Lantern Artist's Residency
2020 - Concept
Ithaca, New York, United States
The project site lies on an island comprised of warehouses lying between the rural outskirts of Ithaca and the urban center. These warehouses were quickly and haphazardly developed, creating a cacophonous landscape of scaleless buildings and paved expanses. The only exception to these constructions is a row of four single family dwellings directly north of the site. The project seeks to navigate between these two scales, puncturing a large roof plane with smaller volumes, creating private spaces within the volumes and public corridors and atriums in between.
Daylight is let into these more intimate spaces from above, and a system of wood slats with a layer of semi-transparent polycarbonate diffuses the daylight into the larger areas, creating ideal lighting conditions for the making and display of art.
The program centers around three atriums. The first faces the street corner, where an overhanging roof beckons visitors into the cafe, art gallery, and lecture space. The second is embedded in the middle of the building and reserved for the making of art, the absence of direct sunlight allowing for uniform lighting. The third opens to the water’s edge at the rear of the building, and creates a space for the artists to relax after a day’s work.
