Still Moving

With Daniel Libeskind's flamboyant Hamilton occupying half of the block and Gio Ponti and James Sudler's spectacular North Building right across the street, Cloepfil decided not to compete visually with those architectural divas. Instead he proposed inserting a backup building that's very quiet, low in profile with only two stories, and subtle in its details. And if that weren't enough to make it thoroughly recessive in relation to its neighbors, it will be screened from the street by a veritable forest of trees. The trees will be part of a handsome entry plaza from which the now-unused west doors of the Hamilton may be accessed via a path.

Cloepfil has brought on landscape architecture firm Reed Hildebrand Associates of Boston to work out the details of the outdoor space.

Though Cloepfil has typically looked to late-twentieth-century modernism for inspiration — even working for a time with Mario Botta — his previous designs have varied widely. Whereas the Still Museum design is nothing like his Seattle Art Museum addition, from 2007, it's very similar to his Saint Louis Museum of Contemporary Art, from 2003. The Seattle project is appended to a Robert Venturi, and the St. Louis one is next to a Tadao Ando. It looks like Cloepfil's made a good part of his career building things next to the work of master architects, which is also what's happening here. (Too bad there wasn't a vacant lot next to 2 Columbus Circle.)

The Still Museum will be rectilinear, with a planar conception of enclosure and a constructivist arrangement of the volumes. Though the duality of the two levels is expressed on the exterior, in particular by the partly cantilevered upper level, both the compressed first floor and the bump-out skylights at the roofline add an ambiguity that suggests three floors.

The first floor will include a lobby, research facilities, offices and a uniquely open storage space with its contents visible to visitors through glass walls. The second floor, partly lit by natural light through windows and skylights with UV filtering mechanisms, will be almost entirely dedicated to exhibition spaces. Some of these galleries will have high ceilings, while others will have low ones, reflecting the different sizes of Still's works, which range from mural-sized canvases to small drawings.

There will be a deeply recessed entry with glass doors in a glass wall facing north and fronting West 13th Avenue. The building will be made of cast aggregate, the specific texture of which has yet to be determined. Cloepfil has said he will experiment on the specific nature of that aggregate, and he mentioned mixing reflective materials like quartz, granite or even bits of stainless steel with the concrete. The idea is that the materials will glisten in the sun. Cloepfil is also experimenting with articulations in the surfaces of the walls, which will likewise be used to catch ambient light.

Though I know a lot of people are underwhelmed by the Still Museum — a friend of mine says it looks like a 1970s dentist's office building — I think it will be very elegant. I still hate what Cloepfil did at 2 Columbus Circle and wish someone else had been tapped for the Still Museum, but I just can't deny how good his ideas are in this case, and I'm confident it will be a great addition to Denver's greater Civic Center area.