Museum in Kansas City
Until recently, the Nelson Atkins Museum looked like a conservative, neoclassical palace for the arts. Eight years ago, when an architectural competition was held to create an extension for modern art, Steven Holl took the opportunity of opening the museum to new visitors and to the cultural life of the city by creating an architectural landscape. Concealed in large part beneath grassed areas, the roughly 16,000 m² extension is recognizable in the form of five glass cubes rising boldly from the sculpture park. Because of their ability to deflect daylight into the interior, Holl refers to these glass cubes as “lenses”.
