Galleria Pop a Manhattan – Pop Gallery in Manhattan

THAT EMMANUEL PERROTIN HAS A STRONG INSTINCT FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE IS SOMETHING OF WHICH THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT. Over the course of the last fifteen years the French gallerist has promoted many artists who have become international celebrities and has opened exhibition spaces in buildings of great character. In New York he has placed his trust in two young architects, Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich, to renovate an icon of the Lower East Side of Manhattan – the Beckenstein Building – constructed in 1890 at 130 Orchard Street, which is now located in one of the metropolis’s few pedestrian precincts. The design by the Peterson Rich Office (PRO) marries the vintage charm of the building and the innovative atmosphere of the rooms by means of formal counterpoints that are able to compose a fluid and unitary spatial narrative. Wholly focused on making the most of its contents, one might say, almost with reverence. Trained at Yale and then honed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (Peterson) and Steven Holl Architects (Rich), the pair founded their studio in 2012, achieving immediate success and demonstrating an effective and personal linguistic-formal capacity and a thorough grasp of technology, something of which we see the result in this intervention.