New York City
SOM

Transforming a horizontal space, SOM conjures up a gleaming interior world of vertical reflections at its Skyscraper Museum in New York City

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	Photo © Robert Polidori
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It seems slightly ironic to wedge a museum devoted to the taller-than-tall achievements of the skyscraper into a horizontal, ground-floor space. Yet Carol Willis, the founder, director, and curator of the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan, is elated with her 5,000 square feet at the back of the new Ritz Carlton Hotel in Battery Park City. For one thing, it was free: Millennium Partners, the developers working with the Battery Park City Authority, donated the space in a 67-year lease, where the museum pays only condominium charges.

Willis is also elated that Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) figured out a smoke-and-mirrors strategy to make the horizontal space seem vertical—without the smoke, of course, and with stainless-steel, mirror-finished panels on the floors and ceilings. And SOM’s architectural expertise came gratis. On top of that, Tishman Construction volunteered construction management services and made sure the stainless steel and other materials could be had at a reasonable price. Jaros Baum & Bolles and Pentagram also donated their respective m/e/p and graphic design services.

Often with freebies, the architectural result turns out nice, clean, and serviceable, offering a new coat of paint for which everyone feels immensely grateful. So it comes as a bit of a jolt to find a spectacular interior here. By surfacing floors and ceilings with gleaming, reflective, stainless-steel panels, Duffy tricks your eye—and your feet: You almost think you’ve entered a vertical interior world populated by tall display vitrines soaring to infinity. No nasty interruptions in ceiling and floor planes mar the illusion; the raised-plenum floor where air is distributed conceals the electrical wiring and pipes.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our September 2004 issue.
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