Blurbex

Architect Stanley Saitowitz presented his preliminary design for the new Tampa Museum of Art today in a meeting with some of the museum’s trustees.

The mood in the room was jubilant, and rightfully so. The structure Saitowitz is proposing—subject to the approval of the entire board of trustees next week—takes part in an international conversation about the future of museum architecture. It is a world-class design for a structure in a medium-sized city.

Saitowitz’s museum would sit along the Riverwalk, flanked by the Poe Garage (to the north), a new park designed by landscape architect Thomas Balsley (to the south), and the new children’s museum (to the east).

Sure, it looks like a box, but that’s not a bad thing.

As well as housing traditional works of art—in white-walled galleries and an all-glass space dedicated to the museum’s growing studio glass collection—the structure has the potential to serve as a canvas for new media works.
The exterior of the building, a chunky rectangle balanced atop a smaller base, would be covered with a wavy, perforated metal façade. Behind the façade, a screen of programmable LEDs could emit changing colors and display informational or artist-made text, photographs, and video—depending on how close together the lights are placed.

Saitowitz’s dual devotion to form and function sets him far, far apart from, say, Frank Gehry or Santiago Calatrava, who’ve created art museums of a very different nature for Bilbao and Milwaukee, respectively.

Rather than a splashy neo-baroque shape, Saitowitz has handed the museum an opportunity to build two things at once—a building and a functional device for the display and creation of art. The combination makes an intellectual nod to the intersection of architecture and communication while offering self-effacing support to the city’s investment in Lights on Tampa and the museum’s hope to collect new media art. And it can only serve to attract artists from near and far, who ought to vie for the chance to harness the building’s unusual interactivity.

The 68,000 sq. ft. building features a dramatic atrium where visitors can gather. A future, second phase of construction could add additional exhibition space and a waterfront restaurant.

The new museum’s potential “green” features would be another feather in Tampa’s cap. They’ll include low voltage lighting, a balance of natural light with shading on key southern exposures, and a grass roof to provide insulation and absorb the building’s run-off from rain. Saitowitz said he hopes to build to LEED Platinum specs, barring value engineering.

(I visited the U.S. Green Building Council’s website, and I could not find an art museum with a platinum rating. Provincetown’s Art Association and Museum is rated silver. Could we be the first?)

But when developer and board member Greg Minder asked Saitowitz what visitor uses he envisioned for the grass roof, the architect revealed one of the most memorable aspects of his presentation.

“You know, I think it would make a really good party space,” he drawled.

Yeah, this one’s a keeper.
P.S., Now if only they can find someone to run it! The museum’s search for a new director is proceeding apace with construction. With site prep scheduled to begin in December, the board of trustees has begun contacting firms who specialize in matching institutions with appropriate candidates in arts administration. Board chairwoman Cornelia Corbett said they hope to hire someone by Jan. or Feb. of 2008, in time to program exhibits for the opening of the new museum in Apr. 2009.

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