Depending on the materials used, it reminds me of the Houston Contemporary Art Museum. Since the building is entitled "Folding Light", I imagine it may be transparent and glow at night.
Depending on the materials used, it reminds me of the Houston Contemporary Art Museum. Since the building is entitled "Folding Light", I imagine it may be transparent and glow at night.
It also sounds like they'll be installing art in the park, which will at least give it some purpose.
As it is now, it's just a open green space without any reason whatsoever to go there.
What is in the building on the southwest side below the property?
And a big empty field is pretty easy to develop. The main parking lots appear to be between the building and the railroad tracks which is good placement. Ideally the other would be pushed back and allow for green space for any potential infill. I think the building is unique and could draw more interest to the 13th-23rd Broadway corridor.
They are installing the containers for their temp facility today:
Awesome. And I find it very fitting that they chose to use shipping containers for the temporary space. It's a statement to their flexibility and as long as you haven't been living in a hole, then you're seeing just one example of the really creative things people are doing with them these days. Definite WIN.
I have no idea what I'm even looking at. The renderings don't tell me much besides the form of the building (barely). I usually like what Rand does with forms and materials, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The site plan, however, leaves somewhat to be desired. I can live with the surface parking behind the building since it backs up to the railroad tracks, but the green spaces (especially to the north and south) could be better utilized.
Beside the homeless community, Campbell Park is dramatically underutilized. So much so that many posters in this thread didn't even know it was a park!
Instead of creating more lightly-used green spaces, I'd like to see the museum form a partnership with the City to engage and activate Campbell Park.
1) Reconstruct Broadway Drive (the street between the park and museum site) into a Shared Space (Shared space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) to facilitate the integration of the site and park.
2) Refurbish and utilize the park grounds for the outdoor sculpture gardens and activity spaces.
3) Develop the empty spaces to the north and south. These would be great park-front locations for live/work artists lofts and studios or for a restaurant or coffee shop.
Here is a quick sketch of what I'm thinking:
More detailed plans will be revealed in a couple of months but will be pretty close to what has been recently revealed.
Not a fan. This is pretty underwhelming considering that the building looks like it will be interesting. If it were more dominant on Broadway, the same structure could make an impact on the northern edge of Auto Alley.
This is MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Cleveland.. similar size building, similar budget probably, somewhat similar site:
Why can't they do something like this?
Yep, Rand strikes again... He often appears to have little to no regard for public space and the urban realm when designing new structures. Not a fan of this use of what could be prime urban space.
It reminds me of a contemporary version of Denver's original art museum, which was loved and hated - about 50/50 it seemed. I loved it, so expect I'll like this building.
I'm not that worried about the land use here. The building will come right up to Broadway Drive. The rest of the area, all the green space and parking, are things that can easily be changed later. This design doesn't inhibit any future development.
I would expect the park in front will be used for all kinds of events and temporary outdoor exhibits.
It's not even a lack of understanding or a weird conceptualization of public space, but rather that Rand simply doesn't value it and doesn't believe it. The proof is in the pudding constituting of his body of work. He simply can NOT work with urban context because he works against it.
Regarding the land use, you're all 100% correct about it not conforming to accepted urbanist design. But you have to understand Rand a bit better before making blanket pronouncements about "good" or "bad." I've had a few great conversations with Rand about architecture, and one that sticks out for me is the one we had about Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
Kahn was very anti-automobile and designed the Kimbell so that automobiles were hidden behind, and the visitor was intended to walk around the building and enter through a carefully-landscaped grove of trees that "introduced" the visitor to the building and built anticipation for the experience within.
Rand is a big proponent of this type of experiential architecture, especially for higher and cultural uses like this. You can see strong evidence in the Boathouse District, where users are led on long paths when approaching the boathouses, in an effort to require the user to take the building in. Of course the knock is that many users - especially daily ones - see it as impractical and just cut across lawns and through landscaping, creating desire trails.
I'm not sure from the preliminary drawings if that type of experience is the intent here, but strongly suspect that it is. Personally, as an architecture fanboy I think that a break in the street wall in favor of an iconic cultural structure is OK in the urban environment in limited doses. It can help make a statement about our values and who we are. Of course, you can argue that is exactly what the failed Stage Center attempted, but I disagree that poor urban land use was to blame for its demise. And please let's not go down that rabbit hole in this thread.
Anyway, Rand does not strictly disregard the urban environment. In fact, he is very respectful of it in projects like Red Prime and his own office, where he did incredible HP that celebrated the existing - very urban - buildings. He just doesn't always choose to conform to it in new structures, which might be OK for this building, especially in this location. If I have to turn in my strict urbanist card for saying that, so be it.
I will, however, point out the irony that with Kahn's Kimbell most visitors simply chose to park in the lot and enter through the back door, completely ignoring the intended experience. They had to fix this problem when they built the Renzo Piano Wing by putting in an underground parking garage that exits visitors to the intended entry.
Great post, but I'm not concerned so much over a break in the street wall to highlight this (that would be fine) but rather that this will be too removed and separated from Broadway that they might as well still be at Fair Park.
Yeah, I can see that, but I guess the intent is to keep Campbell Park (it is technically a park after all) and to program it similar to the current Orly Genger installation, making it a bit of a contemplative buffer between the museum grounds and the street. I understand points of view. Not sure I feel strongly one way or the other in this instance. It will be interesting to see how it all comes together as a finished product.
Wait...we have streetwalls?
I should have referred to it as a theoretical street wall.
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