Where Is the Hamilton Building at the Art Museum

The following essay is excerpted from: Banasiak, Grand. (2020). A Sensory Identify for All. In G. Lindsay (Ed.),Contemporary Museum Architecture and Pattern: Theory and Practice of Place. New York: Routledge, www.routledge.com/Contemporary-Museum-Architecture-and-Design-Theory-and-Exercise-of-Identify/Lindsay/p/volume/9780367075248

Titanium exterior of the
Frederic C. Hamilton Building,
Denver, Colorado.Emerging
technology made information technology possible
to construct new, angled
building forms such as ​​​​​the
Hamilton Edifice.
​Photo:Cosmin Caciuc, 2007
​​

Daniel Libeskind's Frederic C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Fine art Museum opened in 2006; it was the first Libeskind edifice for the United States. Intended to be a statement piece for the city of Denver, its earliest concept drawings referenced angled shapes inherent in the rocky mountain landscapes w of the city. However, the Hamilton building's grade strongly contrasts other buildings in the immediate surrounding urban context. Libeskind was among the start to experiment with emerging 3D design, modelling and digital fabrication technology including using automated control for positioning the angles of the titanium and steel building elements (Johnson 2016). Prior to the emergence of these digital generation and fabrication tools, such non-orthogonal forms were largely cost prohibitive. Advances in technology supported the cosmos of new building forms. Users interacting with these new forms had new perceptual experiences with some unanticipated results.

Some have reported experiencing dizziness
while ascending on the museum's stair
where the walls,ceiling and floors converge
and diverge altering 1's visual sense of
being upright. Photograph: Meredith Banasiak,
2018

The angled interior of the Hamilton building is consistent with its exterior. Some users take reported experiencing a sense of dizziness in response to the angles, specially on the main staircase where not just the walls and ceiling converge and diverge at angles, but also the flooring plane inclines to provide the intended vertical apportionment. The probable source of dizziness is a company's brain struggling to orient itself in infinite. Orientation relies on input from multiple sources. The brain attempts to integrate converging inputs from vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive systems to adjust posture and movement and maintain desired orientation. I source of input comes from vestibular structures in the inner ear. A layer of gravel-like crystals presses downward on a dumbo bed of sensory cells in response to gravity (Baloh et al. 2010) signaling whether the head (and by association, the body) is upright or tilted. Standing on the stairs, the message from these inner ear cells to the encephalon is, "upright!". Meanwhile, the visual organization too contributes information about body position (Witkin and Asch 1948). The disorienting visual cues from the angled planes defining the stairway betoken that the body is "not upright!". The effect tin can exist an imperceptible feel, "Am I upright? Am I non upright?," as the brain struggles to make sense of the competing letters and conform body position. The result is that some users report experiencing a sense of dizziness.

The four-story El Pomar Grand Atrium in the
Denver Fine art Museum'south Frederic C. Hamilton
Building, Denver, Colorado. Photo: Cosmin
Caciuc, 2007

Similar disorienting experiences have been documented by users of Frank Gehry's buildings such equally in MIT's Strata Eye where the spatial complexity of the undulating planes in the conference room reportedly cause i third of visitors to feel empty-headed (Smith 2007). Such dizziness furnishings not only create sensory discomfort, just too physical mobility concerns potentially increasing the risk of falls for visitors who miscalculate movements resulting from alien sensory data. Libeskind's Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco completed in 2008 also utilizes his characteristic angled forms; however, the stairs at the Contemporary Jewish Museum offering visitors one orthogonal side wall plane which helps orient visitors in space potentially reducing sensations of dizziness and subsequent falls.

Does the edifice emotionally bias or confuse what the experience of that same painting might be in a different physical environment? The architecture of the Hamilton building primes the user for an experience which may not be consistent with some of its visual fine art works and temporary exhibit themes. Studies accept shown that context influences a user's ratings of beauty and preference for an artwork, and thus a museum tin induce a certain style of viewing an object (van Paasschen et al. 2015). According to Chatterjee and Vartanian'southward model of neuroaesthetic experience which illustrates the interaction betwixt sensory–motor, emotion–valuation, and significant–knowledge neural systems, (Chatterjee and Vartanian 2014) building geometries can influence a user'southward aesthetic experience and contribute to differences in perceived emotion and meaning (Banaei et al. 2017). Hence, the container-contents relationship, described as how the exhibit space and art legitimize each other (Joy 1998), is at odds in cases where there is a conflict between the perceptual responses generated past the edifice and by the art. For example, neuroscience studies have shown that a fear response is triggered in the encephalon by abrupt objects and sharply angled spaces because sharpness signals threat (Vartanian et al. 2013, Bar and Neta 2007). The perceptual feel of the Hamilton building's precipitous contours, as well as the stairwell experience which may predispose a user to sensations of dizziness, probable back up a land of high physiological arousal. Yet, this architectural experience could be in conflict with visual fine art pieces which aim to support contemplative states more closely associated with calmness.

Tuning the interaction effect so that there is not a disconnect between building and art, betwixt container and contents, means including or commissioning exhibit material which aligns with and is supported by the building itself. Certainly, not all art intends to be calming. To the reverse, highly arousing art forms be and can exist created for which the Hamilton building is an platonic resonator. The novel architectural form and resulting new perceptual experiences have been an impetus for artists and curators to inspire new art and exhibit installations created for this specific building (Lindsay 2016). Art with themes more aligned with the building's perceptual and emotional experience have emerged such every bit Matthew Brannon's large scale vinyl wall landscape "Last to Know" (2009) depicting sharp and serrated knives oriented in the direction of the angled plane adjacent to the stairs in the Hamilton Building, and amplifying sensations of sharpness. In addition, immersive exhibits including interactive animations projected on angled walls in cave-similar spaces gives users realistic sensations of existence on Arctic icebergs. In such cases, the museum's architecture and art comingle and is experienced by the whole body and multiple senses interacting.

Considering the Denver Art Museum includes many temporary and rotating exhibits, exhibits which must fit into many unlike museum buildings along their tour, the museum faces a greater challenge in aligning perceptual experiences betwixt container and contents than museums which house permanent collections where interactions can exist meliorate anticipated and choreographed from design inception.

Chronic detrimental furnishings of multisensory conflict acquired by abundant and asunder sensory information have been documented in long term residents of urban environments where it is believed that psychotic symptoms and psychiatric disorders are triggered by an inability to inhibit the abiding multitude of attention-demanding anomalous stimuli in the surround (Golembiewski 2017). The acute, short term effects of sensory conflict commensurate with museum visits are less understood. No matter what the intended emotive or sensorial message, optimizing multisensory information and reducing sensory disharmonize between the art and the environment supports greater perceptibility of the messaging. Such a strategy not just promotes good design, merely also ethical pattern by providing an experience supporting diverse perceptual abilities so that the museum tin remain an attainable identify for all.

References

Baloh, Robert, Vicente Honrubia, and Kevin Kerber. 2010.Clinical neurophysiology of the vestibular arrangement, 4th Edition. Philadelphia: Oxford University Press.

Banaei, Maryam, Javad Hatami, Abbas Yazdanfar, and Klaus Gramann. 2017. "Walking through Architectural Spaces: The Impact of Interior Forms on Human Brain Dynamics."Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 11, no. 477 (September): ane-14.

Bar, Moshe, and Maital Neta. 2007. "Visual elements of subjective preference modulate amygdala activation."Neuropsychologia 45: 2191–2200.

Chatterjee, Anjan and Oshin Vartanian. 2014. "Neuroaesthetics."Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18, no. 7: 370–375.

Golembiewski, January. 2017. "Architecture, the urban surround and astringent psychosis: Aetiology."Journal of Urban Pattern and Mental Wellness 2, no. ane.

Johnson, Brian R. 2016.Design Computing: An Overview of an Emergent Field. New York: Routledge.

Joy, Annamma. 1998. "The Framing Procedure: The Role of Galleries in the Apportionment of Art." InServicescapes: The Concept of Identify in Gimmicky Markets, edited past. John F. Sherry, Jr., 259–304. Lincolnwood, IL: Nike Town Chicago Business organisation Books.

Lindsay, Georgia. 2016. "Chapter six: Denver Fine art Museum's Hamilton Building." In The User Perspective on Twenty-Commencement-Century Art Museums, edited by Georgia Lindsay, 96-112. New York: Routledge.

Smith, Kyle. 2007. "Frank Lloyd Incorrect."New York Post,November 11, 2007. https://nypost.com/2007/11/11/frank-lloyd-wrong/

van Paasschen, Jorien, Francesca Bacci, and David Melcher. 2015. "The Influence of Art Expertise and Preparation on Emotion and Preference Ratings for Representational and Abstract Artworks."PLoS 1 10 no. eight: e0134241.

Vartanian, Oshin, Gorka Navarrete, Anjan Chatterjee, Lars Brorson Fich, Helmut Leder, Cristian Modroño, and Martin Skov. 2013. "Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in compages."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Usa110: 10446–10453.

Witkin, Herman and Asch, Solomon. 1948. "Studies in infinite orientation. Four. Further experiments on perception of the upright with displaced visual fields."Journal of Experimental Psychology 38 no. 6: 762-782.

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