The Mandala Lab at the Rubin Museum of Art

During its time in Manhattan, the Mandala Lab at the Rubin Museum of Art was a contemporary, rare, and immersive expression of traditional tantric traditions set in everyday life. Often used to guide individuals along a path to enlightenment, the devotional Tibetan Buddhist mandala symbol thoughtfully anchored the exhibition space – inviting people to contemplate the human experience and deepen connections with the world around them in order to expand awareness, enhance well-being, and cultivate compassion.

Installed in a beautifully-designed space from the team at Peterson Rich Office (PRO, Brooklyn, NY)—a firm recognized for its cultural, publicly engaged, and social impact projects at multiple scales—the 2,700-square-foot Mandala Lab exhibition ultimately inspired countless visitors through its sculptures, percussion instruments, video presentations, meditation areas, and more. For the Rubin, PRO crafted a space where guests could independently experience all that the exhibit offered without sacrificing the open, airy, and bright aura that defined the multi-purpose floor plan.

Sculpting the space was a series of semi-transparent architectural metal mesh dividers and operable partitions manufactured by Cascade Architectural using over 1,500-square-feet of 1/4" 18 ga Steel coiled wire fabric and Cascade's pre-engineered Secura Track Steel attachment system. The metallic white powder-coated finish selected by PRO reflected the exhibit's mellow color palette and enhanced the soft, ambient lighting effects used throughout to further define the space. Going one step further to integrate the fully engineered Fabricoil® Coiled Wire Fabric System with adjacent interior lighting systems, the design team at PRO successfully introduced the visual distinction the large exhibition space required without disturbing the deeply-connected nature of the exhibit as a whole—encouraging visitors to explore the exhibition in its entirety by crafting an experience where each space naturally flowed into the next.

In addition to PRO's New York build where visitors from around the world experienced the exhibition continuously until October 2024, The Mandala Lab's impact also resonated globally as the immersive concept traveled to three European cities as a free-standing structure adapted from PRO's New York original to reach visitors in Bilbao, Spain (2022), London, UK (2023), and Milan, Italy (2024). Since that time, the Rubin has once again reinvented itself. One of its most beloved spaces, the Shrine Room, has now taken root in Brooklyn where NYC residents and visitors can continue to be inspired by the exhibition curated by Elena Pakhoutova, Senior Curator of Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum.

Design Team: Peterson Rich Office (PRO)
Photography: © Rafael Gamo