August 14, 2007 at 15:54Finalists of the architectural competition for the design of the Museum of Michigan State University announced
Customers set the bidders to one main condition - the project should treat trees growing on the territory of the future development as carefully as possible, preferably keeping as many of the 73 existing as possible.
Having received this statement of the assignment, four out of five architectural workshops that entered the second stage of the competition raised their projects above the ground using a platform or without it.
In the Kup Himmelblau workshop, the future Ely Museum and Edith Brodov are presented in the form of two elongated concrete blocks of exhibition halls attached to a rounded glass lobby. A pedestrian bridge connects the building to the open-air sculpture garden.
In the architectural bureau KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects), they only thought about a huge silver whale. "Whale" is put on a platform where the largest museum exhibits from the museum's sculptural collection will be placed. The walls of the building resemble a membrane: they made many rounded holes of different sizes, which serve to illuminate the interior. Thanks to them, in the dark, the museum building will glow from the inside.
The workshop of Randall Stout proposed a project preserving 63 trees from 73 growing on the site. The exhibition halls, lined with polished zinc, are raised above the ground almost to the level of the crowns of the very trees that the project managed to save.
Tom Mayne’s Morphosis Bureau linked his project to the park through the use of a large glazing area. The main part of the museum building is raised above the ground, it is supported by a completely transparent block of the lobby of the first floor.
Zaha Hadid - the only one did not raise her project above the surface. The elongated, swift forms of the building create the illusion of speed and dynamics. The horizontally elongated trapezoid, which is formed by the glass walls of the building, is equipped with steel shutters, which will constantly open and close. The result of this will be an amazing action when the corner of the interior that opens for a moment is immediately replaced by the trees of the park reflected in the metal panels. The final results of the competition will be known in early September of this year.
ProjectcoopHimmelb (l) au
Project KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects)
Project workshop Randall Stout
project studio" Morphosis "Thom Mayne
project by Zaha Hadid