Sperone Westwater will move to the Bowery

In September 2010, Sperone Westwater celebrates its 35th anniversary with the opening of 257 Bowery, an iconic building designed by Foster + Partners. Founded in 1975, Sperone Westwater's original program showcased a European avant-garde alongside a core group of American artists to whom its founders were committed. Today, the gallery continues to exhibit an international roster of prominent artists working in a wide variety of media. Prompted by the need for larger and more structurally flexible space, the Foster + Partners design doubles the gallery's exhibition area and provides a variety of rooms for the gallery's ambitious and diverse program. The eight-storey building pioneers an innovative approach to vertical movement within a gallery setting. The centerpiece of the concept is a 12 x 20 foot moving room, 13 feet high, which can create either a temporal transition between the gallery's exhibition floors or an extension to a particular floor's program. Slowly moving between floors, the moving room will be a prominent feature on the Bowery. Visible from the street, its gentle pace and Ferrari-red exterior, contrasts markedly with the surrounding environment. An additional passenger/ freight elevator and stairs provide alternate access. According to Norman Foster, 'The concept for Sperone Westwater is both a response to the Bowery's dynamic urban character and a desire to rethink the way in which we engage with art in the setting of a gallery. The moving room animates the exterior of the building and creates a bold vertical element within. Like a kinetic addition to the street, it is a lively symbol of the area's reinvention and a daring response to the gallery's major program.' The design incorporates a double height, 27-foot tall exhibition space at street level, with a sky-lit gallery, a mezzanine floor, a sculpture terrace overlooking a park, and private viewing galleries on the 4th and 5th floors. A setback at the sixth floor marks the location of the gallery's offices, library and mechanical spaces.

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