TED2012
Liz Diller: A new museum wing ... in a giant bubble
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How do you make a great public space inside a not-so-great building? Liz Diller shares the story of imagining a welcoming, lighthearted -- even, dare we say it, sexy -- addition to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)
Liz Diller - Designer
Liz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice. Full bio
Liz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:16
We conventionally divide space
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into private and public realms,
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and we know these legal distinctions very well
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because we've become experts
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at protecting our private property and private space.
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But we're less attuned
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to the nuances of the public.
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What translates generic public space into qualitative space?
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I mean, this is something
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that our studio has been working on
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for the past decade.
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And we're doing this through some case studies.
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A large chunk of our work
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has been put into transforming
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this neglected industrial ruin
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into a viable post-industrial space
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that looks forward and backward
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at the same time.
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And another huge chunk of our work
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has gone into making relevant
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a site that's grown out of sync with its time.
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We've been working on democratizing Lincoln Center
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for a public that doesn't usually have $300
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to spend on an opera ticket.
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So we've been eating, drinking,
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thinking, living public space
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for quite a long time.
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And it's taught us really one thing,
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and that is to truly make good public space,
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you have to erase the distinctions
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between architecture, urbanism,
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landscape, media design
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and so on.
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It really goes beyond distinction.
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Now we're moving onto Washington, D.C.
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and we're working on another transformation,
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and that is for the existing Hirshhorn Museum
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that's sited
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on the most revered public space in America,
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the National Mall.
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The Mall is a symbol
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of American democracy.
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And what's fantastic is that this symbol
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is not a thing, it's not an image,
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it's not an artifact,
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actually it's a space,
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and it's kind of just defined by a line of buildings
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on either side.
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It's a space where citizens can voice their discontent
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and show their power.
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It's a place where pivotal moments in American history
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have taken place.
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And they're inscribed in there forever --
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like the march on Washington for jobs and freedom
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and the great speech that Martin Luther King gave there.
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The Vietnam protests, the commemoration of all that died
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in the pandemic of AIDS,
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the march for women's reproductive rights,
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right up until almost the present.
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The Mall is the greatest civic stage
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in this country for dissent.
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And it's synonymous with free speech,
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even if you're not sure what it is that you have to say.
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It may just be a place for civic commiseration.
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There is a huge disconnect, we believe,
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between the communicative and discursive space of the Mall
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and the museums that line it to either side.
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And that is that those museums are usually passive,
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they have passive relationships between the museum
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as the presenter and the audience,
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as the receiver of information.
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And so you can see dinosaurs
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and insects and collections of locomotives
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and all of that,
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but you're really not involved;
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you're being talked to.
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When Richard Koshalek took over as director of the Hirshhorn
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in 2009,
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he was determined to take advantage
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of the fact that this museum was sited
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at the most unique place:
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at the seat of power in the U.S.
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And while art and politics
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are inherently and implicitly together always and all the time,
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there could be some very special relationship
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that could be forged here in its uniqueness.
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The question is, is it possible ultimately
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for art to insert itself
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into the dialogue of national and world affairs?
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And could the museum be an agent of cultural diplomacy?
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There are over 180 embassies in Washington D.C.
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There are over 500 think tanks.
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There should be a way
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of harnessing all of that intellectual and global energy
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into, and somehow through, the museum.
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There should be some kind of brain trust.
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So the Hirshhorn, as we began to think about it,
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and as we evolved the mission,
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with Richard and his team --
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it's really his life blood.
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But beyond exhibiting contemporary art,
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the Hirshhorn will become a public forum,
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a place of discourse
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for issues around arts,
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culture, politics and policy.
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It would have the global reach of the World Economic Forum.
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It would have the interdisciplinarity of the TED Conference.
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It would have the informality of the town square.
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And for this new initiative,
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the Hirshhorn would have to expand
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or appropriate a site
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for a contemporary, deployable structure.
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This is it. This is the Hirshhorn --
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so a 230-foot-diameter concrete doughnut
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designed in the early '70s
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by Gordon Bunshaft.
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It's hulking, it's silent,
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it's cloistered, it's arrogant,
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it's a design challenge.
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Architects love to hate it.
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One redeeming feature
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is it's lifted up off the ground
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and it's got this void,
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and it's got an empty core
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kind of in the spirit and that facade
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very much corporate and federal style.
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And around that space,
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the ring is actually galleries.
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Very, very difficult to mount shows in there.
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When the Hirshhorn opened,
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Ada Louise Huxstable, the New York Times critic,
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had some choice words:
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"Neo-penitentiary modern."
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"A maimed monument and a maimed Mall
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for a maimed collection."
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Almost four decades later,
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how will this building expand
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for a new progressive program?
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Where would it go?
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It can't go in the Mall.
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There is no space there.
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It can't go in the courtyard.
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It's already taken up by landscape and by sculptures.
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Well there's always the hole.
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But how could it take the space of that hole
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and not be buried in it invisibly?
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How could it become iconic?
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And what language would it take?
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The Hirshhorn sits among the Mall's momumental institutions.
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Most are neoclassical, heavy and opaque,
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made of stone or concrete.
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And the question is,
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if one inhabits that space,
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what is the material of the Mall?
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It has to be different from the buildings there.
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It has to be something entirely different.
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It has to be air.
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In our imagination, it has to be light.
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It has to be ephemeral. It has to be formless.
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And it has to be free.
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(Video)
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So this is the big idea.
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It's a giant airbag.
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The expansion takes the shape of its container
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and it oozes out wherever it can --
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the top and sides.
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But more poetically,
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we like to think of the structure
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as inhaling the democratic air of the Mall,
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bringing it into itself.
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The before and the after.
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It was dubbed "the bubble" by the press.
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That was the lounge.
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It's basically one big volume of air
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that just oozes out in every direction.
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The membrane is translucent.
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It's made of silcon-coated glass fiber.
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And it's inflated twice a year for one month at a time.
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This is the view from the inside.
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So you might have been wondering
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how in the world
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did we get this approved by the federal government.
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It had to be approved by actually two agencies.
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And one is there to preserve
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the dignity and sanctity of the Mall.
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I blush whenever I show this.
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It is yours to interpret.
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But one thing I can say
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is that it's a combination
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of iconoclasm
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and adoration.
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There was also some creative interpretation involved.
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The Congressional Buildings Act of 1910
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limits the height of buildings in D.C.
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to 130 feet,
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except for spires, towers, domes and minarettes.
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This pretty much exempts monuments of the church and state.
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And the bubble is 153 ft.
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That's the Pantheon next to it.
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It's about 1.2 million cubic feet of compressed air.
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And so we argued it
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on the merits of being a dome.
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So there it is,
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very stately,
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among all the stately buildings in the Mall.
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And while this Hirshhorn is not landmarked,
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it's very, very historically sensitive.
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And so we couldn't really touch its surfaces.
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We couldn't leave any traces behind.
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So we strained it from the edges,
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and we held it by cables.
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It's a study of some bondage techniques,
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which are actually very, very important
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because it's hit by wind all the time.
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There's one permanent steel ring at the top,
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but it can't be seen from any vantage point on the Mall.
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There are also some restrictions
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about how much it could be lit.
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It glows from within, it's translucent.
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But it can't be more lit than the Capitol
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or some of the monuments.
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So it's down the hierarchy on lighting.
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So it comes to the site twice a year.
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It's taken off the delivery truck.
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It's hoisted.
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And then it's inflated
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with this low-pressure air.
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And then it's restrained with the cables.
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And then it's ballasted with water at the very bottom.
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This is a very strange moment
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where we were asked by the bureaucracy at the Mall
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how much time would it take to install.
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And we said, well the first erection would take one week.
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And they really connected with that idea.
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And then it was really easy all the way through.
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So we didn't really have that many hurdles, I have to say,
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with the government and all the authorities.
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But some of the toughest hurdles
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have been the technical ones.
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This is the warp and weft.
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This is a point cloud.
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There are extreme pressures.
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This is a very, very unusual building
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in that there's no gravity load,
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but there's load in every direction.
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And I'm just going to zip through these slides.
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And this is the space in action.
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So flexible interior for discussions,
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just like this, but in the round --
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luminous and reconfigurable.
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Could be used for anything,
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for performances, films,
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for installations.
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And the very first program
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will be one of cultural dialogue and diplomacy
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organized in partnership
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with the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Form and content are together here.
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The bubble is an anti-monument.
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The ideals of participatory democracy
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are represented through suppleness
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rather than rigidity.
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Art and politics
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occupy an ambiguous site outside the museum walls,
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but inside of the museum's core,
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blending its air
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with the democratic air of the Mall.
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And the bubble will inflate
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hopefully for the first time
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at the end of 2013.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Liz Diller - DesignerLiz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice.
Why you should listen
Liz Diller's firm, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, might just be the first post-wall architects. From a mid-lake rotunda made of fog to a gallery that destroys itself with a robotic drill, her brainy takes on the essence of buildings are mind-bending and rebellious. DS+R partakes of criticism that goes past academic papers and into real structures -- buildings and art installations that seem to tease the squareness of their neighbors.
DS+R was the first architecture firm to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant -- and it also won an Obie for Jet Lag, a wildly creative piece of multimedia off-Broadway theater. A reputation for rampant repurposing of materials and tricksy tinkering with space -- on stage, on paper, on the waterfront -- have made DS+R a sought-after firm, winning accounts from the Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall and the School of American Ballet, as part of the Lincoln Center overhaul; at Brown University; and on New York's revamp of Governer's Island. Their Institute for Comtemporary Art has opened up a new piece of Boston's waterfront, creating an elegant space that embraces the water.
Liz Diller | Speaker | TED.com