Narrative Spaces Lecture 04: Architecture of life

Notes from lecture: In reference to the design/build and exhibition by Diller Scofidio.

BAM/PFA - new extension onto this educational building functioning as an art museum and film archive [Growing and diverse collection]. The new extension is top heavy and best described as an expressive "tin foil" wrap in which the facade wraps around the existing building, still keeping exposed parts of the original build. There is a street facing screen that allows the public and the external audience situated in the park [from across the street] to have an interactive connection with the building. 

The new cladding system maps and coats the existing but there is a romantic narrative formed between the two structures, a connection as if the new extension is protecting, hugging or moving across the existing "as if you was pulling/dragging a silk scarf over an object". 

Inside the architecture continues this connection and dialogue between old and new where white walls and concrete exposed components are mirrored throughout the many layers ["Strata" meaning layers]. A series of voids cut through the internal spaces creating multiple perspectives and view points that guides you through the building. The internal cladding within the interior spaces [exhibition rooms, auditorium, cafe] again mimics through line a resemblance of the external cladding "reminding you that you are within this building. There is a very discrete and smart use of lineage and creation of line through the entire interior that develops an architectural tension between the inside and outside and is vocalized through materiality. Although the word tension may sound strong in many ways it is rather playful and becomes an almost focal point where spaces intervene and meet with one another. 

The interior space as a whole becomes very organic and fluid, where lower levels borrow natural light from the slices and levels above, and where colour [Orange] is used in conjunction again with the exterior to enable this constant narrative of inside/outside. Much of the architectures interior is viewed upon as geometric folded forms that direct viewpoints and brings your eyes into connection where two edges, planes or materials meet. 

Upon the opening of the new BAM/PFA extension Diller Scofidio were asked to host and curate and exhibition that they to featured within "Architecture of Life". The exhibition pulled together artists, designers and architects around the globe whose work [realised or not] communicated notions of how we live/could live in space]