Project Type: Cultural Institution
Client: Eyebeam Atelier, John Johnson
Project Schedule: Short listed for the first and second stage of the international competition, one of twelve finalists, 2001
Total Project Budget: $40,000,000
Program: 60,000 sq. ft. including exhibition galleries, media library, auditorium, archives, education facilities.
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen (Design), Cameron Wu, Chris Hoxie (Project Team); CR Studio Architects, New York (Associate Architects)
Consultants: Robert Heintges (Curtain Wall), Guy Nordenson (Structural), Karen Sideman (Curatorial); K+D Lab, Dean D. Simone, Joseph Kozinski, Brandon Hicks (Visualization); metaphrenie.com (Virtual Installations); Robert Michaels (Video Production)

This project aims to exemplify and accommodate unprecedented applications of information technology. Symbiosis of digital media and architectural space results in a kind of cat's cradle situation: reciprocal elements bound in tension. Two sets of seemingly separate horizontal spaces are toggled such that each appears to be an extraordinarily thick mass from which the other is carved. The structural system is a space frame based on tensegrity, a force field of separate compression members held apart by cords in continuous tension: anti-gravitational, multidirectional and permutable. At once episodic and coherent, the totality of spaces and structure is locked in a double bind. It is not dialectical in the ordinary sense of opposing terms, e.g. virtual reality versus three dimensional spatial reality. On the contrary, it involves the coexistence of three-dimensional realities of equal status. Hence, it is hyper-dialectical. The computer enhances the capacity to introduce complexity, i.e. proportionality, into architecture. Whereas proportion designates a primary arithmetical system, proportionality designates a system of systems or analogue. The predisposition of architecture toward analogical reasoning and formatting is intensified by the digital medium.