The design of the Art Interactive Gallery facade, landscape, and signage was the result of WINNING an open INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION. It is located just off of Central Square, Cambridge, MA.
The competition was challenging in its requirements & limitations: 1. a complex program - new public image, entrance directives/signage, blackout/light control, 2. supported by an incredibly low budget of $2,000, 3. housed within a historically important modernist structure (designed by Jose Luis Sert), and 4. abiding to the city’s rather conservative architecture & signage laws.
My entry - entitled "Facade Masterplan" - presented the gallery with a flexible scheme describing a system (a set of rules) that would accomplish all of the requirements at varying cost options (which could be altered in time with more funding). It pushed the notion of "interactive" to a poetic level while fitting within the parameters of the historic building. Read more about it here (window will pop up).
Post-competition work involved building and using a ΒΌ" study model as a form of discussion/design collaboration with the client, the landlord and the city community development, signage & historic commissions, for approval and fundraising. The material budget was thereby increased from an unrealistic $2,000 to $10,000 (still low).
Based on this COLLABORATION several big items were revised: 1. the location of the main entrance moved to the back of the alley
(adding the pedestrian alley space to the project),
2. the permeability of the street level storefront (more open, for street safety), and
3. the replacement of the hard-to-build lightboxes with paint.
The design also changed to account for the fact that all construction work was ‘unskilled’ volunteer labor.
Aside from design, I had to submit a detailed breakdown of construction costs with several bids for each material and supervise the construction. Devin Cough of the AI helped with the cost analysis and construction coordination. The construction was carried out by the AI volunteers.
