Perspective looking across gallery

The MAK Center is an Austrian cultural center located at Rudloph Schindler's Kings Road House in West Hollywood. In order to reduce the traffic through the house itself, this project proposes an addition to the site to house the gallery and offices of the MAK Center. Because of the importance of preservation, all changes to the site had to be carefull considered.

My solution was to create a bar building along the front of the site, which is a conceptual extension of the bamboo wall which already fronts the site. The large gallery space is structured by a series of cast-in-place concrete frames; this is a reference to Schindler's Lovell Beach House, a project that pioneered the use of such structural systems. The upper floors of the gallery are three platforms that move on a series of hydraulic lifts, allowing the gallery to change it's shape and scale to accomodate a wide range of art. Overall, the gallery presents a very difference experience of scale from Schindler's original house. This is intended to make people aware of the radical difference of scale between Schindler's house, unchanged since 1922, and the city outside that has grown up around it. This opposition is carried through to the building's elevations— the street elevation changes little, as the bamboo wall remains intact, while the rear elevation which faces the Schindler House has large screens with images that change periodically. Through this phenomenal transparency, the view from the house in now aware of the world outside its walls.