Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Santiago Calatrava

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The project mirrors the culture of the lake - yachts, the climate, a feeling for motion and tran­si­tion.

A bird spreads its wings as if setting off towards Lake Michi­gan. These are huge white wings made of glass, con­crete and steel that form part of the Mil­wau­kee Art Museum annexe built by top Spanish ar­chi­tect San­ti­ago Ca­la­trava, a man well known for the or­gani­cism of his work. The Quadracci Pavil­ion, as the annexe is called, abuts the com­par­a­tively low-key orig­i­nal museum struc­ture built in the 1950s by Finnish-US Amer­i­can ar­chi­tect Eero Saari­nen. It serves as the premises for a col­lec­tion of modern art, a lecture hall, as­sem­bly spaces and a museum shop.

Ca­la­trava was seem­ingly more intent on adding some­thing to the lake shore than to the ex­ist­ing build­ing. As he puts it: “The project mirrors the culture of the lake - yachts, the climate, a feeling for motion and tran­si­tion.” The pavil­ion blends in equally well with both its urban and its natural en­vi­rons. Its ver­i­ta­ble cor­nu­copia of windows lend it a bril­liantly lit trans­parency that con­trasts starkly with the com­pressed so­lid­ity of Saari­nen’s build­ing. The bold, white, pre­stressed con­crete struc­ture en­gen­ders spatial en­ti­ties rem­i­nis­cent of skele­tons and caves. Asym­met­ri­cal twists and turns combine with idio­syn­cratic cir­cu­lar forms to yield an organic life all its own.

The sin­gle-storey gallery is akin to a wave. Masts secured by steel hawsers give the foot­bridge, which si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­sem­bles an arm reach­ing out towards the city centre, the look of a sailing boat. Every­thing is in flux here - water, the lake and a post­mod­ern sculp­tural study in stylised Nature.

Building details

Photos: Jan Bitter

Location

Milwaukee Art Museum

700 N Art Museum Dr,
Mil­wau­kee, WI 53202, USA

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