Steven Holl Architects' addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art places five translucent, rectangular boxes (called "lenses") on the eastern edge of the museum's campus. The architects describe these five galleries and support spaces as "[materializing] light like blocks of ice." Inside, they offer asymmetrical and unpredictable interior features that blur the line between the structural and the ornamental. This project is an expansion and renovation of the Museum to include additional gallery space, cafe, bookstore, library, parking, offices and support space.
Concept:
The expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art occurs through five new "lenses" forming new spaces, new viewpoints, and new angles of vision. From the movement of the body through the landscape and the free movement threaded between the light gathering "lenses" of the new addition, exhilarating new experiences of the Museum are created. Glass lenses bring different qualities of light to the galleries, while the sculpture garden's pathways meander through them.
The first of the five "lenses" forms a bright and transparent lobby, with cafe, art library and bookstore, inviting the public into the Museum and encouraging movement via ramps toward the galleries as they progress downward into the garden. From the lobby a new cross-axis connects through to the original building's grand spaces. At night the glowing glass volume of the lobby provides an inviting transparency, drawing visitors to events and activities.
The lenses' multiple layers of translucent glass gather, diffuse, and refract light - at times materializing light like blocks of ice. During the day the lenses inject varying qualities of light into the galleries, while at night the sculpture garden glows with their internal light. The "meandering path" threaded between the lenses in the Sculpture Park has its sinuous complement in the open flow through the continuous level of galleries below. The galleries, organized in sequence to support the progression of the collections, gradually step down into the Park, and are punctuated by views into the landscape. The new addition celebrates this fusion of art, architecture, and landscape with the new Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court, setting a binding connection to the existing Sculpture Gardens.
The sculpture garden continues up and over the gallery roofs, creating sculpture courts between the lenses, while also providing green roofs to achieve high insulation and control storm water. At the heart of the addition's lenses is a structural concept merged with a light and air distributor concept: "Breathing T's" transport light down into the galleries along their curved undersides while carrying the glass in suspension and providing a location for HVAC ducts. The double-glass cavities of the lenses gather sun-heated air in winter or exhaust it in summer. Optimum light levels for all types of art or media installations and seasonal flexibility requirements are ensured through the use of computer-controlled screens and of special translucent insulating material embedded in the glass cavities. A continuous service level basement below the galleries offers art delivery, storage and handling spaces, as well as flexible access to the "Breathing-Ts."
