Thomas Phifer and Partners . photos: © Iwan Baan courtesy of Thomas Phifer and Partners . drawings: © Thomas Phifer and Partners
To provide access to a larger portion of its collection and enhance its service to the public, Glenstone has completed a major expansion of its museum facilities and landscape. The centerpiece is a new 204,000- square-foot building, called the Pavilions, designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners.
Embedded into a rise in the landscape to give the outward impression of discrete buildings rising out of the earth, as in a traditional hill town, the Pavilions is organized within as a ring of gallery rooms surrounding a large landscaped Water Court. Rooms of varying sizes, configurations, and light conditions house single-artist installations and a multiple-artist survey of works from the Glenstone collection. The building significantly expands Glenstone’s indoor exhibition space, from 9,000 to 59,000 square feet, and also provides increased office space and support facilities. A strategic master plan and site design by PWP Landscape Architecture more than doubles the area of restored woodlands, meadows and streams accessible to the public, from approximately 100 to 230 acres. The expansion also provides a new public entrance and arrival building, two free-standing cafés, and, in 2019, a center that highlights environmentally sustainable practices at Glenstone.
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Glenstone Overview
Located on 230 acres in c, Maryland, near Washington, DC, Glenstone is a museum of modern and contemporary art that offers visitors a seamlessly integrated experience of works from its collection, architecture, and landscape. Its first exhibition building, known as the Gallery, was designed by Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and opened to the public in 2006. The natural setting, designed by Adam Greenspan and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture, incorporates major works of outdoor sculpture within rolling meadows and unspoiled woodlands. Admission to Glenstone is always free. Visits are scheduled, to ensure that guests can have an unhurried, intimate engagement with the artworks and environment.
Setting
The new landscape design integrates walking paths, bridges and restored meadows and woodlands. More than 6,000 trees of 55 native species have been planted across the grounds, bringing the total installed at Glenstone to 8,000, and approximately 33 acres of existing pasture land have been developed into sustainable meadows with a range of indigenous flora. The Pavilions’ Water Court is richly planted with water lilies, irises and rushes, creating a dynamic landscape that changes throughout the seasons. The visitor entrance is framed by dry-stack stone walls constructed by a master craftsman with stone sourced from a nearby quarry.
Arrival Sequence
Visitors leave their cars in a parking grove and are greeted at the nearby
wood clad Arrival Hall, where they can orient themselves for their visit. Their short walk to the Pavilions proceeds over a timber bridge and into an expansive meadow, where one of the outdoor sculptures is visible in the distance. As the path curves, visitors glimpse the new building through a wooded verge of honey locusts, oaks and tulip trees, until they emerge with a full view of the Pavilions’ entrance.
Building
The Pavilions first appears as a cluster of simple masonry forms, varying in size and proportions and embedded in a rise in the land. The Pavilions has eleven rooms and nine of them will feature single-artist installations at the time of the opening. One room features an installation of works by 52 artists represented in the Glenstone collection, and another room offers a view of the landscape. There are also artworks installed in the entry and the passage around the Water Court.
Light
Natural lighting is fundamental to the construction and design of the Pavilions. Most rooms have large clerestories or laylights to provide balanced natural light from above. One room is open to the sky. The play of light and shadow varies throughout the day; and as the seasons change, the light fluctuates, revealing subtle qualities in the artworks and providing a more natural, nuanced viewing experience.
Materials
The Pavilions’ design emphasizes materials that evoke a direct, elemental and timeless dialogue with the surrounding landscape. The exterior is made of 26,000 stacked blocks of cast concrete, individually poured to measure six feet long, a foot high and a foot deep. Although no color- altering pigment was used, the pouring method and mixture of cement and sand were allowed to result in slight variations in the light gray color and in the texture. This finish deliberately contrasts with the smooth precision of the windows, which have been specially engineered using glass panels as large as nine feet wide by thirty feet tall, and are set flush into stainless steel mullions. The glass surfaces and concrete blocks form a seamless skin that bridges the building’s indoor and outdoor spaces.
White maple is used to clad the interior walls, ceiling and floors of the Café, Arrival Hall and the room looking out into the landscape.
Continuation of the visit
From the Pavilions, visitors may continue on a short path to the Café. Like
the Arrival Hall, the Café has an exterior of cedar, which will continue to weather to a soft gray that echoes the color of the Pavilions’ exterior.
Visitors are able to proceed past the Café to the original museum building, the Gallery, which continues to house temporary exhibitions of works from Glenstone’s collection. Past the Gallery is an additional café space, the Patio, where visitors may enjoy coffee or a snack or refresh themselves before touring the landscape.
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The Gallery (Original Building)
Architect Charles Gwathmey, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
Figures (approximate) 30,000 square feet (gross)
Gallery space: 9,000 square feet
Materials Stone (for exterior walls, interior floors, and terrace), zinc (for exterior panels), teak, and glass
The Pavilions (New Building)
Architect Thomas Phifer, Thomas Phifer and Partners
Figures (approximate) 204,000 square feet for the Pavilions
240,000 square feet total for all expansion buildings
Construction cost: approximately $200 million Principal areas include:
Galleries: 50,000 square feet Offices: 12,000 square feet Water Court: 18,000 square feet
Materials
Pavilions materials:
Stacked cast concrete blocks for exterior and interior walls. Large glass windows in stainless steel frames. Poured-in-place architectural concrete ceilings and terrazzo floors. Plaster walls for selected art display. White maple used for the interior floors, walls and ceilings of selected spaces.
Landscape Materials:
Carderock stone features throughout the site. Cedar entry gate and bridges. Poured-in-place concrete and granite in Water Court. Crushed granite paving. Restored woodland primary species include Tulip Poplar, White & Red Oak, American Beech, Sycamore, Red Maple, Black Gum, and American Holly. Native meadow and understory primary species include Little Bluestem, Purpletop, Carex, and Ferns.
Other Facilities
Arrival Hall and Café: White maple interior and cedar exterior cladding
Environmental Center: pre-engineered steel buildings
Patio: Zinc, granite, teak, stucco, Venetian plaster (interior), limestone (interior), Douglas fir (interior), glass
Project Team, Thomas Phifer and Partners
Thomas Phifer, Gabriel Smith, Andrew Mazor, Michael Trudeau, Rebecca Garnett, Jon Benner, John Bassett, Bethany Mahre, Robert Chan, Lamare Wimberly, Elijah Porter, Isaiah King, Petra Pearsall
Project Team, PWP Landscape Architecture
Adam Greenspan, Peter Walker, Steve Tycz, Conard Lindgren, Seth Rodewald-Bates, Marta Gual, Eustacia Brossart, Julie Canter, Lisa Daye, Matthew Donham, Lauren Hackney, Collin Jones, Pheobe Lickwar, Mi Yang
Consultants Arborist: Bartlett Tree Experts
Office Interiors: Stantec Architecture AV/IT Consultant: CallisonRTKL
Café Creative Direction: HFB STUDIO Civil Engineering: VIKA, Inc.
Code Review: PFP Engineering and Design, Inc. Concrete Consultant: Reginold D. Hough Associates Cost Estimator: Stuart-Lynn Company, Inc.
Ecologist: Jeffrey Wolinkski
Elevators: Hector Columbani Associates, LLC Façade Design: R.A. Heintges & Associates Food Services: JGL Food Service Consultants
General Contractor, Environmental Center: Whitener and Jackson, Inc. Geotechnical Engineering: Schnabel Engineering DC
Graphic Design: 2×4
Irrigation: Sweeney & Associates Landscape Architecture Consultant: RAFT
M/E/P/FP Engineering: Altieri Sebor Wieber LLC M/E/P/FP Engineering, Patio: KTA Group, Inc Master Mason: Philip Dolphin
Meadow Consultant: Larry Weaner Landscape Associates Natural Lighting Design: ARUP New York and London Offices Owner’s Representative: MGAC
Security Consultant: Layne Consultants International Soil Scientist: Pine & Swallow Environmental Specifications: Construction Specifications, Inc.
Stream Restoration Construction: Aquatic Resource Restoration Company
Structural Engineering: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP Sustainability: Buro Happold
Water Court / Constructed Wetland Engineering: Biohabitats Waterproofing: Henshell and Buccellato
