New York Ecology Museum

The New York Ecology Museum is a competition proposal conceived as a living environmental instrument. A field of responsive façade panels filters daylight and gives the museum a changing public identity; a lightweight roof and exposed structural frame shelter a family of carved timber volumes that form galleries, overlooks, circulation paths, and gathering spaces. Developed through iterative modeling, environmental logic, and parametric studies; the project explores architecture as an ecological interface between visitors, the surrounding landscape, and the changing natural environment.

Location
New York, New YorkYear
Competition projectType
Museum / EcologyStatus
Competition proposal

Pedestrian waterfront view of the New York Ecology Museum with Manhattan beyond — Brooklyn waterfront · Pedestrian approach

Axonometric view of the New York Ecology Museum from the park — Park approach · Axonometric study

Aerial axonometric view of the New York Ecology Museum — Urban context · Aerial study

Opposite axonometric view of the New York Ecology Museum — Museum envelope · Axonometric study

Cutaway axonometric showing timber gallery volumes inside the New York Ecology Museum — Interior volumes · Cutaway axonometric

Exploded axonometric assembly diagram for the New York Ecology Museum — Envelope and structure · Exploded diagram

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Click image to expand + read process notes

Design approach

The curved, interconnected volumes draw inspiration from the form and communal organization of Lenape longhouses. The Lenape are the Indigenous people whose ancestral homeland includes present day New York; their architecture supported collective life and strengthened relationships among people, shelter, and the landscape. Reinterpreting these principles through a contemporary structural and material system; the museum becomes a modern village composed of shared spaces for gathering, learning, discovery, and exchange. This concept connects ecology with community; presenting the museum not as a singular object, but as a network of spaces shaped by their relationships to one another.

Plans06 drawings