Conceptual Statement:
There is a recent art gallery; Warehouse 421 in the industrial and historical Mina Zayed area, designed by transformation of existing two warehouses into gallery spaces. Urban transformation in the industrial areas especially for art and cultural spaces to integrate them with public is a very common approach throughout the world. We witness a similar but a larger scale transformation in the Al Quoz area Dubai, as well. Taking an example from the city we live, we’d like to launch a question on how the urban transformations both create gaps with their new existences in a formerly and naturally built environment and how they adapt to the the surrounding by building bridges. Warehouse 421 is a unique example as it is a lonely building in a huge area composed of dozens of warehouses which are architecturally replicas of each other. To get there is like following a labyrinth in between the warehouse sea. Although in the middle of them, it is detached from the other public uses like the fish, Iranian or the vegetable markets. While Meena is awake on the day use, 421 takes its main public character on the evenings and call for public events in which mostly the art followers participate by finding the way. The exhibitions about sea culture, warehouses and even the permanent dhow installation in the entrance are the attachments which it tries to build with its surrounding but is that enough or it should be? We took more than 200 photographs of the Meena area from different angles and Then, we brought some of our visuals together in an open structural plan composition referring to its architectural character. We talked to the gallery space workers, visitors and the working people around including fishers. In our sustainable installation which can grow with more panels in the future, we propose that the next step about 421 could be that it should overflow to the public use areas in Meena and integrate public art installations or exhibitions with the environment to call for it as an art center which bring variety of people together.
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