Art and Preservation
Ithaca, New York, USA
This museum and restoration center houses the A. D. White plaster-cast sculpture collection on the Cornell University campus.
A moment in the hilly topography of the site is cast [replicated] in concrete, generating an artificial condition that feels natural in form to house the exhibition space.
This moment is defined by simple geometries: a glazed cylinder is inserted into the landscape to bind the cast, like a mould, covered by a thick, punctured rectilinear roof plane that hosts support functions directly beneath, suspended above the exhibition stage by thin piloti, generated to reflect the load necessities of the support spaces and the roof plane.
This canopy reflects the surrounding thick tree-line, strengthened by the introduction of a vine trellis system on the interior of the cylindrical curtain wall of the exhibition space.
The cast concrete roof — an obvious nod to the contents beneath — shrouds the gallery and support space. Intentional and precisely located punctures in this cast panel craft a narrative of light below — highlighting particular casts while shadowing others.
This surrogate landscape amplifies and distorts its original characteristics, celebrating the similarly replicated sculptures inside. The greenery generates a mystique, alluding to modern fantasies of Mediterranean antiquity, all of which contained by the punctured canopy, a lens that filters and highlights sculptures throughout the exhibition space in fleeting sunlit moments.
It embraces an original; it forms a new.