RENZO PIANO UNVEILS PLANS FOR KIMBELL EXTENSION; NPR CHOOSES NEW ARCHITECTS
The Architectural Record has published several renderings of Renzo Piano’s new design for the Kimbell Art Museum’s expansion, unveiled yesterday. According to the Record, it was imperative that the seventy-million-dollar addition be respectful of the original building designed by Louis Kahn. Piano’s plans call for a two-story steel and glass pavilion on the sweeping lawn to the west of the existing museum, which opened in 1972. The pavilion will be used primarily for temporary exhibitions, doubling the amount of gallery space and reserving the original building for the institution’s extensive permanent collection. Currently, the museum’s Rembrandts, Cézannes, and Picassos go into storage whenever a major traveling show comes to town. Beyond galleries, the ninety-thousand-square-foot addition will contain studios, classrooms, a library, and an auditorium, mostly located below grade or tucked into a grassy berm to the rear of the site. Visitors will enter through an underground parking garage and then gradually make their way across the lawn, past trees and fountains, to the original building—the procession from nature to art and back again that Kahn originally envisioned. “I am delighted with Renzo’s design, and the way, physically and symbolically, he has connected the Kimbell’s past and future,” says Kay Fortson, president of the Kimbell Art Foundation, which funds the museum.
In other news, according to the New York Times_, National Public Radio has announced that it had chosen the firm Hickok Cole Architects to design its new headquarters in Washington. The firm, led by Michael E. Hickok and Yolanda Cole, was chosen over three other contenders for a design that will incorporate NPR’s existing four-story building within a new ten-story structure. The 360,000-square-foot headquarters will include a 60,000-square-foot studio, as well as a studio space for public events, and an exhibition called “This Is NPR.” No start date was announced for construction.
