The Storefront for Art and Architecture raised $75,000 – a good portion of its $300,000 annual budget – at its fifth annual benefit Tuesday night.

Architect Kyong Park founded the Storefront in 1982 to create an experimental space for artists, architects, and designers. It offers exhibits, lectures, and other events from a small and oddly shaped space on Kenmare Street with a distinctive facade of panels designed by artist Vito Acconci and architect Steven Holl.

The event showed how much affection the New York design community has for the Storefront, a place to be inspired and to forget the commercial and economic doldrums that inhibit innovative building projects.

The founder of the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, architect Lebbeus Woods, captured what it was and is like. “I came into the gallery a little bit after it started,” he said. “I immediately felt an affinity because of all the strange people there.”

Architects in the mainstream are also supportive. Take the accomplished public architect Susan Chin, who is president of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and works on capital projects in the city’s department of cultural affairs.

Ms. Chin helped raise the money to build the AIA’s Center for Architecture in SoHo, which has its own exhibits and programs. She said its existence doesn’t diminish the need for the Storefront.

“The Center for Architecture is more about the establishment. It’s important to have an alternative,” Ms. Chin said.

Exhibits at the Storefront are “very imaginative, very fresh,” the president of the Municipal Art Society, Kent Barwick, said. “They aren’t concerned with the reputation of the architect. It’s always been about the quality of the idea.”

Embodying the spirit of the Storefront was the location of the party – a two bedroom condominium converted from a running track and basketball court. The apartment, in a former Y on West 23rd Street, is the work of the team at the design firm the Apartment, headed by Stefan Boublil and his partner Gina Alvarez.

The apartment is designed for parties, with lots of speakers, a wide staircase, and a huge kitchen. There’s a disco ball in the dressing room.

Mr. Boublil explained it: “I love clothing and fashion. Every time I get dressed, I want it to be a party. It was as trite as that.”

The Storefront’s supporters were a super-chic crowd that must have felt right at home in that dressing room and in the other rooms, too. Angie Waller, an artist, said she liked the “chill-out room,” painted black with couches and a projection screen. Others liked that the original basketball court flooring was kept in the guest room.

Guests included architect Liz Diller, who counts Lincoln Center and the High Line among her projects; architect Marion Weiss, who is designing the Seattle Art Museum’s new sculpture park; Cathy Ho, the founder of the Architect’s Newspaper; designer Fred Schwartz; architect Lindy Roy, who has just completed the Hotel QT in Times Square and is working on an 11-story condominium next to the High Line, and Christian Haden, who calls himself a “design/builder.”

“I have an architecture degree, but I prefer to build with my own hands,” Mr. Haden said.

The party certainly helped the institution’s bottom line, but financial realities remain a pressing issue.

“My constant preoccupation is with the financial viability of the institution,” the president of the Storefront’s board of directors, Belmont Freeman, an architect, said.

With government and foundation funding dwindling and a constituency that is not wealthy, Mr. Freeman is focusing on strengthening the board and securing more private and corporate support.

Then it’s on to a major capital campaign, in conjunction with the Storefront’s 25th anniversary, with the objectives of renovating the Storefront and building an endowment. There’s also the question of a new space. The board has talked about a satellite space and perhaps a bookstore, as well as global plans.

“I could see us one day opening Storefronts in other cities – doing our own little Guggenheim-style globalization. We do not want Storefront ever to become static or stale,” Mr. Freeman said.

Asked about future developments, the Storefront’s executive director, Sarah Herda, touted a program next week: a screening of Mary Ellen Carroll’s 24-hour film “Federal,” about the Los Angeles Federal building designed by Charles Luckman. An exhibit of related photographs by Ms. Carroll is on view at the Storefront through August 6.