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Nevada Museum of Art

Will Bruder Architects

Nevada Museum of Art
By Editorial Staff -

The design concept of the Nevada Museum of Art creates an architecture of dynamic urban presence. The Museum frames a series of well-scaled and formed galleries, choreographed in a sequence for visual experiences. The Museum’s multifaceted program grew to claim the site in a manner that bridges the high rise urban condition of the eastern adjacency to the residential/small commercial scale to the west of the Museum. With its height and volume mediating this transition, it is the warping and curving western façade contrasting the angular faceted east façade that sculpturally sets the Museum apart from the expected - its black skin setting up a mysterious contrast with the neighbors.
The architecture is shaped by the sun, capturing a unique identity with the geologic formations of the Black Rock Desert and the results that occur exaggerate the main form with an organic tapestry of shade and shadow that animates the building. The sculpture garden, composed of a pattern of concrete and steel fragments, is designed to bridge the transition from the energy of the City to the refuge of the Museum’s interior. Entry into the Museum is through a compressed wedge of intimately scaled walls inserted under the raked black ceiling of the first level public spaces. The visitor is at once inside and outside in a glass pavilion which pivots around a massive red form behind the reception desk. Spun off of this form, the four-story skylight atrium carves through the entire section of the building. The atrium provides a quiet gathering room, or party space, and is adjacent to the Museum’s store, café and theater, creating a departure lounge for a journey up the building’s winding raw steel and black concrete grand staircase. The atrium is an ever-changing chamber of form, light, and shadow. Carefully shaped and proportioned wall apertures and skylights with lenses of clear and translucent filmed glazing act as light magnifiers, refracting the changing light of the days and...

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