From expansion projects to new builds, Weitzman faculty and students are helping museums deepen connections to their site and community.
Master of Architecture student Chenxi Li's design for an addition to the ICA, completed for a studio with Daniel Markiewicz
Although it’s been over three decades since Meyerson Hall housed Penn’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the ICA and what was then called the Graduate School of Fine Arts have remained connected, in part through the ongoing series of public artist talks they co-present.
And recently the two organizations were brought together again through the medium of architecture.
The first occasion was in 1990, when architect Adėle Naudé Santos, a graduate of the School who later joined the faculty and served as chair, designed the ICA’s current building. For the last three years, students in the Master of Architecture program have designed additions for the museum as part of the first-year Master of Architecture studio.
For professional architects as well as students, museums provide a unique design challenge. Museums need functional, accessible spaces to display objects and host public programs. Donors and executives often look to distinguish their institutions through design, offering architects a chance to bring all their skills and creativity to bear on a project.
“Architecture’s role is to fulfill the needs of the clients by shaping the gallery spaces in the way that will work best for the institution,” says architect Daniel Markiewicz, an associate professor of practice in architecture and coordinator of the first-year MArch studio at Weitzman. “But it’s also to advise ways of opening up further and enhancing the welcoming aspect for these kinds of institutions.”
From Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao to Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar, museums around the world are increasingly known for their architecture as much as for their collections or programs. Today, as museums and other cultural institutions strive to become more inviting and accessible to their communities, architects are helping them find the way.
WEISS/MANFREDI's design for an addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (left) follows a 2007 addition by Steven Holl (right). "Museums need to transcend their traditional bounded identities," says architect Marion Weiss.
More than a decade after completing a plan to connect the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a Kansas City landmark, with the city’s other cultural assets, WEISS/MANFREDI, is working on an expansion of the building itself. The firm is also working on the reimagining of the La Brea Tar Pits Page Museum in Los Angeles.
For Marion Weiss, Graham Professor of Practice in Architecture and co-founder of the firm, the competition for the Nelson-Atkins commission was “one of the most extraordinary opportunities we could think of.” Many museums, including the Nelson-Atkins, are working to change their public identities and relationships with their communities from an earlier era of exclusivity to one of greater openness.
At both the Nelson-Atkins and Page Museums, WEISS/MANFREDI is introducing new transparency to museums that have been separated from their landscapes and community with largely opaque identities. Responding to the original 1930s design and an earlier addition by Stephen Holl Architects, the WEISS/MANFREDI addition will open “a new chapter of transparency and public invitation” while emphasizing the museum’s role at the center of cultural life in Kansas City, Weiss says. At the Page Museum, their design carves into the historic earthwork to reveal the paleontological collection inside.
“The extraordinary thing about museums is they are one of the few architectural programs that have the art of space and the art of art at the soul of the ambitions,” Weiss says. “Most buildings need to multitask beyond the edges of sensibility. Today museums need to transcend their traditional bounded identities to become more welcoming destinations for a broader public. Both art and natural history museums have the authority to interpret those rules of invitation and access in ways that are seen through the lens of art and science. That’s unique. It means that you have a greater chance to have a client at the other end who’s embracing the kind of ambitions that we hold near to our heart as ambitions of their own.”
"We reject rigid dichotomies in favor of more entangled tensions that sustain the viewer’s attention over time,” says Ferda Kolatan (seated far right) of his MSD-AAD studio. (Photo: Dylan Li)
Most museum projects today involve adding to or reimagining existing spaces, rather than building something from scratch. It’s a practice that has fascinated Associate Professor of Architecture Ferda Kolatan throughout his career. Kolatan, an architect who leads New York-Based SU11, has led a series of graduate architecture studios in recent years in partnership with the GAD Foundation, an Istanbul-based group that coordinates student exchange programs in architecture and urbanism. While speculative in nature, the projects ask students to engage with local culture and stakeholders.
This spring Kolatan’s Advanced Architectural Design studio is working in the city of Side on Turkey’s southern coast at an archaeological site with ancient architectural artifacts. Students, whose trips are sponsored by Barut Hotels, meet with Feristah Alanyali, the head of excavations at Side. They are charged with designing a new archaeological museum using the ancient building remains that still exist on the site, and stones from nearby quarries—as ancient architects would have. “All these volumes, structures, layers—the architecture has to let that speak,” says Gökhan Karakuş, an Istanbul-based designer and historian who works with the GAD Foundation. Their designs are expected to showcase historic artifacts while advancing a kind of hybrid architecture.
“The concept of the hybrid resides in its capacity to integrate existing architectural elements with new ones,” Kolatan says. “Such combinatory techniques rely on gradual transformation and blending rather than abrupt juxtaposition. Both aesthetically and conceptually, we reject rigid dichotomies in favor of more entangled tensions that sustain the viewer’s attention over time.”
Yichen He and Hannah Xu's design for an archeological museum in Side, Turkey
In Kolatan’s studio, students begin their work by focusing on one ancient wall on the site they’re working on, studying its design, qualities, condition, and the size of its stones, before moving onto the broader site. In Markiewicz’s studio, students similarly start narrow, studying an individual chair designed by an architect and using it to inform their designs for an exhibition room to display that chair. They then meet with leaders at the ICA, learn about the logistics and needs of the space, and finish the semester by designing a vertical addition for the museum. It’s an exercise that both encourages creativity and challenges it with real-world limitations.
“I think there is a productive resistance that’s offered by the nature of gallery space,” Markiewicz says.
Robert Chaney, the Marc J. Leder Director of Curatorial Affairs at the ICA, says the original design of the building by Adèle Naudé Santos is unusually flexible for a museum, which is a benefit to the museum’s work with rotating exhibitions. When he meets with the Weitzman students, he tries to impress on them practical considerations like loading and accessibility. But he also wants them to push the limits with their own ideas.
“We’re a cultural, visual institution, so you look to elevate every aspect of the visitor’s experience,” Chaney says. “You want a building that speaks to what you’re doing and that is also a challenging, visually engaging enterprise.”
View Slideshow
