Sculpturecenter: Lic, New York. addition-connection

The studio\’s focus is the SculptureCenter, a non-profit cultural insitution whose mission is to champion contemporary sculpture in all of its forms. It supports experimentation in contemporary sculpture by providing opportunities for artists to produce and exhibit work in multiple dimensions; to educate audiences about sculpture and its relationship to other art forms and fields; and to act as a catalyst for new ideas in contemporary art and culture. SculptureCenter has been an active contributor to New York City\’s cultural community since 1928, when it was founded as \”The Clay Club\” by Dorothea Denslow. It renamed itself in the 1940s, and moved to a carriage house on East 69th Street in Manhattan. Here it established a ground floor gallery space dedicated solely to sculpture with workshops and studio space on the upper floors. Over the course of the next half-century, as the field of sculpture expanded and evolved, SculptureCenter\’s exhibition and education programs have as well. In 2001, SculptureCenter purchased a former trolley repair shop with an enclosed outdoor lot at 44-19 Purves Street in Long Island City, Queens. Built in 1908, the steel and brick building is in the heart of a burgeoning cultural destination, with neighboring institutions such as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum and the temporary MOMA QNS. The 45\’ x 100\’ building, which has been partially renovated by Maya Lin, opened to the public in December 2002, providing space for expanded exhibitions, fellowships and public programs. It includes 3,000 square feet of interior exhibition space, offices, and a work studio. The entrance is through the adjacent 3,000 square foot lot, which is also used as outdoor exhibition space.The SculptureCenter is now considering further steps, in order to develop its identity, together with other cultural institutions, within the existing urban/industrial fabric, and in the context of the city\’s long term economic development plans for the neighborhood. The studio will map the SculptureCenter\’s building site in terms of its materiality, its activities, and its boundary conditions at multiple scales, in order to develop parallel architectural and urban landscape project strategies. We will explore the SculptureCenter as a building and an urban institution, as a place of multiple connections and flows, in order to emphasize the relational identities of its spaces and programmatic elements. 3 projects intervention to develop 3000 square feet of exhibition/circulation spaces in masonry basement, and to integrate these spaces with the street level of the existing building connectionto formulate and pursue urban landscape connections and outdoor spaces for adults and children (using as a resource proposals by City Planning, LICCA, and other groups) expansionto design an addition to 44-19 Purves Street or a new building on an adjacent lot, to include work and living space for visiting artists, a large multi-purpose event space, a sculpture library and public reading room, offices, media lab, cafi/bookstore, and sculpture garden