Last year the University of California, Davis invited three invited three architects to compete for the chance to design their new $30 million art museum, slated to open in 2016. The competition was a design-build affair, with each entrant being asked to pair up with a contractor and submit a holistic design. For those who missed it, SO – IL were announced yesterday as the winners of the competition.
Here we present one of two runner-up submissions from WORKac. The concept revolves around creating a distinctive beacon, which would be a center point for an overlap between art, higher-education, and everyday-life. The parallelogram form is intended to create a dynamic space which creates opportunities for interplay with the proposed landscape and surrounding area. Inside a collection of formal and informal, open and intimate are arranged along two axes, pinned together with a bright common space.
Read the architects description after the break…
A bold, open-faced icon along an outermost edge of UC Davis’ campus, the JSMMS Museum re-imagines the intersections among art, higher education, and everyday life. A beacon to students and visitors alike, the building renders UC Davis’ long history of engagement with the arts visible to the campus and city beyond.Through a careful and innovative reordering of traditional museum conventions, the highly-accessible building becomes a platform for collective learning, creation, and experimentation—a showcase for UC Davis’ artistic legacy and its evolution as a cutting-edge cultural force, and an integral and vibrant hub for future student generations.