Performa Hub
| Location |
| New York, NY |
| Client |
| Performa |
| Status |
| Finalist, September 2015 |
| Program |
| Performance Space, Cultural, Institution, Public Space |
| Size |
| 2,500 SF |
| Team |
| Nahyun Hwang, David Eugin Moon, Justin Kollar |
The Performa Hub, started in 2009, is a dynamic locus for an ongoing dialogue throughout the biennial, acting as a kind of living room facilitating the exchange of ideas surrounding performance and contemporary art and culture. Offering a venue for special performances, screenings, panel discussions, artists’ seminars, a lounge, shop, and visitor center, the Hub is the biennial’s headquarters, bringing to life the organization’s mission to illuminate performance from innovative perspectives and across disciplines.
N H D M's proposal for the invited competition for the 2015 Performa Biennale Hub is based on the notion of a reprogrammable (temporary) hub that both accommodates the needs of the artists and their audiences but also instigate new contexts for Performa and beyond. The design provides dynamic infrastructure of multi-functional moving figures, each to be further developed with its own material, formal, and operational characteristics. Working in the confines of the site, these elements not only define, but blur and challenge the different zones for the necessary program spaces. Articulating and amplifying the programmatic and artistic intentions into dramatic and legible spatial changes, the elements in turn provoke new and unexpected approaches and spontaneous actions. Inspired by this year's Performa theme “Renaissance” that revisits the origins of performance art in the context of the city and the concerns of its citizens, and considering the concept and history of "downtown" as the physical and aspirational context, the proposal seeks to expand its scope and "perform" outside of its temporal and spatial confines. Referred to as the project's "afterlife(live)," all of the design elements are intended to be reused on different sites after the Biennale. This approach challenges the often disposable, ephemeral, and hyperlocal nature of temporary architecture appropriating its most commonly used typologies, while allowing the Hub’s space to perform beyond the framework of the biennale.