With more than a dozen projects, the architect Markus Dochantschi of studioMDA is reshaping the state of the art gallery, one historic building at a time.
Construction crews were roaming TriBeCa. All around, one could hear the omnipresent drills echoing from within historic cast-iron buildings. Inside 384 Broadway, standing before a junk heap quadruple his size, the architect Markus Dochantschi was explaining how a gallery might find its own identity when virtually everyone has the same white walls and concrete floors. God was in the details — and in the lighting fixtures and in the floorboards.
“The architecture must speak,” Dochantschi said, above the noise of sledgehammers and buzzsaws, which are transforming the derelict space into a flexible showroom for the multicultural artists of Alexander Gray Associates. The architect insisted on keeping ornamental details like the Corinthian columns and tin ceilings from the early 1900s. “If it was just another completely neutral space, then why come to this gallery?”
Designs for contemporary art galleries have stayed relatively unchanged for the past century, with most dealers favoring a rigid “white cube” style harking back to when artists from the de Stijl and Bauhaus sought to minimize distractions. Institutions like the Museum of Modern Art soon adopted the white aesthetic as a neutral space in which to view abstract art. Critics have grumbled for decades that the style is “antiseptic” and “restrictive,” but there have been few major galleries willing to abandon the industry standard.
...