Season Finale

I officially finished my semester on Friday night (I submitted my last assignment at 11 pm) so this weekend has been dedicated to some serious spring cleaning. As I am deciding what to throw away and what to keep, I took a moment to photograph the model from my final studio project, the Vitra Design Museum. Models take up so much space and don't weather very well, so I think this will end up down the garbage shoot in the next few days and with that in mind I wanted to document it thoroughly:

The view from the sidewalk into the museum.

View of first floor and mezzanine from outside.

Another peek from outside featuring more of the staircase.

A bird's eye view into the Sheila Hicks Exhibit.

Bird's Eye View of the entire model.

View of someone exiting the museum.

Best Laid Plans

Here are the plans for my Vitra Design Museum. These were printed out 8' high so they're a little hard to see at this scale, make sure to click and blow them up to see a little more detail. Probably unless you've had some architecture education they aren't going to mean anything to you, but for those of you who get something out of them, enjoy:

Keeping With the Trends

Here are two sketches of my updated design.

This is my lobby seating area, now the furniture layout is more flexible/variable:

This is my cocktail lounge, I've updated it to include lighting from FLOS by Philippe Starck:

Sharpie Sketching

In another chapter of my love affair with sharpie sketches, here are some new sketchup sharpie renderings of my Vitra Design Museum lobby:

This is a glimpse of the facade:

This is the seating area on the ground floor:

This is a glimpse inside the cafe during the day:

And this is inside the cafe/lounge area at night when it is an after hours cocktail lounge:

This is a peek inside the museum's administrative offices:

Sketchup Saved My Life

I've been having a serious love affair with Google Sketchup. I'm not that comfortable drawing perspectives, so this software that lets you quickly make a model on the computer has hugely enhanced my perspectives. They help me keep everything to scale, and have really sped up my process!

This is the view from inside the bookstore/gift shop area. The steps to the after hours cocktail lounge on the mezzanine level double as a bookcase in the downstairs.

This is the view from the sidewalk of the museum at night. The light from the mezzanine cocktail lounge spills out onto 22nd street.

This is the staircase that takes you to the mezzanine cocktail/lounge as well as further up to the 2nd floor where the permanent collection is housed

The ticket office, just inside the gift shop area as you enter the museum.

This is the view across the mezzanine cocktail lounge/cafe.

Stairs...

This is a sketch I did today of the view if you are standing inside my hypothetical gift shop/bookstore and looking into the museum lobby. The shelving for the books is literally built into the stair.

Vitra Design Museum Concept

As some of you may know, Pratt offers both a two-year and a three-year masters in interior design. The two-year masters is for people who spend their undergrad studying a related discipline, either architecture or interior design. For people like me, who have their undergraduate degrees in something more or less unrelated (mine is in art history and psychology), Pratt offers a 3 year program. Considering that all the schooling I've had for the preceding 18 years has focused on being able to express myself verbally- its quite a change to be tackling things visually. But, in some ways my verbal background can be a plus, and my current professor has encouraged us to write out what we'd like our design museum lobby to feel like, which I think was a really helpful step. So here it is:


Concept for Vitra Design Museum

Most people making the pilgrimage from the 8th avenue subway west into Chelsea are pursuing one thing: art. While it is also a district that holds some restaurants, nightclubs, and a copious number of taxis, it is first and foremost a destination for art connoisseurs. Usually they are tackling Chelsea in twos and threes, if they are New Yorkers they are frantically trying to multi-task: consuming culture while catching up with friends, if they are out of towners, its an even more social excursion incorporating art watching with people watching.

The Vitra Design museum offers a respite from the monotony of Chelsea attractions. After pounding the pavement up and down the blocks between 10th and 11th aves, (and bemoaning your lack of first born to sell in exchange for that breathtaking Jean Nouvel chair at Gagosian) you enter the Vitra Design Museum for a break. The gift shop which projects into the street is the first sign that this is a break from your usual Chelsea, these are objects you can afford!!! Moreover, these are objects that are projected out into your space instead of tucked protectively deep in the hallowed concrete reliquaries of the galleries.

Passing through the gift shop, the lobby and cafe that you experience next offer up a much needed spot to sit, relax, and get into that deep conversation about Merda D’Artista thats been bubbling up since you left the Manzoni show. As you’re lounging you notice that the staircase is flanked by some intriguing pieces of design, which now that you’re rested and re-caffeinated you’re ready to explore.

Having explored the collection, and exitted back through the gift shop - picking up a great new book on Sheila Hicks inspired by the temporary exhibition, you pass back out onto 22nd street.

Later that week when you return to Chelsea to hit up some Thursday night gallery openings with friends, you leave the Pace Gallery and are excited to see that there are still lights on in the Vitra Design Museum. Is it a private party? No, its their bar- you and your friends are no longer relegated to headache inducing paper cups full of cheap white wine! You can stop into the Vitra Design Museum cafe and sip on some bespoke cocktails while enjoying gossiping and people-watching through the windows.