Liz Diller: A giant bubble for debate

We conventionally divide space

into private and public realms,

and we know these legal distinctions very well

because we've 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?

I mean, 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 backward

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

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 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're moving onto Washington, D.C.

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,

actually it's a space,

and it's kind of just defined by a 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 dissent.

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 commiseration.

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 insects and collections of locomotives

and all of that,

but you're really not involved;

you're being talked to.

When Richard Koshalek took over as director of the Hirshhorn

in 2009,

he was determined to take advantage

of the fact that this museum was sited

at the most unique place:

at the seat of power in the U.S.

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 to insert itself

into the dialogue of national and world affairs?

And could the museum be an agent of cultural diplomacy?

There are over 180 embassies in Washington D.C.

There are over 500 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 it,

and as we evolved the mission,

with Richard and his team --

it's really his life blood.

But beyond exhibiting contemporary art,

the Hirshhorn will become a public forum,

a place of discourse

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 the informality of the town square.

And for this new initiative,

the Hirshhorn would have to expand

or appropriate a site

for a contemporary, deployable structure.

This is it. This is the Hirshhorn --

so a 230-foot-diameter concrete doughnut

designed in the early '70s

by Gordon Bunshaft.

It's hulking, it's silent,

it's cloistered, it's arrogant,

it's a design challenge.

Architects love to hate it.

One redeeming feature

is it's lifted up off the ground

and it's got this void,

and it's got 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,

Ada Louise Huxstable, the New York Times critic,

had some choice words:

"Neo-penitentiary modern."

"A maimed monument and a maimed Mall

for a maimed collection."

Almost four decades later,

how will this building expand

for a new progressive program?

Where would it go?

It 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.

Well there's always the hole.

But how could it take the space of that hole

and not be buried in it invisibly?

How could it become iconic?

And what language would it take?

The Hirshhorn sits among the Mall's monumental institutions.

Most are neoclassical, heavy and opaque,

made of stone or concrete.

And the question is,

if one inhabits that space,

what is the material of the Mall?

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.

(Video)

So this is the big idea.

It's a giant airbag.

The expansion takes the shape of its container

and it oozes out wherever it 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 silcon-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.

It had to be approved by actually two agencies.

And one is there to preserve

the dignity and sanctity of the Mall.

I blush whenever I show this.

It is yours to interpret.

But one thing I can 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 D.C.

to 130 feet,

except for spires, towers, domes and minarets.

This pretty much exempts monuments of the church and state.

And the bubble is 153 ft.

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 the 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 surfaces.

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 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 the Mall.

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 site twice a year.

It's taken off the delivery truck.

It's 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 very strange moment

where we were asked by the bureaucracy at the Mall

how much time would it take to install.

And we said, well the first erection would take one week.

And they really connected with that idea.

And then it was really easy all the way through.

So we didn't really have that many hurdles, I have to say,

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 going to 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 anti-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 air

with the democratic air of the Mall.

And the bubble will inflate

hopefully for the first time

at the end of 2013.

Thank you.

(Applause)