The Girls Club Gallery, New Florida Building Project Photo, America Women artists Design, USA news

The Girls Club Gallery : Fort Lauderdale Building

Fort Lauderdale Architecture, Florida design by glavovic studio, United States of America

post updated May 1, 2024

Location: downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

Date built: 2009

Design: glavovic studio inc.

photo © Robin Hill

Sep 23, 2009

The Girls Club Gallery Fort Lauderdale

Innovative Gallery in Fort Lauderdale Florida – devoted to women artists, developed by a woman philanthropist and Woman-owned architecture firm. Devoted to promotion and education of Art in community. The Girls Club Gallery in Fort Lauderdale is free and open to public. It forms a support environment for artists.

photos © Robin Hill

Concept of architecture is sustainable resin-based façade skin wrapped existing concrete block building. Gutted interior. Articulated planes, maximized flexibility, materiality expressed, Art accommodated. The architectural design includes a series of spaces, reclaimed exterior spaces for public use. Exterior façade used as projection surface.

Project Description

The facade is reconfigured to change the paradigm and question the relationship of the space to the city, to the street and the role of Art in the community.

The Girls’ Club is located on the northern edge of downtown Fort Lauderdale along a quiet street. It is central to the heart of the city, yet reclusive, behind a large municipal parking structure and adjacent to City Hall. Daily, city workers and professionals exit past it, unaware of the creative life of its occupants. The existing warehouse structure is of simple masonry block construction with a double height space and is oriented to the street with minimal presence.

Francie Bishop-Good, a well-known video artist and painter has occupied the studio-east space as a working artist for many years. The studio-west space is being renovated for the Girls’ Club. The existing building is used as a material condition of the city and in this project examines its use as a palette to explore the relationship between the permanent and temporary nature of other materials. The south façade is clad in new fiberglass panels, layered on top of an adhoc steel frame, directly over the existing windows and wall. Creating an illusion of an organic structure, a pattern that somehow emerges as a landscape in the city and casts a shadow within itself. At night, the surfaces transform and the panels become scrim and surface for video art and appear light. At the base of the panels a new literal garden landscape emerges and intersects with the panels, casting real shadows.

The interior is an alternative space specially designed by Margi Nothard of Glavovic Studio to enhance and inspire cultural growth in Broward County. “The feminist orientation is intentional, the collection of Francie Bishop Good, along with those of other local and non-local artists such as Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, and Nan Goldin will reinforce the contribution of women to the field of contemporary art. The mission of Girls’ Club is to educate the public, and to serve as a resource for art scholars, curators, and practicing artists.” Anne Tschida.

Art is located next to non-color, form next to control, old and new coexist.

Layers of material and light are explored on the inside with structural plastics and LED lights embedded into walls providing a nodal point for the support area of the gallery and a pivot wall for hanging art adjusts the space to create space options within the overall studio. The exact program is unknown, indeterminate. The roof has been penetrated with skylights that are countered by a simple linear bar that softens the harsh Florida sun and redistributes the light-flushing it against the original concrete block, reminding us of the warehouse origins.

Are we visible, are we invisible, what is it about?… Identity + Women + Art

Lightness and transparency are sought. Resins and plastics, polymers and color are layered to define private and public spaces. A mezzanine is added and accessed by an intense orange zone, denoting a different use, perhaps a private zone, a place for research, a projection wall is found and a vertical space is created upstairs.

A creative space of a maker to show other makers.

The interior configuration is divided into 2 bays by a masonry wall. The south façade is clad in fiberglass panels, layered on top of a random steel frame, directly over the existing windows and wall. Embedded within a new wall sandwich, the interior layers are a cladding of drywall onto the masonry walls, and translucent polymer panels layer over the existing windows behind the exterior fiberglass and steel frame creating a light box for the sunlight to filter through and protect the artwork. The entrance is a strong raw steel formed box, linking the two studios and reminding us that Art is creative and resilient, challenging and evolving.

Girls Club Gallery Fort Lauderdale images / information from glavovic studio inc.

Glavovic Studio

Location: Fort Lauderdale, USA

Florida Buildings

image from architects