Prism Gallery

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Project Name: Prism Gallery
Construction year: 2009
Website: www.prismla.com
Address: 8746 W. Sunset Boulevard , LOS ANGELES-CALIFORNIA - United States

Architect(s) : PATTERNS (www.p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s.net)
Project Category: Cultural

Latitude: 34.0912
Longitude: -118.382

Prism Gallery

Located at the heart of Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, California is Prism, a new three story cultural center. The mission of the cultural center is to become a cornerstone of artistic experimentation, carving a new niche for the arts in Southern California. Alongside the exhibition space, the center will also house a book shop with a curated selection of texts and products opening to the public on November 12, 2009 this innovative design ports the first facade in the nation to be constructed entirely out of a resin based composite polycarbonate.

The gallery envelope is designed to create subtle sensations by inducing a physical and optical dynamism that both challenge and enhance the movement of the body in the iconic sunset strip. Its formal logic is the outcome of a productive negotiation between the ordering column grid of the existing building and the intense social and physical dynamism of the context. Almost theatrically, the building surfaces are lift up and down, opening the interior while suspending its mass over the strip and producing a sense of weightiness over passerby pedestrian and vehicle traffic approaching from downhill.

The innovative project is the outcome of PATTERNS’s collaboration with 3Form, an advanced material fabrication company specializing on resin based composites. An essential part of the design development process, the collaboration ensured a sophisticated and innovative approach to the materialization of the project. Deeply inspired by automotive design supple forms, streamlined detailing and plastic finishes; the façade has a dual aesthetic performance associated to its plastic materiality and responsive to the lively energy of its context: it behaves as a reflectively glossy surface during daylight and as a viscously translucent skin [when lit from inside] at night. (text from architect's website)

Contributed by ArchiTeam