The open international ideas competition, hosted by suckerPUNCH, is for a new, larger home for the museum of cartoon and comic art . The museum was established in 2001 and currently is based in the Soho area of Manhattan in New York City. The main goal of the museum is to educate the public about comic and cartoon art, how it is crafted, and how it reflects history. More images and descriptions of winning entries after the break.
1st place: Volkan Alkanoglu, Los Angeles, CA ‘Mocca Museum NYC’
Comic and Cartoon Art, from its early stages to the sophistication of this current Century, has been of remarkable importance in cultural history. The MOCCA Museum in New York is a representative of this legacy and its unpredictable, but assuredly rich, future.
The project is designed to serve as a 21st-Century museum, becoming a place that celebrates the notion of containment and the display of beauty, vision, history, polemics and, above all, possibility.
The building assumes an elegant, sculptural presence on its site and reflects to the illustrious lights of New York City. The MOCCA Museum will be a state-of-the-art museum that will also become a social, cultural and economically generative architecture and a catalyst for thought and provocation in the amazing world of Comic and Cartoon Art.
2nd place: MAST:Ivar Heggheim, Jon Andersen, Rasmus Moller & Mads m. Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark ‘Bagpipe’
The overall geometry is driven by the attributes of the chimney, the formal structural qualities of the cone and the organic nature of the hair, by this juxtaposition a ‘character’ to state the relation to the Mocca context is pursued. The Mocca Museum as a highly flexible exhibitions space and is informed by the program and the sun pattern.
The outcome is conceived by a controlled interaction between four essential strategies: A simple geometry creating fluid continuous enclosures without ”right angles”, decomposing ‘organic’ sequences of movement by wrapping the main volumes and thereby creating poches of interior voids in the skin assemblages, smart structure – integration of technology and environment driven by geometrical solutions, and applying the fussy attributes of the hair in order to generate character and ambiance.
Massing: The Mocca Museum is structured around two main cones and three minor cones that acts as chimneys. The top void of each main cone creates skylights.
The visible skylights and continuous walls of the museum suggest a den-like character as a contextual marker and clearly demonstrate the reason for their special design. In contrast to a square room, the cone has a distinct enclosed effect thanks to its natural shape without right angles. Continuous shapes like those of the Museum, emphasizes displayed objects and promotes flexibility.
Skin: By wrapping of the main cone volumes, poches – minor spaces – are created. These can accommodate infrastructural properties: storage, restrooms and staff areas. But the poches are also set to host public facilities such as small flexible workshop spaces and computer labs. This brings integration to all functions without detaching, staff and service areas from the public accessible areas.
Technique: The decentralized system of the chimneys voids inspired by Iranian wind towers facilitates natural ventilation via the chimney effect, and thereby creating a relationship between form, technology and environment.
Light: The main chimneys provide the museum with indirect but varied light. The light falling along the walls, adds flexibility so objects can be randomly placed in the space. The amount of light can be varied by means of blinds, and if desired, the skylight in the chimneys may be replaced by spotlight directed on a single object or a group of items of the exhibition and since the light falls along the walls, adding the possibility of placing an object anywhere in the room. Because of these “non-spacious” attributes of the building the events and exhibitions will be the constituent for the creation of space.
Fussy Cloud: The site will be a 24-hour space, which will support the museum functions but also operate independently below the museum as a small urban plaza, which is defined by the entrances and the exotic underbelly that is a bridging element between the museum functions.
At night, light permeates through the crevices of the enclosure shells. The hair acts as an organic machine, where energy is “derived” trough kinetic energy producing light. The light is both responding to underlying formal features, and underlining the character of the building seen from a distance.
The hair does infrastructural work (lighting) as well as supporting the sensation of a changing atmospheric cloud of fuzzy light in which the relationship between visitor and the core architecture is enhanced. The sensations produced by the lit hairy cloud will create a unique urban plaza – a place for urban events, meeting people, or simply passing through. By means of passing beneath the structure, visitor and space merge into one coherent yet fuzzy environment.
3rd place: Erin Ruhl and Jordan Hines, Lexington, Kentucky ‘Tortoise’
The mission of MoCCA is to “collect, preserve, educate, and display cartoon and comic art” with the primary goal of “educating the public about comic and cartoon art, how it is crafted, and how it reflect history.”Keeping this goal in mind, the ideology of the museum could be compared to a tortoise. The tortoise embodies a sense of history, ancestry, preservation, and wisdom. With history and education as the heart of MoCCA’s mission, the library, classrooms, and gallery spaces become the body of the museum. It is then lifted off the ground not only to provide communal space at the street level, but to elevate the contents to a more dynamic position.
Like the tortoise, an outer exoskeleton of screens protects this body and the art inside. These screens not only filter the daylight to avoid contact with the art, they allow the programs to be highly visible from the street and easily accessible to the public. As one enters the museum, a central spine allows the visitor to take their time and travel upward through the underbelly of the museum, towards the featured exhibition space and roof garden.
Honorable Mention: Jerome Glairoux, Gliwice, Poland ‘BLOP!!..POW!!..WIZZZZZZZ’
The project was made as an answer not only to solve the problem of how to « collect, preserve, and display cartoons and comics arts », but at first to create a place where the city, the people that are living in, and the function of the building could meet in an harmonious way.
Honorable Mention: Erick Kristanto, Sunnyside, New York ‘Bubble Art Display for Mocca / Bad for Mocca’
Bubble Art Display is a way of presenting comic and cartoon art into an architectural building as a public display that attracts people with the intention of promote the art itself. The concept originates from a series of bubble quotes used in comics, which, in this design, is used to display the programs of the Museum. The dynamic and playful interior space, created by the bubble quotes shapes, generates an engaging, fun visitor’s experience, which allows them to observe different activities happening at the same time. Moreover, these bubble quotes are connected by a vertical helix ramp at the center of the building. And to make the experience even more amusing, slides are provided as a shortcut from one space to another. With the unique figure that carries a mission to display as well as promote comic and cartoon art, this museum will be the new icon for lower east side area of Manhattan.
Honorable Mention: Guy a Avellone, Baton Rouge, Louisiana ‘Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’
Concept for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) was designed with an aggressive aesthetic aimed at increasing museum patronage. The aggressive aesthetic was inspired by the comic illustration technique for expressing motion. Streaks were “drawn” onto the exterior to illustrate, as in comics and cartoons, a striking visual motion toward the street. The angle at which the museum is “flying” is 21 degrees, which expresses the Lower East Side street grid angle, desirable stadium seating angle, and is a compatible angle with Tschumi’s Blue Condos across Delancey Street.
The overall composition was shaped by a theme of battling energies from the street and of the museum. The street “energies” are embodied in the yellow acrylic circulation core, which is intended to be flying from Delancey Street and into the museum. The museum, which is visually on a collision course for Delancey Street, is penetrated by the circulation core. This dynamic is a comic expression of the way almost every building is experienced: penetrating the building mass from the street via a circulation system.
Some of the features in this MoCCA concept include:
A yellow tinted acrylic circulation core creates a bold aesthetic, very clear means of circulation, and a light well to assist lighting of adjacent spaces. A sloped end of the library and the computer lab allows for reading and researching while hanging above bustling Delancey Street. The translucent glass capping the sloped ends of the galleries and the theater/lecture hall allows projected animations or images to be seen both inside and from the street. The theater screen is an operable, sound proof partition that can be lifted to create a larger theater or lecture hall.
