Renzo Piano Week: Details of Kimbell Addition Announced (day after Whitney’s green light)

Renzo Piano's back-of-a-placecard drawing of his plan for the expansion (left) of the Louis Kahn-designed Kimbell Art Museum (right)

Just a day after the Whitney Museum's board green lighted its planned new Renzo Piano-designed facility in New York's Meatpacking District, the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, has released details of its final design for its own Renzo Piano expansion---quite a bit more fleshed out than the green doodle above, which the architect had rapidly sketched for me when I had asked him about his Kimbell plans a year ago. (The drawing was executed at the press lunch, where he was seated to my right, at the opening of the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing, which Piano also designed.)

My little drawing has more energy, though, than the vague, bland elevations now being released by the Kimbell.

Here's one example:



To be built on the expansive lawn just west of Louis Kahn's 120,000-square-foot 1972 masterpiece, the Kimbell's new 85,150-square-foot project will be separated from the original facility by a reflecting pool. It will add about 16,500 square feet of gallery space to the Kahn building's 20,000 square-foot galleries. The material for the new façade, which includes glass walls, has been changed to concrete from the previous plan for travertine and concrete---an "aesthetic decision," according to a spokesperson.

You can see the site---the large green lawn---in this aerial view of the Kimbell:



The cost has been pushed up and the opening pushed back from previous announcements of the project's status: When the plan was described back in November 2008, it called for a new 90,000-square-foot building (about 5,000-square-feet bigger than the updated plan). Hard costs for construction were then expected to total $70 million, all funded by the Kimbell Art Foundation itself. Groundbreaking was projected for late 2010; the hoped-for opening was 2012.

By December 2009, the cost has risen to $100 million-plus and the opening was slated for 2013.

That was then, this is now: The pricetag (including hard and soft costs) is projected at $125 million; the opening is still planned for 2013. Groundbreaking is expected this summer.

The raison d'être for the project remains the same. According to the press release (not online at this writing):

During the major exhibitions that the Kimbell presents on a regular basis, the gallery space available for the display of its world-renowned permanent collection has been severely restricted; for periods each year, much of the collection has had to be kept in storage. The main purpose of the new building is to provide extra galleries to be used primarily for exhibitions, allowing the Kahn building to be devoted to the permanent collection.

The new building also provides the classrooms and studios that are essential to a full-scale museum education department, as well as an auditorium considerably larger than the one in the Kahn building, an expanded library, and generous underground parking.

Here's a look at a the layout for the ground floor:



And here's a more detailed description of the two joined structures that will constitute the expansion---one with a "floating roof" (shades of Chicago's elaborate "flying carpet"), the other with a green roof---a relatively recent development in the plan:

The new building consists of two connected structures, the first and more prominent a pavilion [bottom of the model, above] that faces and to some degree mirrors the Kahn building. Here, on a tripartite facade, robust concrete walls flank a recessed entrance bay of glass. The pavilion houses a large lobby in the center, with café, exhibition store, and coat-check, and exhibition galleries to either side, all naturally lit from an elaborately engineered roof.

In the galleries, Renzo Piano has striven for an even more exquisite light quality than he has achieved before: His roof system incorporates aluminum louvers, glass, photo-voltaic cells, wood beams, and stretched fabric scrims. The north and south walls of the pavilion are glass, with colonnades outside to support the roof, which overhangs generously for shade....

In contrast to the pavilion, this rear element of the building [top of the model, above] is self-effacing from the outside, covered by a grassy roof that gives the appearance of an earthwork or archaeological site. It contains a third gallery that is not top-lit and therefore suitable for especially light-sensitive works, as well as the auditorium, library and education center.

As I mentioned in my Wall Street Journal review of the Los Angeles County Museum's Piano-designed Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the architect's "elaborate skylight apparatuses...have [in my opinion] come to seem more fussy and pricey than necessary."

Nevertheless, they seem to have become the must-have fashion accessory of museum expansions around the country. (Think also---the High Museum, Atlanta; the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.)

The selection of Piano as architect was announced in April 2007, under the directorship of Eric Lee's predecessor, Timothy Potts.

UPDATE: You can read Nicolai Ouroussoff's take on Piano's Kimbell design (for tomorrow's NY Times but online now), here. Gaile Robinson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is here.