Last semester, I was required to study an existing building. My professor made a list of several buildings that had some sort of movement aspect to them. This concept is known as kinetic architecture.
When it came time to choose which building we were drawing, my professor had a slide show with pictures of each building. I noticed one that had a very unique feature on it, these sort of large, white, plastic bubbles bulging out the side of the building.
Having never seen a building like that before, I decided to go for it, and chose that as my number one choice. No one else wanted to deal with having to model that, so I got lucky and learned soon later that I got the building I wanted. The building I got is called the Shed, and it is located in Hudson Yards in New York City.
In 2005, the New York City Council approved about 60 blocks to be rezoned. The city looked at this area as the last place to build in Manhattan. New York’s Department of City Planning wrote, “In a place where dreams and ambitions are limitless, land is not. There is one last frontier available in Manhattan-Hudson Yards.” Hudson Yards is a 28-acre mixed use development located on Manhattan’s far west side.
As part of the rezoning, the city maintained a piece of land on West 30th Street adjacent to the High Line for future cultural use. Dan Doctoroff, the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, worked on determining what should go there. He worked closely with Kate Levin, the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Together, they wanted a space that was, ” A highly flexible one that could cater to the growing desire of many artists to break out of their silos and blend disciplines.”
In 2008, the city issued a request for proposals. The city selected Diller Scofidio + Renfro to be the lead Architect and the Rockwell Group as their collaborating Architect to develop their idea of a flexible building that could house all of the arts under one roof.
In 2012, a non-profit organization called The Shed was formed to oversee the construction of the building and continue to oversee it after it was finished.
In January of 2019, it was announced the Shed would open on April 5, 2019. The Shed’s building was renamed to the Bloomberg building after the former Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $75 million of the structure’s $475 million total cost. A dedicated ceremony was held on April 1, 2019 for the building, and 4 days later The Shed opened as scheduled.
The Shed has a few distinct parts to it and when explaining it I find it easiest to split the building into two parts. The non-movable part I usually refer to as the base building, and the movable shell I always refer to by it’s name, The McCourt, named after donors.
There are a few important aspects of the Shed. One being the large white “bubbles”. These are actually known as ETFE pillows, and they are the largest ones in the world. They give a very artistic look to the building and also allow some of the natural light to pass through them. Another aspect of the building is it’s openness. They intentionally allowed for a wide-open, column-less space in the middle of the building for displaying art and performances. You can see the large space in the plan.
Another thing I liked about the building were the different levels of it. The bottom two floors are both gallery spaces for art exhibits. The third floor is theater space. And the top floor has the Tisch Skylights that allow the sunlight to penetrate through into the top of the building. I’ve also been very fond of the mechanical system that allows for the Shed to move. The wheels that the Shed moves on were named the Bogies, and I drafted a section of what they look like with a person next to them to see the scale of just how big these wheels are.
Trying to model the Shed was a struggle. The building has complexities to it, one being of course the plastic pillows. I worked with my professor to model these pillows by first creating the design of the pillows, then plasma cutting the design into a sheet of metal, then using a blow molding machine which would blow the heated plastic up through the metal to create bulges in the plastic. It was a lengthy process, but it resulted in a very successful model of the building.
In order to show people the importance of the kinetic aspect of the Shed, my second model dealt with the different disciplines that the Shed can display. In the one above, the McCourt is deployed out and a concert is being performed inside. I had other thing that could be inserted into the middle of the model. One of these was a dance recital performed inside, another was an art gallery. And then while the McCourt was nested on the building, I had inserts that showed an outdoor viewing of a movie, and an outdoor concert. This model helped me successfully show that whether you’re a singer, song-writer, dancer, choreographer, instrumentalist, painter, film-maker, or any other type of artist, the Shed has the ability to display YOUR art.
Whoa, seeing the process of you modelling this really complicated structure is crazy! It’s incredible how much detail and history you were able to consider and incorporate into your model, and how many different elements you had to bring together in order to create that final product.
The Shed looks like a very intriguing piece of architecture. My favorite part of the building are the wheels that enable the Shed to move. Although I find this to be aesthetically and conceptually appealing, I’m not entirely sure whether it is a practical feature or simply an afterthought that was implemented in order to make the building look more interesting.