Queens Museum Central Atrium

Update (November 2023)
See here for the final published report published on Queens Museum’s website.

Update (November 2021)
See here for a blog post on Queens Museum’s Year of Uncertainty digital platform, about progress on the project - YoU - Access in the Atrium

Update (June 2021)
Scroll to bottom of page for Student Work related to this project from Joel Sanders’ Spring 2021 seminar, “Exhibitionism: Politics of Display” at Yale School of Architecture.

Update (April 2020)
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded Queens Museum a two-year (2020-2022) grant to fund a community-led reimagining of the building’s central atrium, with MIXdesign and Queens Community House. This inclusive design project will benefit underrepresented museumgoers, and expand upon MIXdesign’s Pilot Study, illustrated below.

Pilot Study (2019-2020)

CHALLENGE
Queens Museum’s Central Atrium is a key aspect of the 2013 expansion of the museum, intended to create an open, welcoming and multi-functional space, with flexibility for future modifications. A post-occupancy assessment revealed that today, the vast lobby which doubles as an event space, can be disorienting to many differently embodied and culturally identified multi-lingual visitors - a challenge shared among other community-oriented museums.

OPPORTUNITY
MIX conducted a Pilot Study to reimagine the Atrium as a flexible sequence of activity zones-- consisting of vestibule, reception, restrooms and multi-purpose event space-- that would enhance the visitor experience through the lens of accessibility and diverse needs and identities of the Museum’s visitorship.

Drawings by MIXdesign with Brenna Thompson

PROCESS

• Phase 1: Engagement: First, we obtained feedback from museum administrators, educators, event planners and curators through a survey, workshop and walking tour. Using this information, we conducted a comparative analysis in the form of a matrix that mapped the overlapping needs of different end-user communities as they performed different activities in the atrium at different times (during weekdays, weekends and evenings).

• Phase 2: Project Goals: We analyzed and compiled our findings in a report that identified the following project objectives and preliminary design recommendations the museum might address in the future. The atrium redesign must meet the needs of the specific community of end-users it serves. Feedback indicated user groups spanning Disability, Age, Gender, and Culture, who visit the museum in three group sizes performing associated activities. These included: small numbers of individuals visiting the galleries, student group tours, and large gatherings for special events (openings, lectures, workshops and performances). A comparative analysis of end-user activity groups revealed the shared need for multi-sensory/multi-lingual wayfinding, visible reception hubs, inclusive restrooms, storage for equipment to stage special events, a stage, and two kinds of intergenerational lounges—active and calm.

• Phase 3: Concept Design: We translated the recommendations outlined in Phase 2 into a Concept Design which we presented to stakeholders. The scheme illustrated below incorporates their initial feedback. It is a work in progress, conceived of as a visualization and development tool to solicit more input from the museum’s network of staff, board members, community groups, city agencies and foundations. Although the Pilot Design was generated prior to the pandemic, this version adjusts the design to incorporate MIXdesign COVID-19 recommendations for social distancing.

Floor Plans
The rotating floor plans above illustrate how the furniture of the lower atrium area can be reconfigured according to the museum’s active programming schedule. During regular hours, islands of freestanding furniture create seating clusters for visitors and school groups. For large gatherings, folding chairs and tables can be deployed to accommodate lectures, performances, workshops and events (openings, galas, and party rentals.)

West Entrance
The West Entrance is conceived of as a sanitary transition space. Visitors and school groups arriving by car and bus can obtain multi-lingual information at a multi-height reception desk that doubles as a hand-sanitizing station. No longer hidden down a corridor, the all-gender restrooms are a porous extension of the main entrance and include spaces for caregiving and a waiting area/lounge, in addition to dedicated lactation and prayer rooms down the hall (not pictured.)

Event Space
A freestanding storage wall anchors the center of the atrium and creates a backdrop for staging events. The wall contains IT and catering equipment in addition to folding chairs and tables. Seating islands—oval carpets with multi-height modular upholstered seats—create intimate places for gathering.

Calm Zone
We transformed the underutilized area beneath the cantilevered stair into an enclosed Calm Zone. Acoustic panels, adjustable diffuse top lighting and comfortable upholstered interior creates a quiet refuge geared for people who suffer from sensory overload, including children and people with ASD. Its outer perimeter is lined with a multi-height banquette that also slides along a track to enable social distancing.

East Entrance
Pedestrians entering from Flushing Meadows-Corona Park are greeted by a reception desk/sanitizing station that extends to become an Active Lounge. Modular multi-height seating slides along a track to allow for social distancing and flexible arrangements.

Student Work

The following projects were created by teams of students enrolled in a graduate seminar taught by Joel Sanders at the Yale School of Architecture -- Exhibitionism: The Politics of Display (Spring 2021). Students, working in teams, were asked to develop proposals for making the Queens Museum better meet the needs of non-compliant bodies through a two-step end-user engagement process.

Access and Orientation

Dominiq Oti, Kevin Gao, Lindsay Duddy

Challenge: Both as a building and a cultural destination, the Queens Museum can feel disconnected from its surrounding community. This disconnect manifests itself in many ways: in the Museum’s relationship to public transportation, the urban divide created by the neighboring highway, the building’s relationship to Flushing Meadow Park - all of which can be attributed to the Museum’s “entry sequence.”

Opportunity: By identifying a number of key moments in which this disconnect is evident, our team was able to propose a series of creative landscape interventions that begin to stitch together the Museum to its neighboring communities, in order to expand the Museum’s social impact and presence to the wider NYC community. The Queens Museum’s mission statement guides the form and symbolic representation of these interventions.

Proposal: Using hard and softscape forms, we propose to reinforce the Queens Museum entry as a place for cultural gathering that appeals to current visitors as well as new audiences in the surrounding community. By transforming the exterior areas around the building’s east entrance, our hope is to increase public access to the Museum from Flushing Meadow Park and public transportation.

The intervention creates a more experiential procession to the Queens Museum through the deployment of a landscape architecture toolkit, that modulates the walkways leading to the building. The toolkit can scale and mark spaces for a variety of uses. The toolkit includes trees, planters, benches, alcoves and colorful pathways that mediate access to the Queens Museum on both the East and West entrance. The museum’s outer edge is activated into a place for variegated gathering, encouraging moments of rest and cultural exchange.

Intergenerational Maker’s Space

Martin Carillo, Leyi Zhang, Alex Olivier, Natalie Broton

Challenge: Our group received feedback from Queens Museum end-users that the institution lacks variety and depth in its programming. The end-users that were consulted felt like they had seen everything that the museum has to offer in 45-minutes. In addition, although the end-users appreciate the existing museum programs, they expressed interest in attending more events that represent the multi-national and intergenerational community that surrounds the Museum. In addition, feedback gathered from Sally Talant, the museum’s new director, reflected an inefficient use of the Museum’s space, with only 40% of the building serving as active exhibition space. The rest of the space is used for administration, storage, or is largely unused, with a small portion devoted to artist’s studios. This research posed the challenge to provide a flexible space that can host different programs, bring the community together, and activate the unused spaces in the Museum.

Opportunity: Most of the unused space is located on the Southern wing of the museum. In the Southern wing, insufficient storage spaces are located in the back-of-house. On the Northern wing, the artist studios are isolated from the rest of the museum. It is important to note that the Museum is a separate entity from Flushing Corona Park, with minimal programming or relationship to its outdoor areas. In addition, the wood-floored, multi-purpose “Sunken Living Room” space in the central part of the building, is said to be difficult to program due to its size and location. These  factors inspired our team to design an intervention for these areas. In addition, the fact that the Museum breaks from a conventional “white cube” art space for viewing, encourages the making of art as an area of rich potential.

Proposal: Our project proposes a human-scaled, intimate gateway to the park and the Museum itself, contrasting the monumental scale of the Museum’s long-axis building itself. Our insertion creates a series of thresholds and outdoor rooms that blur the distinction between inside and outside, and reinforces the Museum’s relationship with the park. Given the end-user and stakeholder feedback gathered, our team proposes the insertion of a new building that will serve as an intergenerational makerspace meant to disrupt the predominance of the museum as an exclusive space for viewing art. Our proposal aims to be an inclusive space for the Museum’s community, that supports artmaking and arts education for people of all backgrounds, abilities, and ages. With this in mind, the building is organized in an “L” shape, where one wing is a flexible performance space (acknowledging performance as a way of making). The other wing dedicates its first floor to a woodshop, ceramics studio, fabrication lab, drawing and painting rooms, while the second floor houses the Museum’s artist residency program.

Health and Wellness

Cristobal Gracia, Justin Kong, Ivy Li

Challenge: The coronavirus pandemic has increased the need for more washing stations, as a result of increased awareness of hygiene. In Flushing Corona Park, the water fountains between the Unisphere and the Rocket Thrower (two monumental landmarks outside the East entrance of the Queens Museum) are left unused, offering great potential to meet this need.

Opportunity: Our team deploys spatial elements that encourage rest, play, and hygiene, reimagining the unused water fountains area as an active, multipurpose water infrastructure station. The station enhances the wellness of Queens Museum and park visitors of varying mobilities, ages, and cultures.

Proposal: At the unused fountains area, along the main axis of Corona Park, an ADA-accessible, sunken-level experience interacts with the existing underground water infrastructure. New drinking fountains, hand-washing stations, and a playscape are introduced in sequence as visitors gradually descend into the sunken-level.

Part functional and part sculptural, the water stations orchestrate movement of the body in relationship to water, while reinforcing the existing sprinkler and drainage system of Corona Park.