Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
Creating a rich interplay of texture and contrast, the Bruce Museum by EskewDumezRipple is a world-class museum with a multi-disciplinary collection and exhibition program that brings art, science, and natural history together.
The architects were asked to renovate and expand the existing structure, a private residence originally constructed in the 1850s but subsequently expanded and renovated numerous times.
The Bruce Museum project has recently won a 2024 Green Good Design Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The addition of a 42,000-square-foot new wing provides expanded collection storage, permanent and changing art gallery space, and a new public entrance lobby and lecture hall for the museum.
The design of the expansion addresses the shortcomings of the previous arrival experience.
A critical design decision was made to locate all the expanded gallery programs at the same level as the existing museum galleries.
This results in the expansion extending out over the hillside, providing an opportunity to infill the space below while carving into the hillside as the massing steps down to the park below.
New public programs (lobby, café, gift shop, and multi-purpose lecture hall) are organized on a single floor located twenty-five feet below the galleries at the level of the park.
The new east-facing entrance is now highly visible and easily accessible to visitors arriving by car or on foot.
As a result, the new Bruce Museum is now experienced as a museum in the landscape.
The ring road around the museum is now a limited access drive, providing staff parking at the top of the hill, museum loading/ service access, and drop off/entry for visiting school groups that repurpose the previous museum front door.
The design of the exterior façade took its inspiration from two local precedents that have stone as the primary material reference – quarry and lace walls.
Stone quarries are found throughout the region, where the act of carving into the earth produces a series of striated layers of cut material.
The streaking of dirt and soot further articulates the face of the quarry and produces a wall of graphic contrast.
Also, as part of our early research, we found that early settlers in the region constructed walls on their property by loosely stacking stones to create what are known as lace walls.
These low stone walls create a condition where the built wall is “as much air as it is stone.”
Project: Bruce Museum
Architects: EskewDumezRipple
Lead Architects: Steve Dumez, Noah Marble, Shawn Preau, and Haley Allen
Design Team: Vanessa Smith-Torres, Kyle Digby, Sam Levison, Mark Thorburn, Max Katz, and Guan Wang
Landscape Architects: Reed Hilderbrand
General Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Owner’s Representative: Stone Harbor Land Company
Client: The Bruce Museum
Photographers: Tim Hursley and Michael Biondo
