Kimmel’s SEI Innovation Studio Features 22-Foot Glass Panel and Car-Crash Webcam

Photo credit: Evelyn Bonner
Courtesy of Kimmel Center, Inc.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is getting a generous beautification, courtesy of leading investment-processing group SEI. The global financial services company is funding the center’s redesigning of their previously overlooked Innovation Studio.

Before these changes, the 200-seat Innovation Studio “had only a modest presence,” according to James Timberlake, half of architect firm KieranTimberlake (which recently broke ground for its design-winning New London Embassy). The new entrance on Spruce Street features a 22-foot tall glass panel onto which is projected changing graphics.

Apart from the new architectural Spruce Street entrance, the Kimmel Center’s Commonwealth Plaza will feature a column of light that will extend to the building’s lower level, demarcating the Studio from street level.

Other projects include:

• Rotating art exhibits in the Innovation Studio space, with pieces currently on display from the West Collection, including Pew Fellowship in the Arts recipient Astrid Bowlby’s “Experience Drawings.”
• The East Coast premiere of Jonathan Schipper’s pop culture art installation “The Slow and Inevitable Death of American Muscle.” Two full-sized cars come together in slow motion over a three-month period in the Kimmel Center’s Plaza, until they eventually crash into one another, leaving crushed steel and shattered glass in their wake.

The latter installation actually features a live webcam so you can watch the cars’ movement as it happens. It might not be as adorable as a puppy cam, but it’s certainly more sophisticated.

A screen shot of the live webcam.