Project Title

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum Award CategoryBuilding

The design intent for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum was to create an iconic cultural hub for the University and surrounding community which would attract some of the greatest traveling art exhibits to central Michigan. The emerging concept, the ‘landscape carpet’ links site, campus and community by conceptually extrapolating the network of connections through and over the site delineating the building form and envelope of patches and pleats thus creating continuity of landform, building and structure. Echoing the movement and visual connections, the building skin of stainless steel reflects the varying directions and orientations, giving the Museum an ever-changing appearance. The exterior envelope also plays with the perception of scale by breaking each of the facades down into pleat filled patches. While the skin reflects its external environment, it also responds to the internal program and definition of interior spaces. The pleats evolve into open fins over glazed areas, allowing diffuse daylight to filter into the building creating a dialogue between inside and outside yet never quite revealing its contents. This open character underlines Eli and Edythe Broad’s original intent of building as a cultural hub for the community with all of its diversity.

 The design of internal spaces is a direct manifestation of the overarching concept. Internal volumes reflect the definition of the external surfaces of patches and pleats. Interior organization is based upon clear and intuitive movement through the building for the visitor to galleries from public spaces and circulation routes. Internal circulation is articulated by three ‘L’ shaped architectural concrete walls which provide legibility and material continuity to public areas and guide the visitor from either entrance, through the lobby and reception area to the feature stair. Operating as a sculptural element, the feature stair provides vertical movement through the Museum, connecting all three levels, and serving as a navigational reference for the visitor through the building.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

SITE PLANThe design of the site and landscape further supports the concept of the ‘landscape carpet’ by sculpting the ground plane around the building creating a more integral and dynamic relationship between landscape and architecture truly embedding the building into the site. Areas of the envelope are reflected in concrete fingers set into the landscape with ground grazing lights illuminating the finger’s embedded stainless steel strips furthering continuity between building and landscape, interior and exterior. From the west, visitors are introduced to the museum via a new public plaza created between the Museum and adjacent classroom building. To the east, the landscape engages the cut of the building to form a semi-enclosed external courtyard linking the building to a revitalized pedestrian path and the adjacent Sculpture Garden.

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Lower Level

First Floor

Second Floor

Roof Plan

First Floor – Café

Lower Level – Lobby

First Floor – Lobby

First floor – Reception

Feature Stair

Northwest Gallery

Brad’s #0213

Second Floor - Northwest Gallery