Cultural Transformations: Rethinking Spaces & Places for Art

In this era of reinvention and adaptive reuse, leading cultural institutions are increasingly rethinking their settings and approaches to delivering visual and performing arts resources to their audiences. Seen in museum, library and music projects around the world, the framework of ‘umbau’—which includes conversions, renovation and adaptive reuse—is seen as a sustainable approach that builds on community touchstones in creative ways. This design panel—with Jeanne Gang, FAIA, Jhae Eli-Hernandez of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, advisor András Szántó Ph.D,, and gmp’s Stephan Schütz—shows how this architectural evolution integrates overlays and new suppositions into this future-looking process, nothing less than nonstop transformation of the cultural realm.