Negotiating Spaces

'Study of a significant new arts facility and exhibition space'. Insights from the architects and planners regarding this innovative building Designed by AS-IF, GfZK-2 was completed in 2005, the second building for the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Leipzig. It was deliberately conceived as a stark contrast to the first (a converted villa), in order to raise a debate about the role and function of architecture and its relation to art. A single-storey structure based on a polygonal configuration of spatial segments, the parts form a changeable infrastructure for the contemporary practice of exhibiting and curating and they allow a simultaneous and side-by-side presence of different programmes, visual and thematic relationships, which can be re-configured by means of sliding walls and curtains for each specific exhibition. The book focuses on the uses of the building and the dialogues between the architecture and the processes that occur within and around it. To this end artistic and curatorial exhibition concepts realised in the GfZK-2 are presented alongside essays examining the performative and processual concepts of the architectural space. There are also technical data and texts providing an insight into the building process.