A bar at which to arrive, to drink coffee, to discuss; to grasp and lean against

The black rubber, recycled from old tires, eludes the gaze and offers itself to the hands. A warm, soft surface, usually mounted on the floor, is table, wall, shelf – for you to touch, rest against, support yourself with and set a cup of coffee upon, or to study the catalogue of the video library. Over the rubber bar a box containing the previously mounted security monitor cantilevers. To its left the box extends, new monitors are placed inside, multiplications of the existing, yet not projecting images from the street, but the video materials from the collection of the Swiss Institute.
Swiss Institute www.swissinstitute.net 495 Broadway, NYC.

Project credits: Normal Group for Architecture, Sabine von Fischer & Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, 2003