伊弗森博物馆东翼丨美国纽约丨MILLIØNS

2024/09/29 02:32:38

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Architect：MILLIØNS

Location：Syracuse, NY, USA; | ;View Map

Project Year：2024

Category：Museums

MILLIØNS, a Los-Angeles-based architecture studio, has reimagined the East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. Completed in 1968, the Everson was the first museum designed by I. M. Pei. It is well known for holding one of the most significant collections of American ceramics in the country.

In 2019, MILLIØNS won a two-stage, international architectural competition (organized in collaboration with Dean Micheal Speaks and Associate Dean Kyler Miller of Syracuse University School of Architecture) to design the museum’s café. Dallas-based ceramics collector Louise Rosenfield had offered to fund the project and donate her collection of over 4,000 plus functional ceramics, but only if the pieces could be used by museum-goers in the new café, not simply displayed. The modest scope of the original brief—which initially only included one quadrant of the upper floor—took a surprising turn when Zeina Koreitem and John May, the designers, conceived a much broader redesign of the museum’s entire East Wing around the central theme of expanding public access to the art. This expanded scope was central to MILLIØNS’ winning competition proposal, which thoughtfully broke with the competition guidelines. In doing so, they convinced Rosenfield and museum director Elizabeth Dunbar of their vision, and work began in summer 2020, while the museum was still closed to the public during the Covid pandemic.

The designers were inspired by Pei’s Brutalist masterpiece, and specifically by the way in which Everson’s massing produces intense contrasts of darkness and light. This is particularly the case in the East Wing, which is mostly below grade and where the daylight conditions produce a chiaroscuro effect. MILLIØNS proposed to offset this by introducing materials and surfaces that multiply the reflection and refraction of natural light. The design centers around a series of two-story glass towers that house the Rosenfield collection while bringing light into the space. The towers feature open shelving, which will allow café visitors to reach in and pick out any ceramic object they want to eat or drink from—a rare blurring of the lines between art and the public.

This theme of increasing visibility extends on a conceptual level. Traditionally, museums set up a clear distinction between Back of House spaces and the Front of House galleries. MILLIØNS proposed and realized the idea of a “third space,” a hybrid between Front and Back that allows typically separate activities of display, storage, archiving, and maintenance to coexist and be experienced by the public.

The East Wing has always had an ambiguous relationship with the rest of the museum. The upper floor is publicly accessible, but the lower floor is only accessible to staff, despite the fact that they are both joined, visually and acoustically, by a double-height atrium called Mather Court. The redesign turns the lower level into a semi-public space for events and exhibitions while creating a new research library and renovated staff offices.

Throughout the upper and lower levels of the East Wing, MILLIØNS created a series of new display elements for the Rosenfield collection. Other notable elements include a furniture collaboration with Jonathan Olivares (who was recently named Senior Vice President of Knoll), including a series of communal tables that will act as additional curatorial surfaces for the ceramics. Outside, Dunbar found funding for extensive maintenance, waterproofing and preservation of the original building. The concrete façade was cleaned to reveal its pink tint, and pavers were redone with careful attention to the original aggregate, guided by historical research by MILLIØNS. New planters, designed by MILLIØNS, update the newly opened outdoor patio for the cafe.

As an example of adaptive reuse, the balance that the project strikes between innovation and deference to Pei’s original was crucial for Koreitem and May. In the end, much of the new work quietly asserts itself, while also receding into the background, materializing daylight and transforming the entire east wing, but with only minimal alterations to Pei’s original masterpiece.

“From the beginning, we wanted the new to differentiate itself from the existing. We wanted to create a contrast between the existing rough, desaturated textures and the inserted reflective, hyper-saturated textures. This is something that is very common in our work. We like to produce tensions between heavy monolithic materials and light thin materials. We took a heliocentric approach so all colors, surfaces and materials spec-ed are meant to enhance the natural light coming from the skylights. When we inherited the East wing, we quickly understood that because it is partially subterranean, the chiaroscuro effect was dominant but not favorable for a gallery and cafe space.

The furniture for the East Wing came from a treasure trove of original furniture that we found in storage. These were spec-ed by IM Pei, so we decided to bring them back to life and to refurbish them. Even though they are classics (Breuer’s Cantilever chairs in the research library, Saarinen’s executive chairs and Florence Knoll’s lounge chairs in the curators’ and director’s offices), we did not want to be nostalgic about mid-century color schemes.

We collaborated on the curtains with Justin Morin, a Paris based artist. Justin understood our color sensibility right away, and proposed a palette extracted from the ceramics in the ROSENFIELD COLLECTION. These gradients were then digitally printed in Zurich by 4spaces.

Our work often uses gradients and rainbow like palettes. We like to work with color as a kind of volumetric finish rather than a secondary or superficial layer. What really stood out for us in this project is the realization that the concrete aggregate that IM PEI had worked with was actually pink tinted and there are many pink hues spread out across the museum. This discovery opened up a more nuanced approach to color. The concrete palette of the museum is much more dynamic than one might think”.