Cranbrook Gate
Bloomfield Hills, MI
1992
The gate choreographs a minimal arrangement of architectural forms that announces the Cranbrook campus in both its material and symbolic dimension. A new designation of gate needs to be conceived of for this moment in history in which gates are made of cybernetic codes, in which non-physical communication pervades and forms modes of contact, where accessibility is independent from proximity, where the non-place opposes the place-specific urban realm. Instead of a frame holding a gate we propose a roof. Instead of accentuating the vertical plane and the recording of a passage, we privilege the horizontal. The place at the empty center of the gate is occupied by a wall and thus denies accentuating the movement in both directions. The gate becomes more than an ‘object’ in the landscape; it ‘frames’ the landscape and creates a place.
The gate to Cranbrook is not a static barrier: its forms are derived from the movement of cars coming and going in opposite directions. It is designed for the drivers, both those passing by on Woodward Avenue, and those entering and leaving the community. It represents the effect of speed on a built threshold. It is not just about space, but also fundamentally about time. It is not just about inside/outside or private/public, but about before and after, about coming to a stop and moving again, about sliding by a wall and about traversing the shadow of a roof.
The gate echoes the formal economy of the buildings and spaces of the Cranbrook campus. The double scale of the feature (in the booth and gate) refers to the two scales of Cranbrook’s buildings and spaces: the grand scale of the classicist library and art museum, and the picturesque scale of the early buildings. At a syntactic level the gate opens up a rich symbolic field that slides through the twentieth century, focusing on the contemporary issues of time and speed. Finally, the galactic formations represented in the literal gate are given the symbolic role of linking its expression to the Arts and Crafts education while its content refers to the Institute of Science.
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The gate to Cranbrook is not a static barrier: its forms are derived from the movement of cars coming and going in opposite directions. It is designed for the drivers, both those passing by on Woodward Avenue, and those entering and leaving the community. It represents the effect of speed on a built threshold. It is not just about space, but also fundamentally about time. It is not just about inside/outside or private/public, but about before and after, about coming to a stop and moving again, about sliding by a wall and about traversing the shadow of a roof.
The gate echoes the formal economy of the buildings and spaces of the Cranbrook campus. The double scale of the feature (in the booth and gate) refers to the two scales of Cranbrook’s buildings and spaces: the grand scale of the classicist library and art museum, and the picturesque scale of the early buildings. At a syntactic level the gate opens up a rich symbolic field that slides through the twentieth century, focusing on the contemporary issues of time and speed. Finally, the galactic formations represented in the literal gate are given the symbolic role of linking its expression to the Arts and Crafts education while its content refers to the Institute of Science.