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The Aspen Art Museum by Shigeru Ban Architects

United Kingdom Architecture News - Aug 25, 2014 - 13:59   2232 views

The Aspen Art Museum by Shigeru Ban Architects

Shigeru Ban's Aspen Art Museum,image courtesy of Aspen Art Museum

“In terms of the design of the galleries themselves they are somewhat neutral and flexible spaces. We definitely did not want the architecture to overwhelm the art” says Zachary Moreland, senior architect of Shigeru Ban Architects. He is speaking about the practice's newly completed Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, USA.

Six of these galleries are contained within the museum’s interior glass volume, which spreads out over four levels. Yet it is what wraps around this volume that proves the building’s central attraction. The museum’s facade is a basket weave; a porous latticework between exterior and interior. Formed from a material called ProdEX – a composite of bakelite and wood veneer – the facade looks like a raffia shell, not unlike the woven wooden roof that topped out Ban's 2010 Centre Pompidou-Metz museum. “That’s related to the location," says Moreland. "When people are in Aspen they want to see the outdoors."

Earlier in the 20th century Aspen was seen a centre of counterculture, perhaps best embodied in Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s efforts to be elected sherif in 1970; he’d already failed to be elected mayor the year previously. Yet it has since morphed into a ski resort town for wealth, luring in visitors with its environs of dense forests and colossal, serrated mountains. Everything in Ban’s design for the museum – which was founded in 1979 and previously based in a disused hydroelectric plant – is intended to reflect this....Continue Reading

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