A new downtown home for the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, the project is the culmination of two years of close collaboration with ISLAA to develop the program, scope and design of its new home in Tribeca. The space comprises 4,000sqft of exhibition space across two levels, as well as a research center, archives, staff and conference spaces, and more.

The opening of the space coincided with ISLAA’s 10-year anniversary. As such, the space needed to accommodate what was already an established institution, with a sizeable collection and all the attendant professionalized functions one would expect of an institution of stature. It also needed to maintain a degree of programmatic ambiguity to allow ISLAA to continue to evolve in the years to come. ISLAA have referred to themselves as an archipelago, and we see the space as a continuation of that same logic – many different functions coexist in a manner that is carefully choreographed, but the specific form they take is rather loose.

Through the careful use of subtle, but particular, design elements such as Douglas Fir end-grain flooring, patterned glass dividers, and eccentric areas for display, Overhead sought to signal that ISLAA's new home would not be an inert "white box," but rather a place that is alive with conversation and serious inquiry, and a place for the direct experience of work that has long awaited such visibility.