Museum Extension in Fort Worth
- Burkhard Franke
With his design for a new pavilion at the Kimbell Art Museum, Renzo Piano achieves a balance between deference toward Kahn’s masterpiece and a self-confident architectural statement. At the urban scale it mirrors the tri-partite structure of Kahn’s building: two exhibition spaces flank a foyer. To the west, education rooms, an auditorium (situated partially underground), and additional exhibition spaces are tucked away in a second unobtrusive structure. A central, park-like zone provides access to both the original building and the new pavilion. The latter’s main spaces are nearly equal in size. Eleven pairs of laminated beams – bound together by spacers – span each of these interiors. They extend the length of the space and can be interpreted as a reference to Kahn’s barrel vaults: both systems provide column-free space and facilitate a fully glazed entrance facade between the solid walls of the exhibition wings. The beams rest on a colonnade of reinforced-concrete columns situated just beyond the transparent skin. The roof’s layers consist of: sprinkler pipes, gutters, arched glazing units, maintenance catwalks, and solar control louvers with integrated photovoltaic cells. Bracing members run between the paired beams. Electric channels for the lighting are positioned in the latter’s interstitial space. The overall roof assembly is clearly visible in the foyer, but in the exhibition spaces, the fabric mounted between the beams obscures the different components and filters the daylight. Each of its layers cantilevers farther than the one below it, creating an elegant roofline. The glazed roof is ultimately analogous to a finely tuned mechanism that generates open, lofty architecture.
