by: Lisa Delgado
Event: New Works: Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture
Location: Museum of Arts and Design, 01.22.09
Speaker: Brad Cloepfil, AIA — Principal, Allied Works Architecture
Organizer: Museum of Arts and Design
Installation view of the “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary” exhibition at the MAD Museum.
Photo Richard Barnes, courtesy MAD Museum
The Museum of Arts and Design’s new home at 2 Columbus Circle has been fraught with controversy. Preservationists decried the changes by Allied Works Architecture (AWA) to Edward Durell Stone’s Venetian-style building; some architecture critics looked at the new renovation as not going far enough toward making a bold design gesture.
In a recent talk, AWA principal Brad Cloepfil, AIA, revealed his perspective on the renovation of the museum, which opened in its new location last September. He showed no particular preoccupation with making a grand architectural statement — instead, his focus was on opening up the building to its surroundings and creating a space that feels vibrant, alive, and integrally connected with the fabric of the city.
One early scheme involved using art vitrines as “columns of light” that would penetrate vertically through the various levels and tempt visitors to explore. That idea proved impractical, Cloepfil said, but its spirit remains in a system of glassy slits that cut through the floors, allowing museumgoers to glimpse the shadows of artworks or visitors on other levels. The façade is also slitted, both horizontally and vertically, yielding views of the city to MAD visitors and allowing glimpses of the museum’s collection to people outside.
Other AWA museum projects reveal a similar concern with fostering a connection with the urban surroundings. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis features ribbons of concrete that intersect and overlap, creating “a bounded place” that is still “intimately connected with the city,” according to Cloepfil. At the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the firm designed a soon-to-open addition that’s elevated off the ground so that “people could move through the building physically, see into the building, see through the building, and it would become a kind of filter for the activity of the campus,” he said.
As attendees wandered about after the talk, the lights of cars and buildings glowed through the strategically placed slits and windows, demonstrating the way the museum welcomes its surroundings. The architects have given a nod to the art and the design of the city.
Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for Oculus, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.