Museum of the Moving Image renovated by Thomas Leeser

In New York a former Paramount studio, the architect Thomas Leeser designed the Museum of the Moving Image. An institution that explores all forms of screen culture, in both artistic and commercial. The white, pink and blue three color dominant.

After three years of renovation and expansion, has reopened to the public in January, the Museum of the Moving Image (literally, Moving Image Museum) in New York, from 1988 to disseminate knowledge of film, television, communication, television, media and digital, through exhibitions and other cultural events dedicated to art, history, technique and technology.

The works were made ​​by Studio Leeser, specializing in architectural projects “contaminated” by the new media. The German architect Thomas Leeser is known worldwide for its innovative design which has revolutionized the traditional concept of space. He was associated from 1980 to 1989 study by Peter Eisenman and opened his own studio in Brooklyn, most of the work of the study involves the integration of emerging technologies and new media architecture and design.

The original building museum, dating back to the Twenties, based on a structure of three-story brick, was built as a production studio Paramount. Atmosphere suitable for a museum collection on what is behind the screen and nothing more. The draft Leeser, $ 67 million project, completed with funding from public, turned it into a modern and versatile, adding new galleries, screening rooms and spaces for teaching.

The new wing (which includes an entrance hall on the ground floor and two upper levels) adds 3.500 square feet of interior space, including three different environments for the vision and attractive public spaces, more Millemetri square outer courtyard open to the public (whose opening is planned for spring), bringing the total area to about delmuseo 9 thousand square meters. The outer casing of enlargement to the rear facade is composed of a surface mesh of 1067 triangular aluminum panels, light blue, mounted on a structure to open joints inmodo that everyone can collect rainwater and that recall lines of digital wireframe drawings.

The new entrance on 35th Avenue relocated and redesigned, it presents visitors with a portal-way mirror with the words “Museumof the Moving Image” in letters several feet high shocking pink. The input can be considered in all respects the first screen where the visitor comes across, considering the play of light information from the merger of direct vision and reflexes into a single plan.

The hall on the ground floor is a seamless white space and blue and a slide show of works on a long wall moves fifty feet and tilted 83° to give a sense of dynamism to the progress of the visitor. Inside the 264 seater auditorium walls and ceiling have felt blue: a space designed as a capsule for a trip immaginario.Questa enveloping blue surface consists of 1.136 triangular panels, mounted on the open joint, with lighting integrated into.

The room is equipped with a large screen, with classic proportions, and equipment for the screening of sizes from 16 to 70mme high-definition digital 3-D. A stage hosts live events and a small pit orchestra creates the space for the musical accompaniment of silent films. A hybrid space between gallery and screening room, called the “theater”, is located at the first landing of the main staircase. The seats are an abstract landscape of benches built into the floor, while the wall above the staircase serves as a screen for temporary exhibitions of digital works. On the third floor of a new space of 400 meters square, free of columns, is available for rotating exhibits.

With 380metri square clear space, the gallery has been designed to allow the Museum to present display materials of all kinds, from classic plays to multimedia installations. The core collection of historic objects, which still occupies most every part of the exhibition space, part the model original headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner and many kinetoscope, pocket viewers, cineografi vintage and other projection equipment.

The new storage space which is located on the third floor to support an international community of researchers and scholars, providing access to the incomparable collection of the museum, including more than 130 thousand objects.