)
American Bible Society
A STRATEGY TO STAY
Sometimes the answer to “sell” or “stay” is both. That’s what DF&A realized when it considered the quandary of the American Bible Society. The ABS had been distributing Christian Bibles from its Manhattan headquarters for 200 years, during which time changes in zoning and the growth of the real estate market made its site near Columbus Circle a potential gold mine. But the nonprofit wanted to stay in the heart of the city to spread God’s word to those who arguably needed it the most. So DF&A designed a strategy that allowed them to sell and stay.
Because the American Bible Society building serves as a museum, a library, and the headquarters for a major nonprofit institution, it requires a sense of light, spaciousness, welcome, and grandeur, but not necessarily expansive floor space. So DF&A redesigned the headquarters using a strategy of atrium displacement, in which a technically smaller, but grander ABS below--with three atria and two enticing entrances--supported a luxury hotel above.
Although the objects of our daily life can be rich in history and meaning, they rarely command our attention. The Budapest Museum of Ethnography designed by DF&A celebrates those very objects, while itself becoming a well-loved part of daily life. One of our favorite elements of the design is a visible storage tower called a Cabinet of Curiosities, a heightened version of the cabinets in our homes that are stuffed with treasures. From inside the museum, the Cabinet allows visitors to appreciate artifacts in their uncurated state, as a kind of beloved jumble. From outside the museum, the Cabinet of Curiosities extends beyond the street-side facade, both a symbol of critical inquiry and an object of curiosity itself.
Dallas, Texas, is one of America’s most car-dependent major metropolitan areas, with some of the biggest highways around its downtown. Pedestrians are a rare breed. But does that mean people don’t want to walk? In designing the mixed-use complex Dallas Alpha West, DF&A wagered that not having to use a car would actually come as a relief. The firm adopted the Dutch concept of the woonerf, or shared street, to create a 14-acre dynamic mixed-use plaza that prioritizes the pedestrian.
