Nine years after the Museum of Maritime and Seafood Industry in Biloxi, Miss., was damaged by Hurricane Katrina’s 30-foot tidal surge, the museum reopened its doors to the public in a brand new, H3-designed building on August 1.
The $7 million, 19,580-sf museum houses 10,000 sf of exhibits and gallery spaces, meeting rooms, a production shop, administrative areas, and storage. It is a final milestone representing six years of effort by the city, the museum, and the H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture design team.
Leading the project was Biloxi-native Daria Pizzetta, H3 Partner-in-Charge. “Everything I knew as a child is gone,” Pizzetta says, whose grandmother donated much of the family’s maritime memorabilia to the museum just weeks before the hurricane. “This project [was] more than designing a museum, it’s rebuilding the heritage of my Gulf Coast hometown,” he said.
The materials used in the design of the museum are locally sourced and make reference to the Point Cadet neighborhood. The design itself mimics the seafood factories that were once housed in the neighborhood, incorporating a white clapboard patter, corrugated tin roofs, and open front porches. The building’s porch structures, as well as interior wood detailing, make reference to coastal wooden pier structures.
The building’s elevation meets Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements for constructing within a Coastal A flood plain.
A museum's premier artifact is the sloop Nydia, built in Biloxi in 1896. Nydia measures 30 feet long and 40 feet high, and is the focal point of the gallery that was designed around it. The use of glass as the primary enclosure of the main gallery creates a “ship in a bottle” effect, letting the Nydia be visible from the exterior.
Related Stories
| Mar 29, 2011
Chicago’s Willis Tower to become a vertical solar farm
Chicago’s iconic Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) is set to become a massive solar electric plant with the installation of a pilot solar electric glass project.
| Mar 29, 2011
Read up on Amazon.com's new green HQ
Phase IV of Amazon’s new headquarters in Seattle is nearly complete. The company has built 10 of the 11 buildings planned for its new campus in the South Lake Union neighborhood, and is on-track for a 2013 grand opening.
| Mar 29, 2011
Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura wins Pritzker Architecture Prize
Portugese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, whose precisely-honed buildings reflect the influence of the late Chicago modernist Mies van der Rohe, is the 2011 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor.
| Mar 25, 2011
Qatar World Cup may feature carbon-fiber ‘clouds’
Engineers at Qatar University’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering are busy developing what they believe could act as artificial “clouds,” man-made saucer-type structures suspended over a given soccer stadium, working to shield tens of thousands of spectators from suffocating summer temperatures that regularly top 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
| Mar 23, 2011
AIA adds 13 new contract documents to Documents-on-Demand service
Web-based solution adds 13 popular Architect’s Scope of Services Documents to AIA Documents-on-Demand, providing easy access to documents anytime, anywhere.
| Mar 23, 2011
After 60 years of student lobbying, new activity center opens at University of Texas
The new Student Activity Center at the University of Texas campus, Austin, is the result of almost 60 years of students lobbying for another dedicated social and cultural center on campus. The 149,000-sf facility is designed to serve as the "campus living room," and should earn a LEED Gold certification, a first for the campus.
| Mar 23, 2011
Architecture Billings Index shows nominal increase
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the February Architecture Billings Index score was 50.6, up slightly from a reading of 50.0 the previous month. This score reflects a modest increase in demand for design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 56.4, compared to a mark of 56.5 in December.
| Mar 22, 2011
The American National Standards Institute accredits Stantec for greenhouse gas verification
Stantec Consulting Ltd.’s Atmospheric Environment Group has been awarded accreditation by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for verification of assertions related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Scope of Accreditation is for verification of emissions and removals at the organizational level for Group 1 – General.
| Mar 22, 2011
Mayor Bloomberg unveils plans for New York City’s largest new affordable housing complex since the ’70s
Plans for Hunter’s Point South, the largest new affordable housing complex to be built in New York City since the 1970s, include new residences for 5,000 families, with more than 900 in this first phase. A development team consisting of Phipps Houses, Related Companies, and Monadnock Construction has been selected to build the residential portion of the first phase of the Queens waterfront complex, which includes two mixed-use buildings comprising more than 900 housing units and roughly 20,000 square feet of new retail space.
