Brooklyn studio SO-IL has stretched a thin layer of white film over the facade of the Storefront gallery in New York, giving the building a vacuum-packed appearance (+ slideshow).

SO-IL created the Blueprint installation – which masks the street facade of a gallery in white shrink-wrap titled – as part of an exhibition with the same name at the Storefront for Art and Architecture space in Soho, New York.

Studio founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, alongside Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer, invited artists and architects to contribute over 100 works that reveal the design process and context behind their works for the exhibition.

"The show is about the assessment of what we have done and where we are heading," Idenburg told Dezeen. "The notion of the blueprint  – an obviously a nostalgic medium – suggests the idea of a plan and intention."

"For our installation, we used a technique called 'mothballing' – a technique to 'put things away' – to reevaluate the original intent of the architecture of Storefront: an activator and agitator of the public realm."

The gallery's shopfront, which features large geometric panels that pivot from the facade, was designed by New York artist Vito Acconci and architect Steven Holl in 1993.

The twelve white hatches usually open onto the street during business hours to reveal slices of the bright green interior.

"Rather than conserve, this shrink-wrap reinvigorates the Holl/Aconci installation and reveals the activities happening behind its permeable skin," Idenburg explained.

According to the architect, the plastic-coated protruding panels transform the exterior into "one continuous and undulating surface", while the resulting interior "provides an intimate space that allows the viewer to see behind the mind of the artist".

SO-IL used a similar technique to veil a Seoul art gallery in chain mail in 2012.

At night, light glows through the translucent skin from the gallery space within, creating patches of light and shadow.

Blueprint will be on display at Storefront for Art and Architecture until 21 March. The organisation and gallery space – set up as a forum and platform for emerging architecture, art and design practices – hosts a programme of exhibitions, artist's talks and film screenings.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.