Proposed for a site adjacent to the Sheldon Art Gallery on the campus of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the DRAPE Artist Residence and Gallery consists of a single volume that provides a residence, studio, and gallery for a visiting artist. The name DRAPE serves both as an acronym for these three programs (Display, Residence, and Art Production Environment) as well as to underscore the flexible space-dividing membrane that allows the occupant to negotiate and tune the relationship between these various aspects of his or her life.

This flexible membrane is comprised of ½” thick sheets of silicone rubber chemically welded to form one continuous surface that is draped over a series of motorized hangers that can be moved back and forth in order to manipulate the overall form of the membrane—allowing it to divide, combine, or otherwise characterize the interior volume of the structure. Integral power, data, light, and air are distributed between the laminated sheets and accessed through an array of control ports.

These, combined with an assortment of inflatable furniture elements that can be deployed from and returned to a number of floor compartments, allow the occupant a high degree of flexibility in how the space of the DRAPE is redefined.

In addition to the resulting flexibility, the DRAPE also allows the resident artist to act as a creative author of the architectural character or content of the work. This expressive capacity of the membrane is facilitated by its excessiveness with regard to its supposed function of partitioning space: the occupant therefore not only decides on where the space is divided, but also on the degree and character of that division. Moreover, as its relative thinness and malleability embody the fluidity and temporality of the boundary between these aspects of the artist’s life, its manipulation allows the artist to make relatively nuanced statements about the (inter-)relationship of these activities—and to employ architecture’s capacity to monumentalize these statements—while retaining the ability to revise them over time through the reformulation of this architectural element.