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 handle 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 atmosphere targeted on the neighborhood. 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 meant to enlarge 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 higher place SAMA in a fast-growing neighborhood that has seen the redevelopment of the previous Pearl Brewery, plus the addition of recent housing and companies.
“As stewards of the final remaining inexperienced house alongside the [River Walk] Museum Attain and house owners of the most important property adjoining to the river, this grasp plan will function a essential roadmap, enabling us to create a extra vibrant, welcoming house for the neighborhood to get pleasure from,” 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 revolutionary method to artwork museum design, experience in adaptive reuse, and notable work with cultural establishments.
Herzog & de Meuron has led tasks such because the Tate Trendy in London, the place they turned the previous Bankside Energy Station into an artwork vacation spot. Its workforce additionally restored the historic interiors of the previous Park Avenue Armory in New York Metropolis, creating a brand new house 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 think about. The primary items of high-quality artwork that may kind the idea of its assortment have been initially held with the Witte Museum for many 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 closing acre, which enormously supported our progress and broadened our impression,” stated Neff.
Ascan Mergenthaler, senior associate with Herzog & de Meuron, stated he and his colleagues are excited by the problem of reworking 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.
