Founded more than 30 years ago, The Conservation Center has grown into one of the nation’s leading private art conservation laboratories. The Center’s clients include some of the country’s most prestigious private collections, museums, galleries, and corporations. The Conservation Center’s 28,000 sq. ft. laboratory, designed by Studio Gang Architects, houses conservators of many disciplines on staff. With experts ranging from paintings, to works on paper, to antiques, furniture, and more—The Center places special emphasis on a unique, multifaceted approach to treating fine art and objects.
Group
Mediated Matter
The Mediated Matter group focuses on Nature-inspired Design and Design-inspired Nature. We conduct research at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, materials science and synthetic biology and apply that knowledge to design across scales from the micro scale to the building scale. We create biologically inspired and engineered design fabrication tools and technologies and structures aiming to enhance the relation between natural and man-made environments. Our research field, entitled Material Ecology, integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication. This design approach enables the mediation between objects and environment; between humans and objects; and between humans and environment. Our goal is to enhance the relation between natural and man-made environments by achieving high degrees of design customization and versatility, environmental performance integration and material efficiency. We seek to establish new forms of design and novel processes of material practice at the intersection of computer science, material engineering, design and ecology, with broad applications across multiple scales.