Boston-based studio, Safdie Architects, has completed an expansion of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, with buildings that both maintain and depart from the original style.
This part of the site’s long-term plan adds two galleries and 114,00 square feet (10,590 square meters) of space for the latest major gift and subsequent reinterpretation of its collection. The museum’s footprint has grown by half since it opened in 2011.
The extension reveals a U-shaped volume under the site that follows the already established two-dimensional plan laid down by Safdie in the original design.
The building now forms a complete figure-eight loop that follows the path of a stream that has been rerouted through the heart of a natural landscape with many trees.
A bridge gallery with a 40-seat café connects the two Safdie-designed galleries, which remain while providing flexible program spaces for the museum’s curators.
The design is completed by a learning center reserved for artist residency programs and academic studios, as well as a circular outdoor meeting space within the plaza area.
A second entrance was also added at the north end of the museum site.
According to the Safdie Architects team, the expansion project connects the artistic experience with the natural science tradition of the region, while adding a palette of new materials.
“In developing the design of the extension, it was decided to stay within the vocabulary of the existing museum, with one exception: the North Temporary Exhibition Gallery and the new creative learning hub add a new palette to the design,” studio founder Moshe Safdie told Dezeen.
“There are three galleries: the new Contemporary American Art Gallery, lit with skylights and wooden construction; the North Temporary Exhibition Gallery with a different light facing the North; and the Glass Bridge Gallery, which includes a cafe, aimed at the exhibition of objects that are resistant to light and offers a wide view of the surrounding area,” he said.
Viewed from a bird’s eye view, the additional gallery and the bridge’s vertical steel roof structures ensure continuity with the architecture of the existing pavilions, while the sawtooth pattern used for the learning and engagement center provides formal design references to the existing plan.
Skylights allow control of the sunlight that flows into the exhibition halls, while the interior sequence of the bridge gallery is exposed with glue-sealed wooden roof barrels carefully sourced from the local forests of northwest Arkansas.
Safdie admitted that it was “very satisfying” to see the success of Crystal Bridges fifteen years after its opening and said that “the diversity of visitors and the response of the community has been very gratifying” in retrospect.
Crystal Bridges executive director Rod Bigelow added his praise for the addition of the buildings, which he said “gives us a new fabric to share American art in ways we couldn’t before”.
At the entrance to the 134-acre Crystal Bridges campus, local Polk studio Stanley Wilcox has completed its design for the Alice L Walton School of Medicine, joining Marlon Blackwell Architects’ giraffe-inspired vision for the Heartland Whole Health Institute headquarters.
Alice Walton of the American retail empire Walmart has driven much of the building in small town America.
SWA Group and Gensler also designed the lumber companies headquarters for Walmart in Bentonville.
Elsewhere in the American southwest, Safdie Architects’ four-story design for the Cherokee Heritage Center in eastern Oklahoma was unveiled in early April.
The developer of Habitat 67, the Holocaust memorial museum Yad Vashem, and the soon-to-be-expanded Marina Bay Sands has enjoyed a recent American resurgence, announcing new projects in Miami and New England from the end of 2023.
Photo by Tim Hursley