Hospitality Design - December 2016 - 92

trendspotting

A rendering of the upcoming expansion
of the Gateway Arch Museum

> Striking Museums

There has been an influx of statement-making museums across the U.S. by
an impressive group of veteran architects. Here's a look at four standouts.

After winning The City + The Arch + The River 2015 international
design competition, New York firms Cooper Robertson and James
Carpenter Design Associates, with locally based Trivers Associates,
are designing a renovated and expanded Gateway Arch Museum and
Visitor Center in St. Louis. The challenge was not only to update it with
a more contemporary vocabulary but also to make the underground
venue-located at the base of Eero Saarinen's iconic Gateway Arch-more
visible. That includes a reimagined entrance built into a grassy berm that
will open up to an expanded Luther Ely Smith Square stretching over the
highway. "The design strengthens the physical connections between the
city and the arch with a dynamic, linear plan that takes visitors from the
entry and culminates in a tram ride to the Top of the Arch, with nearly
45,000 square feet of new museum space," says Scott Newman, a partner
at Cooper Robertson, who leads the firm's cultural and educational
practice. "The trip through the exhibit merges seamlessly with the trip up
the Arch, offering context for the big views of St. Louis, the river, and to
the west."

SFMOMA

Snøhetta's new 10-story addition to the original Mario Botta-designed San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) offers three times more
gallery space than before, 170,000 square feet of new and renovated indoor
and outdoor galleries-and a dramatic new building. Since opening in
1995, the neighborhood around the museum has changed significantly-
its debut reinvigorated the area, attracting offices, shops, hotels, and
restaurants. This newfound vibrancy, says project architect Jon McNeal,
called for a "more open and transparent relationship to the street and city,"
including a glass-walled gallery and entrance. "From the street the two

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December 2016 hospitalitydesign.com

The rippled exterior of the SFMOMA expansion

buildings have very different approaches: The original building is more
protective and internally facing, and the expansion looks to invite visitors
inside by making the art as visually accessible as possible. [They are like]
dance partners-moving slightly differently, looking distinct from one
another, but working together as one."
The extension's unique exterior is clad in a ripple geometry made of
fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) "evocative of the natural processes of the
Bay Area, visually embodying the ephemera of sunlight, fog, wind, and
water," he says, adding that facets made of opaque glass provide a polished
counterpoint. "It's dynamic in all types of light, and its cantilevered and
double-curved form maximizes daylight and clear space in the public
realm at ground level. This increased daylight access combines with a new
public pedestrian circulation pathway and a highly transparent façade to
beckon and welcome visitors."
Inside, dark gray epoxy terrazzo with small multicolored aggregate
and maple wood strip floors that match those in the original building are
"meant to read as a seamless whole to minimize any distraction from the
art," says McNeal.

Photo by HENRIK KAM

Gateway Arch Museum and Visitor Center
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