Nicholas Torres

Challenge

Design a 50,000 GSF art museum for Wooden Objects on Evans Way Park in Boston, MA.

 

Vision

I was guided by several things on the site for my placement, one being the line of sight connection from the entrances to the Park from Evans Way and Louis Prang, another being the main circulation spine that seemed to diagonally cut across the park from the North to Southwest. This allows visitors to the site to move around the building, while still being subconsciously drawn in, by the organization of the paths. With the building itself I was guided by the idea that I wanted to showcase a wooden boat in the large gallery. My museum would be set up to show the history of wood making in New England. Within the site parameters it was clear that my building would have a larger “head” in the North and a smaller “tail” in the South. The head of the building would house the galleries and public functions including an education center and restaurant while the tail would house the more private functions like the lecture hall, laboratories, and administration. These two modules would be joined together by a circulation core in the form of an atrium, allowing visual communication across the modules, that is lined up with the Gardner Museum entrance as a show of friendship between the two museums. I organized my galleries in the head on several floors, rotating around and growing outward like a tree around the large galleries holding the ship. The galleries on the 3rd and 4th floors are open to the atrium through galleries and allowing viewing the ship from multiple angles. Overall I wanted to provide a straightforward circulation system for my visitors, allowing them to experience the objects and rooms themselves in a spatially complex way.