Program: A three-story, 81,000-square-foot addition to the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The addition doubles the museum's gallery space, allowing much of the collection that had been in storage to go on display. The new wing includes a 5,000-square-foot gallery for temporary exhibitions, a secure loading and receiving area, an auditorium, a works-on-paper gallery, a docent room, a conference room, and a museum store.
Design concept and solution: In expanding the existing museum, built in 1970, the architects wanted the addition to read as a seamless extension of the original, as if the two had always been a single unit. The new poured-in-place concrete structure mimics the slablike massing of the 1970 building and replicates its third-floor gallery plan. On that floor, a bridge gallery connects the two wings, and a band of limestone wraps around the exteriors of both. While the existing building is focused inward, around an interior court, the addition opens itself to the public with a double-height, glazed lobby. The lobby faces a stone-paved courtyard that passes between the two buildings. Emphasizing the new wing's openness, the courtyard's stone paving extends through the lobby and up the main staircase to the third-floor galleries. Rows of copper-clad monitors on the roof modulate daylight and bring it down into the galleries.
Completion Date: August 2011
Total construction cost: $43 million
Owner:
University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents
Architect:
Machado and Silvetti Associates
560 Harrison
Boston, MA 02118
T: 617.426.7070
F: 617.426.3604
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