The University of Iowa recently completed its new Stanley Museum of Art, a public teaching museum designed by BNIM. The 63,000-square-foot building restores an art museum to the campus after 14 years, following historic flooding in 2008. The Stanley Museum of Art reunites the school with its renowned collections and works, such as Jackson Pollock’s Mural, which had been temporarily held by art institutions around the world.
The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art is a public museum for discovering and teaching art, as well as a center for campus connection. The building features a transparent main lobby and a new entry plaza for art displays, performances, social gatherings, and classes. A series of flexible gallery spaces offers students, faculty, and visitors space for observing, discussing, and exploring the collections. The galleries’ proportions allow for faculty to curate collections for teaching and research and for students to learn about curating, which is central to the museum’s mission.
The museum’s upper floors include a visual arts laboratory classroom where the collections can be used for teaching. Collaborative staff and volunteer spaces also support the research and teaching of the collections.
A dark, kinetic brick facade, with alternating brick texture and brick finish, reflects the changing sunlight. The lobby’s glass facade and a series of interconnected voids throughout the building establish connections to natural light and guide the visitor experience. Outdoor terraces also serve as spaces for socializing and school visits.
On the Building Team:
Owner: The University of Iowa
Design architect: BNIM
Architect of record: BNIM
MEP engineer: Design Engineers
Structural engineer: Meyer Borgman Johnson
General contractor/construction manager: Russell Construction
Related Stories
| May 19, 2014
What can architects learn from nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience?
In a new report, HOK and Biomimicry 3.8 partnered to study how lessons from the temperate broadleaf forest biome, which houses many of the world’s largest population centers, can inform the design of the built environment.
| May 15, 2014
First look: 9/11 Memorial Museum opens to first-responders, survivors, 9/11 families [slideshow]
The 110,000-sf museum is filled with monumental artifacts from the tragedy and exhibits that honor the lives of every victim of the 2001 and 1993 attacks.
| May 13, 2014
19 industry groups team to promote resilient planning and building materials
The industry associations, with more than 700,000 members generating almost $1 trillion in GDP, have issued a joint statement on resilience, pushing design and building solutions for disaster mitigation.
| May 13, 2014
Libeskind wins competition to design Canadian National Holocaust Monument
A design team featuring Daniel Libeskind and Gail Dexter-Lord has won a competition with its design for the Canadian National Holocaust Monument in Toronto. The monument is set to open in the autumn of 2015.
| May 11, 2014
Final call for entries: 2014 Giants 300 survey
BD+C's 2014 Giants 300 survey forms are due Wednesday, May 21. Survey results will be published in our July 2014 issue. The annual Giants 300 Report ranks the top AEC firms in commercial construction, by revenue.
| Apr 29, 2014
USGBC launches real-time green building data dashboard
The online data visualization resource highlights green building data for each state and Washington, D.C.
| Apr 24, 2014
Unbuilt and Famous: LEGO releases box set of Bjarke Ingels' LEGO museum
LEGO Architecture has created a box set that customers can use to build replicas of the LEGO Museum, which is not yet built in real life. The museum, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, will commemorate the history of LEGO.
| Apr 18, 2014
Multi-level design elevates Bulgarian Children's Museum [slideshow]
Embodying the theme “little mountains,” the 35,000-sf museum will be located in a former college laboratory building in the Studenski-grad university precinct.
| Apr 16, 2014
Upgrading windows: repair, refurbish, or retrofit [AIA course]
Building Teams must focus on a number of key decisions in order to arrive at the optimal solution: repair the windows in place, remove and refurbish them, or opt for full replacement.
| Apr 15, 2014
12 award-winning structural steel buildings
Zaha Hadid's Broad Art Museum and One World Trade Center are among the projects honored by the American Institute of Steel Construction for excellence in structural steel design.