Rochester Imaging Museum

The city of Rochester is home to three of the world's largest premier corporations in the field of imaging technology. The dominant role of the city's multinational corporations in the areas of information and imaging technologies has earned it the title "World's Imaging Center." The Rochester Imaging Museum is one to assure the legitimacy of that claim. The museum resides at an intersection of a series of conflicting relationships -- the intersection of the city grid and the geological formation of the gorge, the jousting between man-made forms and nature, the remnants of industrial ruined past and the need for new beginnings, the flow of the magnificent waterfall and the flow of digital information, the amnesia of history and imaginations of tomorrow. The urban fabric and the natural landscape are woven back to back, uniquely forming the heart of the city. The design question emerges -- which world does the architecture wish to be part of? How can architecture function as the transition zone between the Machine and the Garden? And amidst of all things, how can the program of imaging itself help solve these problems? An extension of the adjacent ruins, and a simulacrum of the waterfall nearby, the museum became a member of both worlds. Then it looked at the city. The city looked back.