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Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - AIA National Honor Award

 

Article from AIA National Honor Award - 2008
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2008 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture

Project:
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Kansas City, Missouri

Architect:
Steven Holl Architects
New York City

Owner:
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Kansas City, Missouri

Notes of Interest
The expansion of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art fuses architecture with landscape to create an experiential architecture that unfolds for visitors as it is perceived through each individual’s movement through space and time. The new addition engages the existing sculpture garden, transforming the entire Museum site into the precinct of the visitor’s experience. The addition extends along the eastern edge of the campus and is distinguished by five glass lenses, traversing from the existing building through the sculpture park to form new spaces and angles of vision.

Jury Comments
This ingenious design solution encompassing a new building and landscape as the addition preserves the integrity of the original structure while charting a fresh new direction for museums. With light as the consummate inspiration for the orientation and forms of the building, the solution transforms galleries and lobby, day or night, and endows the asymmetry of the plan with a sense of logic. The museum’s details have been meticulously crafted and casework blended into the wall surfaces so subtly as to be invisible.