New York, USA
The Shed is New York’s first arts center dedicated to commissioning, producing, and presenting all types of performing arts, visual arts, and popular culture.
In 2017, Michael Bloomberg donated $75 million to the project where the High Line meets Hudson Yards.
The Shed’s Bloomberg Building— an innovative 200,000 square-foot structure designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Lead Architect and Rockwell Group, Collaborating Architect—is designed to physically transform to support artists’ most ambitious ideas.
A telescoping outer shell can deploy from its position over the base building and glide along rails onto an adjoining plaza to double the building’s footprint for large-scale performances, installations, and events.
Its eight-level base building can simultaneously house multiple events of different scale and content—from plays, to operas, dance performances, artwork, and large scale installations.
Its eight-level base building can simultaneously house multiple events of different scale and content—from plays, to operas, dance performances, artwork, and large scale installations.
The Shed’s open infrastructure can be permanently flexible for an unknowable future and responsive to variability in scale, media, technology, and the evolving needs of artists.
The Shed’s 120-foot tall (37 m) movable shell is made of an exposed steel diagrid frame, clad in translucent cushions of a strong and lightweight Teflon- based polymer, called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). This material has the thermal properties of insulating glass at a fraction of the weight. The Shed’s ETFE panels are some of the largest ever produced, measuring almost 70 feet (21 m) in length in some areas.
The Shed has an energy-conscious design using a radiant heating system within the plaza construction and a variable forced air heating and cooling system serving the occupied portions of the shell for maximum efficiency. The building is designed to achieve LEEDSilver certification and to exceed New York’s energy codes by 25%, which is required of all new buildings on city-owned land or using city-provided funds. Despite the shell’s two-million-cubic-foot interior, only the lower 30% will need to be temperature controlled. The Plaza has a radiant-heat floor plate.
The Shed’s kinetic system is inspired by the industrial past of the High Line and the West Side Rail Yard. Based on gantry cranes commonly found in shipping ports and railway systems, the kinetic system comprises a sled drive on top of the base building and bogie wheels guided along with a pair of 273-foot-long (83 m) rails on Level 2 (Plaza Level).
Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Collaborating Architect: Rockwell Group
Client: The Shed
Photographers: Iwan Baan and Timothy Schenck