Hasta La Ideas

Come for the proto-cubism and Mayan sea creatures, stay for the Renzo Piano maquette! Such is the range of works now on view at the Kimbell Art Museum, which recently unveiled the final design by Renzo Piano Building Workshop for a major new museum building located to the west of its iconic Louis Kahn-designed home. The Fort Worth institution is offering visitors a glimpse of its future with a detailed scale model of the new building (pictured at right, click for an enlarged version) now on display in the museum lobby. “The model is beautiful,” says Kimbell director Eric M. Lee. “It will provide visitors with a clearer understanding of how the new building relates to the Kahn building and how it will be positioned in the landscape.”

Expected to open in 2013 and cost $125 million, the Kimbell’s Piano-designed addition will consist of two connected structures: the first, facing and echoing the west front of the Kahn building and the second, running parallel in the rear. The front pavilion will welcome visitors into a spacious, travertine-clad lobby, with major exhibition galleries extending to the north and south. A third gallery, as well as an auditorium, library, and education center, will be housed in the rear pavilion, which will be topped with a green roof (the recreational possibilities are endless…Kimbell kickball, anyone?). In addition to the green roof, which reduces heating and cooling demands, photovoltaic panels on the lobby’s floating glass roof will shade direct sun, filter daylight, and generate enough power to offset up to half of the carbon produced by the building each year. “I see designing for energy savings as the only proper, contemporary way to build, not as an ‘add on,’” said Piano in describing his approach to the Kimbell’s new building, which will require only a fourth of the energy consumed by the Kahn building.

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