New York, New York, USA
In the heart of Chelsea, the design team of Architecture Research Office has transformed and expanded three buildings for the Dia Art Foundation, adding new facades, interior connections, and flexible, multi-functional spaces.
For its transformative design, Dia Chelsea has recently been awarded a 2022 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The renovation and expansion of Dia Art Foundation’s three adjacent buildings in Chelsea re-establishes its New York presence and foregrounds the artist’s vision.
Grounded in Dia’s architectural legacy of adapting existing structures, the design adds new facades, interior connections, and extensive building systems that respect the integrity of the buildings’ original spatial, structural, and material qualities.
Today Dia Chelsea is a 32,500-square-foot facility, with 20,000 square feet of an integrated, street-level exhibition and programming space.
The six-story easternmost building contains a new ground floor entry, bookstore, and a flexible “talk space” for 150 people.
New openings connect from the lobby through the adjoining walls of the one-story middle and western buildings, the exhibition spaces.
The project also includes 10,000 square feet of new Dia offices and an expanded library and education space on two upper floors of the eastern building.
The design presents each of Dia’s buildings as a distinct element within a unified composition.
Referencing the formerly industrial neighborhood and the existing structures, brick is the primary material on the façade, laid in a meticulous common bond pattern.
On the lower level of the eastern building, symmetrically-organized doors and windows separate the public entry from the one for other building tenants.
The facades of the middle and western exhibition buildings have large central openings that facilitate art handling and are scaled to the proportions of the spaces within.
A tall telescoping glass door defines the western building’s facade while an oversized metal-paneled garage door, which references the previous industrial door, defines the middle building.
Smaller doors for emergency egress flank these openings and the new steel-framed window and door system are painted gray, matching the color used across Dia’s other sites.
The design along the enhanced streetfront creates a porous connection for passersby and visitors alike to engage with art at Dia.
Project: Dia Chelsea
Architects: Architecture Research Office
Design Team: Kim Yao, Adam Yarinsky, Jeff Hong, Daniel Kuehn, Benjamin Moore, Jenny Hong, Christine Nasir, and Lian Ren
General Contractor: Eurostruct, Inc.
Client: Dia Art Foundation
Photographers: Elizabeth Felicella, Lucy Raven, and Bill Jacobson Studio
