Working with wHY Architecture in NYC, came with the opportunity to engage with a variety of leading cultural institutions and to contribute to the process of museums rethinking their role in the context of specific cities and communities. Collaborating with museums and curators is a unique way to craft spatial narratives that blend different realities, temporalities and ideologies, often times to communicate particular statement. The range of projects included cultural institutions across the world - from various cities in the United States, the UK and Russia, to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
wHY was the winner of an international competition to redesign the landmark Ross Pavilion and surrounding parkland of West Princes Street Gardens. Located on a UNESCO world heritage site, the project requires a highly sensitive approach to reviving an important public space at the heart of the city. As a response, the project applied practices of wilding to restore the Scottish landscape, creating a synthesis of structural design and organic growth; rather than designing a “building in a park,” the design set out to design a park which defines the architecture.
The American Museum of Natural History’s historic Northwest Coast Hall is the Museum’s oldest exhibition hall, which opened in 1899 to showcase the material cultures of Indigenous communities living along North America’s Pacific Northwest Coast. Curated by ethnographer Franz Boas, known as “the father of modern anthropology,” the exhibits were ambitious and laid the foundation for a new way of presenting cultures.
The histories, customs, materials, creative expressions and objects highlighted in the Northwest Coast Hall are those of living cultures. WHY’s renovation of the gallery restored and refreshed the displays to more conscientiously reflect that – intimately engaging Indigenous consultants and curators in the process and working closely with the Museum’s Exhibition department, which was responsible for the writing, graphic design, and multimedia. Together we ignited multimedia touchpoints and set the stage for nimble contemporary displays, all while preserving the immense architectural history of the original gallery.
The renovation project of the Rockefeller Wing at The Met was the process of reassessing art history. The redesigned spaces carefully reassessed the relationship between vastly different world traditions and geographies. The planned installations will amplify an understanding of historical and cultural context, highlight the provenance of specific artifacts, and provide greater clarity and accessibility to visitors. This project is informed by extensive archival and field research, as well as sensitive engagement with representatives from the living cultures represented in the galleries.
The New Museum, NYC (Competition for the expansion project of the New Museum)
Set on the edge of Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Harbour, the Empty Gallery is a pioneering art space for audiovisual art, experimental film and music. Brewin devised a series of halls and walkways cloaked in pitch-black darkness to disorient the senses and completely isolate the traditional experience of art from the ‘distracting’ surrounding environment. This journey into the dark void is interspersed with meditated moments of pause which facilitate the uninhibited transmission of ideas and emotion between the art and the audience.