Miami Art Museum designed to fit in with park
The building design for the Miami Art Museum – to be unveiled today – seeks to be one with its waterfront site in Bicentennial Park.
BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI AND DANIEL CHANG
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The Miami Art Museum on Friday unveils a working design for its new $220 million bayfront home that, safe to say, looks unlike any building in Miami -- or any other place:
Beneath a set of long, flat, layered canopies held up by slender poles, a series of interconnected blocks -- the museum galleries -- seem to float over a raised platform. Thick vines hang from or creep up toward the canopy ceilings, which are punctured by skylights. Under the platform is an exposed parking garage.
The whole dreamlike composition, inspired in part by the houses of Stiltsville in Biscayne Bay, resembles nothing so much as a giant sandwich, pincushioned by toothpicks, in which the meat and bread have come slightly apart.
It will all be cooled by bay breezes and the latest green technologies.
The new MAM was designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, known for daring but carefully considered architecture.
It ought to dazzle and confound in equal measure. MAM officials could not be more pleased.
AN ORIGINAL
''It's an original Miami building,'' said museum director Terence Riley. ``It's not New York; it's not London. Right away, it has an iconic quality. But what I'm really excited about is that it appears it's going to be a fantastic museum.''
Scheduled for groundbreaking in one year and completion in 2011, the MAM building would co-anchor the proposed Museum Park on the 29-acre site of Bicentennial Park, the lodestone of Miami's downtown revival. Design work on the second anchor, a science museum by British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, is in preliminary stages.
Construction of the MAM building, estimated to cost $130 million, will be financed with $100 million in Miami-Dade County bonds that voters approved in 2004, with the balance provided by museum donors. Riley said the museum has raised the full amount for construction, and will now focus on privately raising $70 million for an endowment and $20 million for other expenses related to the new building.
Starting Saturday, MAM will host an exhibition at its downtown building on the development of the new design, intended in part to spur fundraising as well as public discussion of the plan, Riley said.
''This is not theoretical,'' Riley said. ``We have results, and we want to share them with the people who are financing it.
''What we're looking for is a kind of mature community debate and discussion that eventually finds its way into the museum,'' he said. However, Riley expects more refinement than drastic change in the working design, which has been endorsed by the museum's board.
At least one insider says MAM appears to have an architectural hit on its hands, unlike other Miami buildings by famous architects that are widely regarded as duds.
''I think the building is brilliant,'' said Peter Menendez, a senior associate at the Miami architecture firm Spillis Candela DMJM and a former MAM board member. ``This is the building that will break the jinx in this city in which great architects have come and not done their best work.''
But MAM officials and architects say they have been wary of the pressure to come up with an instant icon along the lines of Frank Gehry's famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which has drawn millions of visitors to the industrial city and prompted other cities around the world to attempt to reproduce the effect, often with unhappy results.
''There have been some iconic flops recently,'' said Riley, who handpicked Herzog & de Meuron. 'We said, `Don't worry about the icon business. Do a great museum.' If it's a great museum, it may become an icon.''
The architects -- who came to world renown after converting a massive power plant on the Thames River in London into the Tate Modern museum -- say their design started with South Florida's climate, the museum's bayfront park site and MAM's vision for expanding its small permanent collection.
''It was clear to us from the very beginning that this project is about climate, community, about community space, not just beautiful galleries in a park,'' said Christine Binswanger, the firm's partner in charge of the project. ``We want not just a beautiful building. We want to have this building relate to the park and be a part of the park.''
To that end, they came up with a large canopy-like structure, open to the air on all sides, that would provide a garden-like shelter -- with vines, trees and other flora -- and water views to park and museum visitors. The museum itself would be three stories, with the first and third having transparent walls to allow views in and out and providing the impression that the second floor -- housing the museum's main galleries -- floats in the air. A broad staircase would descend to a baywalk and act as a front porch for the museum.
Despite its apparent delicateness, Binswanger said the building's computer-aided post-and-beam design will be ''extra stiff'' to meet hurricane codes. Structural engineers from Miami have already done preliminary studies, and a model will be subjected to wind-tunnel tests.
SAVING ENERGY
The building will also be designed around energy-saving, sustainable materials and techniques. For instance, groundwater could be pumped up the columns to cool the canopy roof and the space beneath.
The museum would also include a café and shop, library and classrooms with panoramic views of the park and bay. An auditorium will be on the garage level, which may also exhibit art, likely projected video or photography.
''The beginning of this experience should be when you park your car,'' Binswanger said. Binswanger said the overall design mimics banyan tree roots or a mangrove cluster: a multitude of redundant structures creating a unified organism.
The design also was inspired by what Riley referred to as a classic example of South Florida ''folk architecture'' -- Stiltsville.
By incorporating copious foliage into a design that recalls a wrap-around porch, Riley said, the architects managed to bring the park inside the building, creating what he called ``open space under a roof.''
''It's not a trunk for art,'' Binswanger said. ``It's open and breathing.''
Inside, visitors will find a museum that does not, in Riley's words, ''aspire to be a mini-MOMA or a mini-Tate,'' alluding to museums with encyclopedic collections of modern art. Rather, Riley wants to build a collection that focuses on specific artists and offers broad overviews of artistic movements.
''To make this an interesting destination,'' he said, ``we don't have to tell the whole story [of contemporary art]. We can tell the story the way we want to.''
There would be three types of galleries: some that present an overview of the anticipated collection; others that focus on, or ''anchor,'' the works of a particular artist; and ones that will be created by architects in collaboration with a commissioned artist. The museum would have about 32,000 square feet of exhibit space, tripling that in its current building, designed in the 1980s as a temporary exhibition hall.
The open structure also allows flexibility for the young museum to grow. Rooms can be added to the galleries without major disruptions, MAM said.
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