Transparent Interfaces: Bloch Building

Added : 30 Aug 2010 | Visits : 1565 | Average votes : %

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New-York based Steven Holl Architects design the expansion for The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art as an experiential architecture that manifolds fives lenses of glass to bridge the landscape and existing building.

Threading a new movement between the existing building of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Steven Holl Architects have composed five interconnected structures of glass as the museum addition dubbed as the Bloch Building. When Steven Holl embarked on the major expansion for the museum, he developed irregularly shaped boxes of translucent glass, which he called lenses, cascading down one side of the hill and linked underground by a series of galleries; changing the view of the old museum forever. Traversing from the existing building across its sculpture park, the five built ‘lenses’ form new spaces and angles of vision. Enriching the visitor’s experience, the glass lenses play with different qualities of light to illuminate the meandering pathways of the sculpture park.

A modernity amidst the grassy landscape, the five glass-lens of multiple levels are woven together to gather, reflect and refract light that define their identity. The continuous level of storeys ascend from the first lens that comprises of a bright and transparent lobby, with café, art library and bookstore, inviting the public into the Museum and encouraging movement via ramps toward the galleries as they progress downward into the garden. The galleries progress sequentially through the collections, gradually step down into the sculpture park with punctuations offering panoramic views into the landscape. In opposition, as each gallery level steps down, the ceiling of that level peaks into a glass-enclosed lens that rises above ground level. By day, light is reflected into galleries below. At night, the glowing glass volume of the lobby infuses a soft glow through an inviting transparency, drawing visitors to events and activities. Internally, the lenses create vaulted ceilings and cathedral-like spaces. Externally, they arise out of the ground as sculptural interventions, playing with the landscape and engaging visitors both inside and out to partake in the architectural experience. Within the glass lenses and in top of them, green roofs are created to extend a view to the visitors over the park merging the architectural and landscape paradigms. The architect has used light as the key characterisation of the galleria space that stretches over a horizontality of 840 foot. The five lenses, actually twin layers of glass walls, emerge from the ground and create an undulating and varied drama between architecture and landscape, inside and outside, translucence and opacity, tranquillity and dynamism.

This additional gallery space, wherein the light streams in at unexpected moments, has allowed the Museum to intensively re-examine its artistic holdings in a flexible contemporary format. The clarity which the glass induces in combination with the multiple entry points attempts to open the world of art inside to the larger community.

Text Compilation: Maanasi Hattangadi

Photographs: courtesy Steven Holl Roland Halbe, Andy Ryan

Architects Website: www.stevenholl.com