Canal Projects
New York, New York
Completed 2022
Design Team
Jejon Yeung, Max Worrell, Beatriz de Uña Bóveda, Yunchao Le
Collaborators
Lighting Designer : Lighting Workshop
Structural Engineer: Silman
MEP Engineer: Jack Green Associates
Canal Projects, a nonprofit contemporary art institution, supports forward-thinking international artists at pivotal moments in their careers. A renovation of two floors of a landmarked cast-iron building in SoHo, the design creates a series of open, flexible spaces that support exhibitions, events, and lectures. Completed in 1900, the historic building retained a wealth of original industrial details, including a white-painted façade, masonry walls, cast-iron steam radiators, and double-hung windows.
A new entry off Canal Street establishes a distinguished front door for the organization. Inside, a dramatic vertical space wrapped in patinated bronze panels marks the first in a series of thresholds leading to the galleries. Upstairs in the main gallery, the preservation of five cast-iron columns and five wide-flange steel columns expresses the building’s restrained industrial character.
The spaces compress and expand, collapse and unfold, and shift between dark and light.
The white-walled gallery transitions to a darker, more textured downstairs gallery that accommodates a library, film screenings, and lectures. Below the sidewalk vault a custom metal bookcase contains the library, quiet and contained yet activated by dappled light and pedestrian activity from the streetscape above. White Dutch doors conceal a hidden pantry; when opened, they reveal an original masonry archway over an orange interior, a layering of bright color, old elements, and new materials.
Photos by Naho Kubota