New York's Swing-Open Gallery Gets First Doorknob in 20-Year Refresh
New York's most acrobatic gallery wall finally has a doorknob.
GRT Architects has updated the street-level home of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York's Lower East Side, in the first substantial overhaul of the gallery in twenty years. The work added custom, removable shelving, upgraded electrical and HVAC — heating, ventilation and air conditioning — in the single triangular room, and put a doorknob on the facade for the first time, Dezeen reported.
Storefront is small and triangular. It was founded in 1982 by architect Kyong Park. Its street front, designed by architect Steven Holl and artist Vito Acconci, is made of giant concrete panels that swing open and closed.
That trick is great theatre. It is awkward for hanging a show. There is nowhere fixed to put anything, and anything fixed risks getting hit when the wall moves.
GRT's answer is the gallery's first semi-permanent display system. It is a modular frame in aluminium, fixed to anchors along the front wall and carefully positioned to miss a rotating panel as it swings.
The whole kit can be taken apart to leave the room empty. Or it can be slid into new positions and bolted down. That reversibility matters in a space where every exhibition has different needs and the building itself moves.
The parts are practical. Some panels double as surfaces for projecting video. One shelf sits concealed behind a canvas curtain. The frame is built from customised components from aluminium framing company 80/20, chosen to be light, repeatable and easy to reconfigure.
Behind the scenes, the practice also designed a new gallery desk and back-of-house storage modules, according to its project page, GRT Architects. Outside, the changes include a new door. GRT described the work as involving "long overdue" infrastructural upgrades in a statement reported by The Architect's Newspaper.
What makes this stand out is how little it shows off. The shelves do not hide the famous pivoting facade. They work around it, then disappear when they are not wanted. For anyone walking past on Kenmare Street, the biggest clue that something changed might be the smallest one. A door you can actually open.
GRT Architects, a practice that designs buildings, interiors, furniture and products, left the concrete panels and the triangle intact. The deputy director of Storefront is Guillermo Ruiz. The gallery keeps its shape, its swing and its tight footprint. It just gains power, air, storage and somewhere to hang things.
