SHoP Architects design an ambitious contemporary art facility in Santa Fe
There comes a time in many young art institutions’ lives when they have to grow up; elevating from daring upstart to established institution. Such was the case with SITE Santa Fe, an inventive Kunsthalle located in a boxy former beer warehouse in Santa Fe’s Railyard district. SITE, which recently turned 20, had over the years hired renowned architects like Greg Lynn, Graft, Todd Williams and Billie Tsien to enact temporary changes, but it needed something permanent and ambitious. ‘We were dreaming of something much more,’ explains SITE director and chief curator Irene Hofmann.
Earlier this month SITE celebrated the results of that undertaking – a reimagined facility designed by New York-based SHoP Architects. The museum now boasts about 14,000 new sq ft of (well-organised) space, much-needed technical improvements, and a dramatic new entryway.
That extended entrance, which the architects call the ‘prow’ because of how it juts sharply out toward the street, is a layered, folded, and perforated aluminium beacon that simultaneously pulls people in, defines a new outdoor plaza and frames the sky. It changes dramatically as light around it shifts, both day and night.
Its digitally-modeled creation, says SHoP principal Christopher Sharples, was inspired by the corrugated aluminum sides of boxcars in the nearby railyard, and by the triangular shapes prevalent in the city’s indigenous designs. Beyond the new beacon, a glass curtain wall exposes and draws people into SITE’s expanded, wide open new lobby, which flows freely into a gift shop and café. ‘We were taking the closed, opaque spaces and opening them up to the city,’ explains Sharples, who likened the complex, budget-challenged project to open heart surgery.
Galleries, in many ways familiar, have been slightly reconfigured with temporary walls. Around them are a new multi-purpose learning lab, a large, flexible auditorium, new offices, storage, a central courtyard and, above it, a sky terrace. All these spaces have been fitted with new lighting, electricity and (something SITE amazingly never had before) climate control; allowing them to stay open a much greater portion of the year and draw artists that couldn’t work in the previous conditions.
Happily the team preserved some of the old facility’s rough edges – like the concrete floors, marred in places from artist interventions, and the original stucco façade, albeit painted black, playing a sneaky supporting role. While much of the intervention is understated, it’s impossible to miss the jagged, brash prow, and its smaller sibling to the museum’s rear (which frames a smaller public space).
‘It’s scrappy, it’s got some attitude,’ says Sharples. Much like SITE. Whether the institution will maintain its jagged edges remains to be seen. But there’s no question about its elevated standing as one of the America’s homes of artistic innovation.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the SITE website and the SHoP architects website
ADDRESS
SITE
2606 Paseo De Peralta
Santa Fe NM 87501
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
-
Derek Jarman's House: Inside Prospect Cottage
A new book shines a spotlight inside Derek Jarman's Dungeness 'escape house'
By Caragh McKay Published
-
Warren Street Hotel is a colourful marvel in downtown Tribeca
The Warren Street Hotel boasts a distinct blue façade by Stonehill Taylor and eclectic interiors by Kit Kemp Design Studio
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Herbar’s barrier cream repairs skin damage using medicinal mushrooms
Herbar has launched The Barrier Cream, which harnesses the healing power of mushrooms and adaptogens to repair, soothe and protect the skin barrier
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema
‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
By Anne Soward Published
-
BLUM marks 30 years of Japanese contemporary art in America
BLUM will take ‘Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood’ to its New York space in September 2024, continuing its celebration of Japanese contemporary art in America
By Timothy Anscombe-Bell Published
-
Todd Gray’s sculptural photography collages defy dimension, linearity and narrative
In Todd Gray’s New York exhibition, he revisits his 40-year archive, fragmented into elaborated frames that open doors for new readings
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Frieze LA 2024 guide: the art, gossip and buzz
Our Frieze LA 2024 guide includes everything you need to know and see in and around the fair
By Renée Reizman Published
-
New York artist Christopher Astley showcases an alternative natural world
At Martos Gallery in New York, Christopher Astley’s paintings evoke an alternative natural world and the chaos of warfare (until 16 March 2024)
By Tianna Williams Published
-
The Whitney plots Harold Cohen’s artistic AI adventures
‘Harold Cohen: AARON’, at the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrates the artist’s software – the earliest AI program for artmaking – as an artwork in its own right
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Sneak peek: inside Jack Shainman’s vast New York gallery
Jack Shainman’s new gallery space opens with ‘Broken Spectre’, a new film by Irish artist Richard Mosse
By Mary Cleary Published
-
Artists explore the meaning of home through the lens of queer and trans domesticity in New York
Group exhibition ‘Dreaming of Home’, at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, uses a seminal Catherine Opie photograph as a springboard to explore the meaning of home today
By Hannah Silver Published