7. metropolitan gap
With Atelier E2A
Reuse of the former Goethe Institute of New York and conversion into a multifunctional space with museum, library, offices and restaurant.
The studio exercise asks the students, working in couple, to design a house for a new cultural center in New York. What we aim to do is to revitalise the Goethe Institute by building new spaces but, at the same time maintaining and respecting the existing as much as we can. The old and the new will be intimately con- nected: the new being the result of the growth of the old, the old being so monumentalised and preserved, a still point in the general con- stant process of transformation that acts in the city: New York is a never ending flow of changes and since it is impossible to contrast it, the interaction between new and existing is a prerogative. The intervention consists in two main different moments: the first is the reuse and reorganisation of the existing building; the second, on the other hand, is the implementation of a new exposition part that will grow underground, doing so in deep contrast with the normal new Yorker attitude. The building will create a new consciousness of itself and the city.
