A giant bubble for debate Liz Diller

we conventionally divided space into

private and public realms and we know

these legal distinctions very well

because we become experts at protecting

our private property and private space

but we’re less attuned to the nuances of

the public what translates generic

public space into qualitative space and

this is something that our studio has

been working on for the past decade and

we’re doing this through some case

studies a large chunk of our work has

been put into transforming this

neglected industrial ruin into a viable

post-industrial space that looks forward

and backwards at the same time and

another huge chunk of our work has gone

into making relevant a site that’s grown

out of sync with its time we’ve been

working on democratizing Lincoln Center

for a public that doesn’t usually have

300 dollars to spend on an opera ticket

so we’ve been eating drinking thinking

living public space for quite a long

time and it’s taught us really one thing

and that is to truly make a good public

space you have to erase the distinctions

between architecture urbanism landscape

media design and so on it really goes

beyond distinction now we are moving on

to Washington DC and we’re working on

another transformation and that is for

the existing Hirshhorn Museum

that’s sited on the most revered public

space in America the National Mall the

mall is a symbol of American democracy

and what’s fantastic is that this symbol

is not a thing it’s not an image it’s

not an artifact it’s actually it’s a

space and it’s kind of just defined by

line of buildings on either side it’s a

space where citizens can voice their

discontent and show their power it’s a

place where pivotal moments in American

history have taken place and they’re

inscribed in there forever

like the march on Washington for Jobs

and Freedom and the great speech that

Martin Luther King gave there the

Vietnam protests the commemoration of

all that died in the pandemic of AIDS

the March for women’s reproductive

rights right up until almost the present

the mall is the greatest civic stage in

this country for descent and it’s

synonymous with free speech even if

you’re not sure what it is that you have

to say it may just be a place for civic

and miseration there is a huge

disconnect we believe between the

communicative and discursive space of

the mall and the museums that line it to

either side and that is that those

museums are usually passive they have

passive relationships between the museum

as the presenter and the audience as the

receiver of information and so you can

see dinosaurs and and and insects and

collections of locomotives and and all

of that but you’re really not involved

you’re being talked to when Richard

Kirsch aaalac took over as director of

the Hirshhorn in 2009 he was determined

to take advantage of the fact that this

museum was sited the most unique place

the seat of power in the US and while

art and politics are inherently and

implicitly

together always and all the time there

could be some very special relationship

that could be forged here in its

uniqueness the question is is it

possible ultimately for art’s to insert

itself into the dialogue of national and

world affairs and could the museum be an

agent of cultural diplomacy there are

over a hundred and eighty embassies in

Washington DC there are over five

hundred think tanks there should be a

way of harnessing all of that

intellectual and global energy into and

somehow through the museum there should

be some kind of brain trust

so the Hirshhorn as we began to think

about

and as we evolved the mission with

Richard and his team it’s really his

lifeblood

but beyond exhibiting contemporary art

the Hirshhorn will become a public forum

a place of discourse for for issues

around arts culture politics and policy

it would have the global reach of the

World Economic Forum it would have the

interdisciplinarity of the TED

Conference it would have kind of the

informality of The Times Square and for

this new initiative the Hirshhorn would

have to expand or appropriate aside for

a temporary deployable structure this is

it this is the Hirshhorn so 230 foot

diameter concrete donut design in the

early 70s by Gordon Bunn shaft

it’s hulking its silent its cloistered

its arrogant it’s a design challenge

architects love to hate it a one

redeeming feature is its lifted up off

the ground and it’s got this void and

it’s God an empty core kind of in the

spirit and that facade very much

corporate and federal style and around

that space the ring is actually

galleries very very difficult to mount

shows in there when the Hirshhorn opened

it’ll always huxtable the New York Times

critic had some choice words neo

penitentiary modern a maimed monument

and and maimed mall for a maimed

collection almost four decades later how

would this building expand for a new

progressive program where would it go

can’t go in the mall there is no space

there it can’t go in the courtyard it’s

already taken up by landscape and by

sculptures oh there’s always the hole

but how could it take the space of that

hole and not be buried in it and

invisibly how could it become iconic and

what language would it take the

Hirshhorn sits among the most monumental

institutions most are neoclassical heavy

and opaque made of stone or concrete and

question is well if one inhabits that

space what is the material

of them all it has to be different from

the buildings there it has to be

something entirely different it has to

be air in our imagination it has to be

light it has to be ephemeral it has to

be formless and it has to be free

so this is the big idea

it’s a giant air bag the expansion takes

the shape of its container and it loses

out wherever can the top and sides but

more poetically we like to think of the

structure as inhaling the Democratic air

of the mall bringing it into itself the

before and the after it was dubbed the

bubble by the press that was the lounge

it’s basically one big volume of air

that just oozes out in every direction

the membrane is translucent it’s made of

silicone coated glass fiber and it’s

inflated twice a year for one month at a

time this is the view from the inside so

you might have been wondering how in the

world did we get this approved by the

federal government I mean it was it had

to be approved by actually two agencies

and and it was and one is there to

preserve the dignity and sanctity of

them all

I blush whenever I show this it is yours

to interpret but one thing I could say

is that it’s a combination of iconoclasm

and adoration there was also some

creative interpretation involved the

Congressional Buildings Act of 1910

limits the height of buildings in DC to

130 feet except for spires towers domes

and minarets there’s pretty much exempts

monuments of the church and state and

the bubble is 153 feet that’s the

Pantheon next to it it’s about 1.2

million cubic feet of compressed air and

so we argued it on the merits of being a

dome so there it is very stately among

all these stately buildings in the mall

and while this Hirshhorn is not

landmarked it’s very very historically

sensitive and so we couldn’t really

touch its services we couldn’t leave any

traces behind

so we strained it from the edges and we

held it by cables it’s a study of some

bondage techniques which are actually

very very important because it’s hit by

wind all the time there’s one permanent

steel ring at the top but it can’t be

seen from any vantage point on them all

there are also some restrictions about

how much it could be lit it glows from

within it’s translucent but it can’t be

more lit than the Capitol or some of the

monuments so it’s down the hierarchy on

lighting so it comes to the side twice a

year it’s taken off the delivery truck

its hoisted and then it’s inflated with

this low pressure air and then it’s

restrained with the cables and then it’s

ballasted with water at the very bottom

this is a converse strange moment we

were asked by the the bureaucracy at the

mall how much time would it take to

install and we said well the first

direction would take one week the very

first and they really connected with

that idea and and then it was really

easy all the way through but so we

didn’t really have that many hurdles I

have to say with the with the government

and all the authorities but some of the

toughest hurdles have been the technical

ones this is the warp and weft this is a

point cloud there are extreme pressures

this is a very very unusual building in

that there’s no gravity load but there’s

load in every direction and I’m just

gonna zip through these slides and this

is the space in action so flexible

interior for discussions just like this

but in the round luminous and

reconfigurable could be used for

anything for performances films for

installations and the very first program

will be one of cultural dialogue and

diplomacy organized in partnership with

the Council on Foreign Relations form

and content are together here the bubble

is an ante monument the ideals of

participatory democracy are represented

through suppleness rather than rigidity

art and politics occupy an ambiguous

site outside the museum walls but inside

of the museum’s core blending its

with the Democratic era of the mall and

the bubble will inflate hopefully for

the first time at the end of 2013

thank you