Museum Gift Shop | Lab
Completed 1999
Designed and built in collaboration with the School of Architecture, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Positioned on the main axis of the historic, Beaux-Arts, Museum of Art on the University of Michigan campus, the 540 sqft gift shop is a “reluctant object.” It is at once a spatial player in one’s experience of the museum while simultaneously attempting to blend in. The interior of the shop is highly programmed for the sale of gifts while the modeled white exterior surfaces provide a background for medieval fragments and figures, their display designed to disturb the symmetry of the box and convey ambivalence. Embedded into one long wavering wall is a slender glass case which, supported by 101 spidery steel legs, holds manuscripts, chalices and small artifacts. On the opposite exterior is a composition of medieval figurines, individually held off the wall by steel arms and bases. As an object in space the bookshop becomes almost symmetrical, almost white, almost an object that competes with art.
