Camera Dashboard: 30 in 30: #21

Saturday, January 20, 2007

30 in 30: #21

The current home of The Skyscraper Museum was completed in 2004. Designed by verti-meisters SOM, the small museum is located in a ground floor space of a hotel/residential tower in Battery Park City. It's right across the street from Machado + Silvetti's Wagner Park pavilion.

The exhibition space is raise above sidewalk level by a few feet. A stair provides access behind the cashier, though the intended route is via a ramp (above) that creates a more controlled and processional experience for the visit. From the ramp, it is clear that the interior architecture and exhibition design rely upon images, light, and reflections. That might not sound different from other exhibition spaces, but here the effect is saturated more than others.

The above image of the main corridor -- adjacent to a ramp that rises further to the museum's office space -- illustrates the primary means of reflection: the floor and the ceiling. Both are created from mirror-polished stainless steel, though the floor has a small square pattern for traction and sense of stability.

The architects admit that the floor and ceiling surfaces, "create the impression of an infinitely vertical space, with the reflections of the exhibit display vitrines appearing as soaring volumes representative of a skyscraper skyline." The above image most clearly illustrates this effect. Though something fishy is going on in those sidewalls, like a funhouse was inserted into the serious, business-driven world of building tall. Whatever the architects were thinking, the result is a refreshing addition to the straightforward reflections and refractions of the rest of the space.