New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) designed the museum expansion and sculpture garden to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. According to DS+R “The Bubble is an inflatable event space planned for the cylindrical courtyard of the Hirshhorn Museum. In respectful dialogue with this Modernist icon originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft in 1974, the Bubble is an architecture of air; a pneumatic structure enclosed only by a thin translucent membrane that squeezes into the void of the building and oozes out the top beneath its mass.”
In contrast to the familiar strategy of roofing over courtyards of institutional buildings, the Bubble produces a soft building inside of a hard one in which existing and new spaces, both interior and exterior are playfully intertwined. The ephemeral structure will be erected twice-yearly, allowing the museum to program its courtyard.