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Monday, December 13, 2010

Art Collector’s Loft : By UNStudio

Greenwich Village, New York City, United States
UNStudio
Post By:Kitticoon Poopong
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan



Ben van Berkel, principal of the Amsterdam-based architectural firm UNStudio, is known for his breathtakingly swoopy designs of sleek surfaces that never seem to end. The gleaming, aluminum-clad Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, with its double-spiral-ramped concrete structure

Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan



After completing that nine-story-high, 270,000 square-foot building, you might think that a 5,840-square-foot (gross) residential loft would be too rinky-dink a commission. Van Berkel argues otherwise: “I’m not interested as much in the scale of a project as with the program,” he explains. In this case, he was asked to design a loft in New York City for a collector of Modern and contemporary art, which he found fascinating. “It’s as if you’re making a portrait of someone and how he might live with his art,” van Berkel adds.
Art Collector’s Loft
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan
The owner met the architect when van Berkel was working on an ill-fated expansion of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier in the decade. The collector, who had seen UNStudio’s famous Möbius House (1998) in Het Gooi, the Netherlands, says, “I found a clarity in the language and a logic of the space that made me think about the way I lived.” He decided to seek van Berkel’s help “in making sense out of the muddle that had become my art collection.” 
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan



The architect’s solution for the apartment, on a floor 95 feet long and almost 60 feet wide in a former light-industrial building, was as logical as it was novel: He pushed living spaces along the east and west party walls, saving the central portion for the gallery. At the north and south ends, the architect clustered living and dining areas, inserting a steel-and-glass wall on the south elevation, where a glass balcony allows unobstructed garden views.
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan



The design team — including van Berkel; the executive architect Franke, Gottsegen, Cox Architects; and lighting designer Richard Renfro — created a swerving hung ceiling where arrays of 18,000 individual LEDs could be mounted above two layers of a translucent, two-way-stretched polymer membrane. Tracks separating the fabric ceiling from the plaster surfaces accommodate fixtures for point lighting. “The ceiling took nearly a year to test and rework,” recalls the client. 
Art Collector’s Loft
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan
The team programmed the lighting to offer a changing mix of cool and warm illumination. A combination of fluorescent (on the underside of the major gallery wall) and halogen fixtures (embedded in the coves along with HVAC diffusers) provide additional indirect light. 

Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan



While the actual structure of the early-20th-century building is concrete deck, and the steel columns are covered with terra-cotta fireproofing, very little of this structure is revealed by the continuous, off-white surfaces. Van Berkel covered the columns with preformed glass-fiber-reinforced-gypsum shapes, which were then hand-plastered on-site. He used these preformed elements for the concave ceiling coves and other curved pieces as well, including ones extending from the wall to the floor.
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan
Hand-plastered surfaces characterize all walls — formed of metal stud and cement board — as well as much of the ceiling. The wall on the west side of the gallery, dividing the art display from the library, is a formal tour de force, seeming to float as it carries artworks on one side and the collection of books on the other. As Matthew Gottsegen of Franke, Gottsegen, Cox Architects explains, it is suspended from a steel beam in the existing building; the wall touches down on the north end to stabilize its curves.
Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan
The library’s narrow, serpentine space allows the client to easily see his books, without having to rely on a typical four-walled room plan where a desk is plunked down in themiddle.He avows, “The library turned out to be the most captivating part of thedesign.”
This softly radiant setting, where off-white is the predominant color, allows the selected sculptures, paintings, drawings, and rare books to be seen as objects in space. Even Leo, the owner’s bulldog, matches the color scheme. As the client puts it, “While it was a long time in the making, it far exceeds my hopes. The architecture still awes me, yet envelops me in a comforting way. Would I do it again? Never.” But then, why should he?
diagram--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio
Art Collector’s Loft
floor plan--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio
The people
Interior Designer: UNStudio
Location: Greenwich Village, New York City, United States

Design Year: 2007-2009
Construction Year: 2008-2009
Completion/Opening Date: 2010
Gross Square Footage: 5,840 sq.ft.
Photographs:  Iwan Baan
Design Architect:
UNStudio
Stadhouderskade 113
PO Box 75381
1070AJ Amsterdam
via:archrecord

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