On June 1, Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University will open a 73,000-sf building with five acres of landscape within the University Park campus’ 370-acre Arboretum and adjacent to the H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens.
The project, designed by the architect Allied Works and landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand, is one of the latest expressions of the museum design trend that blurs the lines separating indoor and outdoor spaces.
Also see: Teddy Roosevelt library aims to be one with nature.
For more than a decade, museum designers have been forging the connection between exhibit space and natural surroundings. The Milwaukee Public Museum recently broke ground on the largest cultural project in Wisconsin’s history, the five-story 200,000-sf Future Museum, codesigned by Ennead Architects and Kahler Slater, with construction by Mortenson and ALLCON scheduled to begin next month. The building’s design harkens to the region’s diverse landscapes formed by movements of water over time. The Future Museum, situated on 2.4 acres in Milwaukee’s Haymarket neighborhood, will include two gardens designed by GGN, located near the entrance and on a rooftop terrace, providing an opportunity to bring native plants into the city’s urban environment.
Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass., in March unveiled renderings for its first purpose-built art museum, which is scheduled to open in 2027. This three-story, 76,800-sf museum, designed by SO-IL, will consist of four program areas. A courtyard garden stands at the heart of this mass timber building. And views of the Berkshires’ landscape open from the central lobby toward the main entrances. Seating areas between the museum’s galleries offer view of the landscape, as does a lounge that unifies research space and classrooms. The landscape around the building will be reforested and renewed, with flowering meadows and gardens featuring native plants.
The Building Team for the Williams College Art Museum includes PDR (executive architect), Reed Hilderbrand (landscape architect), Fast + Epp (SE), Buro Happold (MEP), Fuss & O’Neil (CE), Thornton Tomasetti (sustainability consultant), Consigli (CM), Skanska (owner’s project manager), FMS (lighting designer), and SGH (envelope consultant).
Credit: Jeudi.Wang, courtesy SO–IL and the Williams College Museum of Art.
Like strolling through a garden
The design of Penn State’s new $85 million Palmer Museum of Art doubles the existing building’s footprint and includes 20 galleries, new educational and event spaces, a sculpture path, and outdoor terraces. Grasslands, gardens, and woodlands of the Arboretum inspired the museum’s design, too. Interlocking pavilions define six courtyards and create space for the terraces and gardens. An overhead bridge joins the museum’s two wings, and creates a gateway to the botanic gardens and nearby Pollinator and Bird Garden.
“As a lifelong gardener, the prospect of merging my two passions, art and landscape, was very exciting,” said Allied Works’ Principal Brad Cloepfil, in a prepared statement. “The Palmer Museum of Art’s new location invites you on a walkthrough of the gardens and galleries as the building moves over the site.”
Erin M. Coe, Palmer Museum of Art director, added that a visit to the museum “provides a remarkable opportunity to meander through spaces filled with works of art as though one were strolling through the landscape.”
Related Stories
| Nov 3, 2014
IIT names winners of inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
Herzog & de Meuron's iconic 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage in Miami Beach, Fla., is one of two winners of the $50,000 architectural prize.
| Oct 29, 2014
Diller Scofidio + Renfro selected to design Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs
The museum is slated for an early 2018 completion, and will include a hall of fame, theater, retail space, and a 20,000-sf hall that will showcase the history of the Olympics and Paralympics.
| Oct 23, 2014
Prehistory museum's slanted roof mimics archaeological excavation [slideshow]
Mimicking the unearthing of archaeological sites, Henning Larsen Architects' recently opened Moesgaard Museum in Denmark has a planted roof that slopes upward out of the landscape.
| Oct 16, 2014
Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials
The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 10, 2014
A new memorial by Zaha Hadid in Cambodia departs from the expected
The project sees a departure from Hadid’s well-known use of concrete, fiberglass, and resin. Instead, the primary material will be timber, curved and symmetrical like the Angkor Wat and other Cambodian landmarks.
| Sep 25, 2014
Jean Nouvel unveils plans for National Art Museum of China
Of the design, Nouvel describes it as inspired by the simplicity of “a single brush stroke.”
| Sep 24, 2014
Architecture billings see continued strength, led by institutional sector
On the heels of recording its strongest pace of growth since 2007, there continues to be an increasing level of demand for design services signaled in the latest Architecture Billings Index.
| Sep 24, 2014
Frank Gehry's first building in Latin America will host grand opening on Oct. 2
Gehry's design for the Biomuseo, or Museum of Biodiversity, draws inspiration from the site's natural and cultural surroundings, including local Panamaian tin roofs.
