The "Bubble,” as it is called for the short-term, is a joint venture of Koshalek and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, a renowned New York-based design firm, to re-invent the Museum as an intentional classroom and illustrate intersections of public and private space. Additionally, the museum book store will undergo a transition from a common commercial entity to becoming integrated as a part of museum exhibition space, through a renovation and move to the basement of the building.
Perhaps this new agenda comes from the idea that we need to adapt spaces to peoples’ readily changing needs. Perhaps this comes from Richard Koshalek’s desire to make the Hirshhorn a world class modern art museum with a daring new exposition. Perhaps this comes from the need to blur public and private space by incorporating The "Bubble” as an almost space-less entity into a negative, or void, of the concrete mass building; and the book store as an experiment in museum exhibit space. Or perhaps this agenda just comes from a need to make the stolid flimsy, the serious fun, and the patron part of the exhibit.
We all need to re-frame our roles sometimes and let reality bend itself: changing our perspectives, and therefore changing the ways in which we place ourselves in the built environment. This refreshes us and refreshes our daily social interactions, and ultimately our ways of being within a built environment that can at times seem over-powering, or even detached and static throughout our habitual routines. The "Bubble" and the museum book store will begin to enjoin these notions in a: public, private, open, closed, serious, and not, space, or place at the Hirshhorn Museum.
As part of Partners’ program Institutions as Fulcrums of Change, museums are highlighted as public anchor institutions within the livability framework. Located on the National Mall, the country’s public space insignia for political activism, freedom of speech, and congruence of civic voice, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden prides itself on being “a place for involvement by creative individuals and opportunity seekers.” (1) As one of the Hirshhorn Strategic Plan’s top seven priorities, “Curating Public Space” will be an opportunity for the museum patron to enter the museum space and adapt it to, or experience within it, their own creativity and imagination. The museum is seeking to break barriers between defined spaces and (besides the bathrooms and private employee-operated facilities) all parts of the Hirshhorn will be open and available for interpretation.
The "Bubble” is an innovative design to be constructed just as its name alludes, “…an architecture of air: a pneumatic structure enclosed only by a thin translucent membrane that squeezes into the void of the building and oozes out the top and beneath its mass.” (2) Constructed within the donut-shaped hole of the museum, The Bubble will create a “soft building inside of a hard one,” (2) resulting in an ephemeral and translucent blue covering of the museum courtyard and interior space erected twice per year in the spring and fall. Using a series of cable rings, the design firm created The Bubble to regularly shape-shift as a constantly mutable space. Lastly, The Bubble provides an additional 14,000 square feet of sheltered space which will allow for extensive programming to include lectures, performances, films, and more.
Promoting a series of projects throughout 2010-2012, in lieu of the Museum’s upcoming anniversary in 2014, the Hirshhorn will sponsor four main symposiums within The Bubble to create an active “classroom of the future.” Themes will include: International Cultural Diplomacy, with the goal to promote greater understanding among cultures; Animation in (and throughout) History; Open Source technology, or how technology drives our culture; and “Art and Destruction” as a theme throughout history. While still in development, the programming promises to enhance The Bubble as a space for audience interaction and creative, individualistic production of ideas, all the while emphasizing a mutable space to encompass qualities of its patrons and current exhibits. This incurring transformation will be influenced by the public, beginning to blur the lines between public and private, and ultimately what defines the museum space.
Adding to the museum interior overhaul, Koshalek has commissioned Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken to move the museum book store downstairs, and ultimately reinvent it as a place for interaction and education [Read the Hirshhorn press release announcing the book store renovation here]. The high-ceilinged museum lobby is filled with natural lighting, and generates a sense of centrality as several revolving doors lead to and along the National Mall; it also most prominently features the museum book store. "As soon as you engage the museum, it shouldn't be a commercial experience, or a typical government- or corporate-lobby experience, but an educational experience (Koshalek).” Aitken claims that he will reinvent the book stores’ future location, the “marginal and really oppressive” basement, into a light-filled space; inspiring a kaleidoscopic experience wtih light refractions, angled mirrors, and a feeling of sanctuary (3).
The current museum book store, analogous to most other museums', is a space commonly used only for practical or commercial purposes such as: buying a book after a museum visit, passing through the store on the way to somewhere else, or browsing the store’s goods without any real intentionality. This renovation, set to change the patron’s experience of an often overlooked or under-appreciated space, invokes reference to a study of a similar space: the hotel lobby.
Douglas Tallack, Professor of American Studies at The University of Nottingham, writes in the article Waiting, Waiting, in the Hotel Lobby, regarding the lobby as “a semi-public gateway to private places, a space of ambiguous identity.” (4) Tallack’s fascination of over-looked places: hotel lobbies, coffee shops, airports, rest stops, diners, and more, highlights those places which are often passed through, or used simply as points of rest, along the way to one's final destination. Koshalek is re-positioning the museum book store as a destination spot, rather than a place to walk through on the way to somewhere else. This renovation will challenge the store’s original function as a static space used only to buy goods, and will ultimately challenge all interior museum space to become a constantly mutable exhibit, no longer constricting the patron's experience with art to a defined exhibit space.
The Bubble and the book store renovation will encapsulate the museum space to offer patrons a new, innovative place for exploration. Similar to the hotel lobby, patrons may have strolled into the museum court yard, or the entrance lobby and into the book store, without much consideration to the space and their actions within it; except that now patrons must first step into a giant, blue, translucent bubble, or a book store set to ignite new feelings and experiences, and engage.
Citations:
1 Koshalek, Richard. Building Livable Communities: Creating a Common Agenda.
2 Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro. "Bubble: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden." Diller Scofidio Renfro. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
3 Gopnik, Blake. "Hirshhorn Museum Bookstore Redesign by Doug Aitken." Washington Post - Politics, National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - Washingtonpost.com. 21 Apr. 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2010.
4 "Waiting, Waiting": The Hotel Lobby. Tallack, Douglas. Irish Journal of American Studies. Vol. 7, (1998), pp. 1-20
