Buffalo, New York, USA
Located at the northern edge of the historic Delaware Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Shohei Shigematsu of OMA has led the expansion project of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, a space where art meets architecture and nature in collaboration with landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.
The city is known for its history of industrial revolution and the current revitalization of remnants from that past. It has a rich architectural history—from silos and manufacturing facilities to buildings by Eero Saarinen, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The museum itself has two connected historic buildings: a 1905 solid, neo-classical building by Edward B. Green originally planned for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition and a 1962 Modernist extension by Gordon Bunshaft that included a new auditorium box and an outdoor courtyard.
Despite being in the park, the two buildings side-by-side severed views and access to it from the city, and even from inside the museum itself.
Our ambition for the extension was not only to expand the complex to accommodate the museum’s growing art collection and diversifying programs, but also to reconnect it to the park and city and establish a new openness to public activities.
The 1905 and 1962 buildings command a clear separation, closed off from their surroundings. In contrast, the approach for the new pavilion is to unlock the full potential of being in the park.
On the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building’s ground floor, the architects started with galleries in the shape of a cross.
The galleries lie at the heart of the building while four transparent corners—containing the lobby, media gallery, office, and loading dock—bring the park in and surround the museum in nature.
While the scale of the cross galleries is akin to that of the intimate rooms of the 1905 structure, two larger, more efficient gallery boxes that resonate with Bunshaft’s box are stacked above.
A double-height gallery in the front of the building connects the cross and flexible boxes.
The first floor of the structure holds five galleries, with a variety of offices, theatres, and circulation points arranged around the four corners.
The floors are of pink terrazzo in the lobby and transition to stone chip throughout the other areas.
A long spiral staircase sits adjacent to the entrance and circulates museum visitors around a large structural column through the different levels of the structure.
The second story holds the promenade, which is large enough to hold large-scale sculptures, with another gallery space in the enclosed core that extends up from the ground floor.
While the existing buildings were hermetic historically, the new Gundlach Building opens itself up to its surroundings—a transparent entity that contributes a new profile and language to the lineage of the architectural history of the institution.
Together, the new complex offers an array of programs and spatial experiences—from classic to modern to contemporary, gallery to classroom, intimate rooms to grand halls, lawn to courtyard to winter garden.
The new refurbished areas become a new community engagement, learning, and creativity center; greatly enhanced by and monumental artwork Common Sky by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann of Studio Other Spaces, which now encloses the original open-air and largely inaccessible interior courtyard to create the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation Town Square.
Most importantly, a new point of entry on the east facade of the Knox Building establishes a connection from the city to the park.
Project: Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Architects: OMA
Lead Architect: Shohei Shigematsu
Landscape Architects: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Civil Engineering: Wendel
Photographs: Marco Cappelletti
