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Outside the box

Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 2/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

For Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe, moving to the edge of Culver City was a way of breaking the rules. So was hiring Escher GuneWardena Architecture to design a space there. Instead of the typical white box, entered directly from the street, partners Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena's plan leads visitors along a hallway encircling three carefully proportioned separate rooms.

To achieve this imaginative solution, Escher GuneWardena started from scratch: gutting the 5,000-square-foot warehouse, sandblasting its brick shell, and cleaning and glazing the concrete floor. "The traces in the floor read like ghosts," says Escher.

The architects built that all-important corridor around the interior's perimeter, with a secondary passage cutting through the trio of galleries clustered in the center. The three relate proportionally, with the largest measuring 28 feet wide by 35 long and the same dimensional ratio appearing in the two smaller spaces. Skylights set in 3-foot wells eliminate shadows during the day. For night events, museum-quality fluorescent tubes illuminate artwork by Takashi Murakami and Dirk Skreber, among other convention breakers.

Clockwise from top left: Dirk Skreber's oils on canvas in the main gallery, illuminated by skylights and fluorescents. The Los Angeles gallery, with opaque glazing on the storage and staff side, clear on the public side. The lightly glazed concrete floor. A Skreber sculpture in the smallest gallery, painted black for a recent film exhibit. Corridor access to the three galleries.

PAINT: DUNN-EDWARDS PAINTS. LIGHT FIXTURES: COOPER LIGHTING. LIGHTING CONSULTANT: GALLEGOS LIGHTING DESIGN. GENERAL CONTRACTOR: J.A. GRIFFITH CO.