

SIZE： 0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET： Undisclosed

HTAP Architects conceived this contemporary arts gallery inserted into a richly layered historic context as an instrument for observing the city. The building will soon be destroyed and the gallery's anticipated two-year lifespan forced a focus on the temporary nature of the space, the rapidly changing city fabric and the underlying cultures at work.

The client desired a cleanly detailed gallery space with a single glowing ceiling panel, a new light-coloured floor and spotless white walls. A seamless Barrisol translucent fabric ceiling screening carefully arranged temperature-balanced lighting fixtures and a reusable timber floor accomplished this aim with an eye to re-usability. The gallery became a spare, culturally neutral space floating inside the old building's layers of accreted history.

The long narrow space was punctuated with a series of rusted steel portals framing a view of globally branded shops and hotels in one direction and a view of an inner courtyard of working class apartments in the other. These inner alleyways exuded a smaller scale as well as a slower, circular rhythm of home life and housed a living environment made of systems of connections between people. Contemporary art occupied the gallery between the two worlds, tasked with the purpose of responding to the situation - one that is local, but which reflects a global trend.

Utilizing the affordability of custom crafting in Vietnam at the time, furniture and fixtures of stacked plywood layers were added to the mix. Steel framing portals were custom fabricated and rusted with a process developed by the contractor through trial and error. A pivoting front gate screened with misused stainless steel industrial belting became a backlit entry marker in the open position and provided a veiled view into the gallery when closed.

During construction, a shallow balcony encased over half a century before was discovered and exposed exactly as it had been found. This reiterated an understanding of the building as a product of accretion and modification that accepted the new gallery as merely another accumulated layer.

The spare contemporary art space highlighted its unique context to encourage artists and viewers to reflect on the nature of the city and the underlying cultures that shape it -- a situation now highly visible in Vietnam, but which reflects the changing nature of urban situations around the world.