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With Open Arms
Designing Museums To Be More
Accessible
By Amy S. Choi
| Designers
tried to "open up the fortress" with a sheer-glass
pavilion, a glass canopy and other features. |
Museums have always been forbidding structures, but not to
those working on a $43.5 million renovation of the Brooklyn
Museum of Art.
"The goal of the redevelopment was to make the museum
as accessible as possible to the public," said Joan Darragh,
the museum's vice director of planning and architecture. "We
wanted to reach young people today. Opening the museum up
to the local community was essential."
In the spirit of openness, both visual and physical accessibility
was incorporated into the redesign of the museum's entrance.
The renovation project will feature a sheer-glass pavilion,
a glass canopy, 82,000 sq. ft. of open plaza space, an elevated
promenade, two water installations and a grade-level entrance,
all designed to "open up the fortress," Darragh
said.
In earlier phases of the museum's redevelopment, interior
gallery spaces were renovated and the entire roof was restored,
including the majority of the building's 32 skylights. Most
recently, additional parking, a new rear entrance and outdoor
installation space were added.
This third and final phase should be complete by mid-April.
New York City-based Polshek Partnership Architects LLP,
in collaboration with Tokyo-based Arata Isozaki & Associates,
designed the museum concept. Both have been the museum's master-plan
architects since 1986.
In redesigning the Eastern Parkway main entrance, one priority
was to keep the legacy of the museum's original façade,
originally designed in 1893 by McKim, Mead & White in
the grand and forbidding Beaux-Arts style, yet make the building
as inviting as possible.
Wide expanses of sheer, steel-supported glass were the solution.
"The use of glass as a material early on allows visual
access, not just to the art in the building but also the people
in the building," Darragh said. "You can look inside
and see people that are just like you. This was an opportunity
for us to capture the audience and make the institution as
transparent as possible."
The clear, stepped-glass pavilion connects to the restored
limestone façade and recalls a 28-ft.-high flight of
stairs that were featured in the original design and were
removed in 1934. The grade-level entrance will now be under
a glass canopy and enter into a glass-enclosed, newly renovated
17,000-sq.-ft. lobby. The stepped glass also meets with an
elevated walkway, which allows visitors on the walkway to
see directly into the lobby and become a part of the museum
itself.
The glass, while providing a philosophical entrance to the
property, also provided most of the headaches on the project.
"The glass is probably the most important and also
the most challenging aspect of the site right now," said
Don Curtis, project executive at Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc.,
the construction manager. "The pieces are semicircular
and fan-shaped and largely supported by prestressed wires
and cabling. This has probably never been done before."
W&W Glass Systems Inc., a Westchester-based architectural
glass and metal contractor, and Polshek Partnership also designed
the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum
of Natural History. It took the team more than a year to develop
the engineering and custom fabrication to support the glass
at the Brooklyn Museum.
The glass itself had to be imported from Italy. Each piece
is a different size and shape, curved to fit the fanned step
of the pavilion, providing yet another challenge to construction
workers used to building in set lines.
"There's really no grid on this building and very few
right angles," said John Moore, the project manager from
Bovis Lend Lease. "The layout work here was extraordinary."
The lack of a strict grid also helps open the museum out
into the community. A curved set of shallow steps, forming
an amphitheater that faces the Eastern Parkway, is in the
tradition of a Brooklyn stoop, where the public can lounge
and relax. The stairs are laid with a form of wood similar
to that on the Coney Island boardwalk, localizing the museum
and incorporating it into the neighborhood aesthetic.
Still, the museum does not displace all of its grandeur.
Two water features, one in front of the amphitheater and one
tucked near the entrance of the property, echo the clarity
of the glass while still inspiring awe.
They are from WETDESIGN of Universal, Calif., which designed
waterworks at both Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and the Salt
Lake City Olympics. "This is classical yet contemporary
design," Darragh said. "We're celebrating our past,
but this is clearly the cosmopolitanism of today."
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