Photography Gallery

Soho, New York City
8800 sq ft
Art Museum

This project is for a client who has acquired the loft space of an existing building in the SoHo area of New York City. They would like a space for exhibiting and selling photographs from renowned photographer Andreas Gursky, as well as two other gallery spaces for the work of Barbara Crane and André Kertész.

The exterior walls and openings could not be changed, but the roof could be designed. The structural system consists of parallel load-bearing walls, which define six bays that span 20 feet wide. You begin by ascending the stairs or arriving by elevator into the lobby space. The furred-down ceiling gives a feeling of compression, and as you follow the curve of the wall into the main gallery space, the ceiling height expands dramatically beneath the skylights. The plan is organized with the first two bays used for services, allowing the remaining four bays to be defined as primary, secondary, and tertiary gallery spaces, along with a terrace along the northern wall.