CultureNOW | A Celebration of Culture & Community

Architect Moshe Safdie describes the process of conceptualizing and designing the new Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem. The rebuilding of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum includes a new visitors’ center (Mevoah), a new history museum replacing the existing museum constructed in 1953, a Hall of Names, a synagogue, galleries for Holocaust art, an exhibitions pavilion and a learning and visual center. In addition, new underground parking and facilities for tour buses are located adjacent to a new entrance piazza. The overall program quadruples the permanent exhibition space.

Architect Moshe Safdie discusses the design of the Peabody Essex Museum. Constructed in several phases over the past 200 years, it is the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States. The objectives of Safdie's architectural expansion and re-organisation were to create a dramatic addition emblematic of the institution’s new identity as a center of art and culture; to unify a disparate group of buildings and join them with newly doubled gallery space; and to present the museum to visitors as a coherent, welcoming whole. 

Joan Blumenfeld, Design Principal at Perkins+Will, discusses the land on which the Police Acadmey was built. The site was previously a brownfield and flood zone, thus the architects had challenges with creating the infrastructure since everything had to be built above ground.

Joan Blumenfeld, Design Principal at Perkins+Will, discusses the concept behind the New York City Police Academy. The architects had to contend with creating something for both the mind and body of the police recruits. The Academy is designed to consolidate an administrative and training campus for the New York Police Department and is the largest and most technologically advanced in the world. All spaces are designed to link together with enclosed walkways and stairs in what is essentially a "horizontal skyscraper."

Architect Joan Blumenfeld, Partner at Perkins+Will, was part of a team that renovated the NYU Stern School of Business in a building designed by Philip Johnson. Many buildings were located underground, which allowed for no natural light. They wanted to create a more transparent space in the community, and to have the building reflect its urban roots. 

Alice Aycock describes the design of the staircase she created inside a San Francisco library. She wanted the piece to seem as if a tornado had hurled it into a corner. This functional staircase connects the 5th and 6th floors of the library. The stairs wrap around a two-story sculptural cone and appear to unravel themselves as fragments of imaginary stairs peel off. Cyclone Fragment is a purely abstract sculpture that appears as a ghost projection of the spiral stair.

Renowned artist Alice Aycock describes the inspiration for her piece, the Star Sifter, which was commissioned to act as a barrier between JFK Airport security lines and the open atrium above. Airport security had been positioned underneath the atrium, making it possible to for contraband items to be smuggled past security. Star Sifter is conceptualized as a giant net and cone to catch falling items from making their way past security.

Alice Aycock discusses her "twisted bridges" sculpture on the waterfront in Nashville. The sculpture, located on the banks of the river in Nashville, was designed to look like two parts of a bridge that had been playfully flung into the air. The giant sculpture survived the floods of 2010, despite being submerged in high water.

Alice Aycock discusses her large-scale "wormhole" in a parking lot of the Kansas City Airport. The artwork ties themes of human flight, astrophysics and, some might say, extra-terrestials. Shaped like two giant trumpet bells facing away from each other and attached in the middle like a double-sided cornucopia, the artwork is fabricated like an airplane - an armature wrapped in an aluminum skin. The sculpture evokes the spaces created by wind tunnels, which are used to test the aerodynamics of airplane designs. It also suggests future travel through wormholes or time machines as imagined in science fiction. The neon antennae are designed as vertical counterpoints to the curvature of the tunnel. They also suggest that energy is radiating out into and down through the sculpture.

Alice Aycock describes the inspiration for her large-scale sculpture, an aluminium helix, placed atop the defunct Department of Sanitation Waste Transfer Station as part of a project to transform the building into a public plaza. The shape was inspired by Fred Astaire's dancing, and responds to the vast visual environment around the Queensborough Bridge.