A famend Swiss architectural agency is being tasked to remodel the San Antonio Museum of Artwork (SAMA). The aim is to make the downtown-area institute much more user-friendly.
Officers with the museum introduced February 12 that Herzog & de Meuron was chosen to create a complete campus plan that can combine SAMA’s location alongside the San Antonio River and its historic brewery buildings, and tackle the evolving wants of native residents and guests.
Based on a press launch, the campus plan will prioritize museum accessibility, improve artwork storage amenities and outside areas, and promote a sustainable surroundings targeted on the group. Work on the campus plan will happen now by way of June 2025.
The museum is housed in what was once Lone Star Brewery, and officers say adjustments are additionally supposed to amplify the noteworthiness of the museum’s historic nineteenth century brewery buildings and their outside squares.
Edward Hart, SAMA’s board chair, stated he and fellow museum leaders are excited by an opportunity to raised place SAMA in a fast-growing neighborhood that has seen the redevelopment of the outdated Pearl Brewery, plus the addition of latest housing and companies.
“As stewards of the final remaining inexperienced area alongside the [River Walk] Museum Attain and homeowners of the biggest property adjoining to the river, this grasp plan will function a vital roadmap, enabling us to create a extra vibrant, welcoming area for the group to take pleasure in,” stated Hart in an announcement.
Museum officers used an in depth choice course of that culminated in selecting Herzog & de Meuron, who they stated had an modern strategy to artwork museum design, experience in adaptive reuse, and notable work with cultural establishments.
Herzog & de Meuron has led tasks such because the Tate Fashionable in London, the place they turned the previous Bankside Energy Station into an artwork vacation spot. Its group additionally restored the historic interiors of the previous Park Avenue Armory in New York Metropolis, creating a brand new area for visible and performing arts. The agency was awarded the distinguished Pritzker Structure Prize in 2001.
Total, Herzog & de Meuron has accomplished 200-plus tasks, together with artwork museums, artist studios, exhibition areas and live performance halls, worldwide over greater than 40 years.
Though SAMA is comparatively new, it does have a rising legacy to contemplate. The primary items of high-quality artwork that will kind the idea of its assortment had been initially held with the Witte Museum for a lot of the center a part of the twentieth century till 1981, when SAMA formally opened.
Emily Ballew Neff, the Kelso Director at SAMA, stated this undertaking is an opportunity to develop a visionary blueprint for the museum’s 13-acre campus.
“We’re additionally deeply grateful to CPS Vitality for his or her beneficiant conveyance of our last acre, which enormously supported our progress and broadened our affect,” stated Neff.
Ascan Mergenthaler, senior associate with Herzog & de Meuron, stated he and his colleagues are excited by the problem of remodeling the SAMA campus. Leaders with the architectural agency will get suggestions from museum employees and board leaders in addition to members and neighboring residents.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate on defining an inclusive, sustainable and forward-looking imaginative and prescient for SAMA, which takes full benefit of its beneficiant outside areas, its panorama, its spectacular historic buildings and its wide-ranging artwork assortment,” Mergenthaler stated in an announcement.
