Gluckman Mayner Architects is an architecture firm located in New York City with Richard Gluckman and David Mayner in partnership since 1998. The architects are known for minimalist design, evident in five pioneering art galleries that moved into the Chelsea gallery district from the SoHo neighborhood during the late 1990s, the proposed expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Mori Arts Center (2003) in Tokyo.
Richard Gluckman studied architecture at Syracuse University, where he returned in 2005 to design the Warehouse, current home of the Syracuse University School of Architecture. He has designed a wide range of buildings including an apartment building in lower Manhattan, and houses in Texas and Long Island New York. As principal of Gluckman Mayner Architects, Gluckman has been responsible for museum projects as the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1996); the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Germany; the renovation and expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1998); the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2003); the conversion of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1994); the Museo Picasso in Málaga, Spain (2004); the The Warehouse in Syracuse, New York (2006); and the downtown location of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2007).
In addition to museum and gallery spaces, Gluckman has also designed studio spaces for artists as well as art galleries. He first worked with artists in 1977, when he helped Dan Flavin with a fluorescent light installation along a staircase in the Upper East Side residence of Heiner Friedrich and Philippa de Menil. After completing a New York loft for artist Richard Serra in 1989, Gluckman designed a house for him in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a new studio on Long Island (2003). In addition, he has completed houses and studios for artists Chuck Close (in Water Mill, New York), Francesco Clemente, Don Gummer, Ellsworth Kelly (in Spencertown, New York), and Louise Lawler. In 1999, he devised the 25,000-square-foot Chelsea location for Gagosian Gallery in which Serra presented the monumental sculpture, Switch. In 2007, the Yvon Lambert Gallery opened its New York location on West 21st street in a 700sq m space designed by Gluckman in collaboration with Thomas Zolli and Rachel D. Vancelette.
David Mayner began working with Richard Gluckman in 1980, and became Principal of the predecessor firm to Gluckman Mayner in 1988. Mayner studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received his Master of Architecture degree in 1976.
Recognition
Gluckman Mayner Architects has won a number of American Institute of Architects awards including in 2007 a Design Award for Architecture (NYS AIA Chapter), the Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture (AIA College Committee) and in 2008 an Honor Award and a Building Type Award (NYS AIA Chapter). While most of the design projects of the firm have been in an urban setting, its unique minimalist sensibility has also been on exhibit in more natural settings, such as that of the Mii amo Spa at the Enchantment Resort in Sedona, AZ.
