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Type
Date
Location
Project Name
Collaborators
Nelson Atkins Museum of Art
Kansas City MO
1999 - 2007

Client
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Architect
Steven Holl Architects

Structural Engineer
Guy Nordenson and Associates

Associate Structural Engineer
Structural Engineering Associates

2000 Progressive Architecture Award
1999 NY AIA Project Award

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This competition-winning design is for a 160,000sf addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. The addition is a continuous series of gallery spaces extending alongside the existing Daniel Riley-designed sculpture garden. One side of the galleries is open to the garden and the other is built into the hillside. Five light “lenses” occur along the galleries, bringing reflected natural light into the space. The base structure is concrete and the lenses are supported by “T’s” (cousins to the Wave-T’s in the museum's parking garage, also designed by Guy Nordenson and Associates and Steven Holl Architects) that incorporate the air and service distribution. These T’s are stabilized by stays, like a sailboat mast, inside the double glass walls. The structure in the glass walls is purely tensile.
photograph by Andy Ryan