Highline Museum

After lying dormant for more than twenty-five years, the reinvigoration of the highline as a space for leisure, tranquility and contemplation realizes this existing datum through which the neighborhood is experienced. While this infrastructure provides a new extension of the Kunsthalle site, the width and linearity passes through the site with a speed that limits the duration of inhabitation, not allowing for gathering. Allowing for a deviation from the highline into the site provides for a prolonged experience of art and urban landscape. Most cultural institutions serve only a part of the population; the convergence of urban life and this newly defined infrastructure within the limits of the site creates an intimate dialog between public circulation and the private galleries of the Kunstalle. A continuous public route connects the street, highline and a series of exterior spaces carved out from the mass of the building. These spaces act as extensions of the private galleries, offering glimpses to the work inside. They offer temporal access to the individual galleries, allowing them to operate independently when needed. The interior galleries exist as a series of flexible studios, exhibition and performance spaces allowing the artists to operate within the context of the site, neighborhood, city and beyond. The Kunsthalle, as an institution, generates a constant dialogue between culture and current events through the artists’ site specific work allowing the collection to remain the life of the artists within.