242 State Street by Olson Kundig

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A wall of windows winches up and down to reveal the interior of this gallery renovation in Los Altos, California, by Seattle architect Tom Kundig.
Kundig, the principal designer at Olson Kundig Architects, added the new mechanical facade to a vacant 1950s building at the heart of the Silicon Valley community, creating a temporary gallery space able to reveal its contents to the neighbourhood.
The five-metre-high grid of windows is hooked up to a system of gears, pulleys and counterweights. To set them into motion, a pedal must be engaged to unlock the safety mechanism, before a hand wheel can be rotated to begin lifting or lowering the facade.
In this way, 242 State Street is able to "morph from an enclosed structure into an environment that invites the community into the space," says Kundig.
The interior of the space, previously used as an Italian restaurant, was left largely unchanged to create a flexible space for displaying different types of artwork.
Kundig did however raise the roof by half a storey to create a more generous setting for larger pieces, and inserted a row of skylights to allow more natural light to reach the back of the space.
A pivoting door was also added to provide access to the gallery when the facade is closed, while the steel beams supporting the pulley system could for be used to support signage.
The gallery opened at the end of 2013 as one of the ten venues for Project Los Altos, a local art initiative launched by SF MoMA. Artist Spencer Finch created a site-specific installation at the front of the space - a grid of colourful squares that resonated with the new facade - while Jeremy Blake installed a digital projection behind a temporary screen.