Lye himself said in 1964, that “great architecture goes fifty-fifty with great art.” The building’s design articulates this philosophy – he believed an artwork was a piece of consciousness communicating with the future. He used light as his primary medium.
The Len Lye Centre is situated in Taranaki, New Zealand, a region known for its stainless steel production industries. The 3,000 sqm (32,292 square feet) building engages with the urban square via a light reflecting and transmitting façade. This transfers light in a holographic effect from one place to another to enliven and activate both.

[Len Lye would] be absolutely thrilled, he’d be dancing around in this place. 

John Matthews, Chairman, Len Lye Foundation

The Len Lye Centre is designed to fulfil multiple requirements. It needed to integrate with a proposed new art and cultural precinct, which links through to the commercial heart of the city. It also needed to seamlessly merge with an existing heritage Art Gallery facility in a converted movie theater. The finished building introduces new gallery spaces, education studios, a 62 seat cinema, the Len Lye Archive and a dedicated motor room for his kinetic works. The resulting space is reverential, creating a sensory experience from light as a ‘temple’ for art.
“Lye was fascinated with temples and in conceiving the overall design it seemed appropriate to draw inspiration from the “megarons, or great halls, of the classical world, as well as from Polynesian forms and ideas. These ideas also influenced Lye. To do this, we developed our thinking in a holistic or adaptive way; as a systems methodology. This ment that rather than using proportion or aesthetics, we used patterns in the ecology of the project’s environments to drive the design elements. For example, the shimmering, iridescent colonnade façade is manufactured locally using stainless steel – Taranaki’s ‘local stone’ – this links both Lye’s innovations in kinetics and light as well as the region’s industrial innovation. So by using stainless steel we can celebrate and communicate to visitors the reason for the fortunate gift of his art works to Taranaki.”
says Andrew Patterson, director, Patterson Associates

The façade’s deeply pocketed shape provides a series of images or reflections and attracts people to the facility as a result. Viewed from above, the colonnade’s top edges create a local koru form, displaying the Museum’s Polynesian influences.

Inside the building, the colonnade creates a theater curtain, with three asymmetric ramped sides embracing the space of a processional journey ascending along a ramp into various galleries. There are divisions in the circulation. Light is drawn inside through the apertures in the colonnade, and these create moving light patterns on the walkway, perhaps a form of passive kinetic architecture.