Brooklyn-based firm SO-IL has revealed the design for a new campus art museum at Williams College in Massachusetts, created to become a primary teaching resource for the institution renowned for its art history program. Since its inauguration in 1926, the Williams College Museum of Art has gathered an expansive collection of over 15,000 works. Through the design of SO-IL, the museum will be able to move into its first freestanding purpose-built home. In May 2024, the museum will present an exhibition on SO-IL’s design.
The new WCMA building is envisioned as a gateway between the campus, Williamstown, and the wider world, striving to draw in visitors and become a platform for discussions, exchange, and creativity. Located at the western entrance to the campus, the museum opens to the students, the local community, and visitors with a cluster of four program areas, defined as pavilions arranged around a central gathering space, all connected by an overarching roof.
The temporary and permanent exhibitions are organized in two gallery clusters by the main lobby, providing more than 15,000 square feet of display space, accounting for 35 percent of the net square footage of the building. Additional spaces are dedicated to dynamic programming and community engagement towards the south entrance, complete with an auditorium, art studio space, and a café extending toward the southwest.
The pedagogical aspect of the museum is incorporated with a hybrid gallery-classroom space dedicated to the museum’s signature Object Lab. A study center offers 6,400 square feet of space for study, storage, classrooms, and a seminar room. The functional organization of the building follows the concept of porous and open spaces, opening up the gathering areas towards the Berkshire landscape. In the center of the museum, a courtyard garden brings nature inside while seating areas between the galleries offer views to the landscape.
Designing a college art museum is one of the most exciting tasks we as architects can imagine. Orchestrating synergies between the past, present, and future enables us to create a home where students, faculty, community, and collection converge. We believe space is as much a teacher as the programs it houses, so we are thrilled to partner with WCMA in designing a building in which different modes of art study and appreciation can intersect, coexist, and reinvent one another. Walls do not confine the concept of this museum, but rather the inviting gesture of an overarching roof that delineates spaces for these interactions to take place. - Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg, founding partners of SO–IL
The building also strives to meet strict sustainability criteria and to maintain its energy efficiency at EUI 70 kBtu/ft2/yr. The design incorporates renewable materials and innovative climate control technologies, aiming to minimize energy consumption. The structure is made of mass timber, left exposed in the lobby. The outer walls of the pavilions will be clad in carbon-conscious masonry, while the overhanging roof provides shade for the expanses of glass in the façade. Additionally, to the exterior, bioretention basins are included to collect and treat rainwater. The project’s landscape, designed by Reed Hilderbrand, will be renewed and reforested, with a flowering meadow and gardens featuring native plants.
Recently, the internationally recognized office SO-IL has inaugurated several cultural institutions, including the Site Verrier de Meisenthal Cultural Center in France and the Amant Performing Arts Center in Brooklyn, United States. In an interview for ArchDaily, SO-IL Founding Partner Florian Idenburg discussed the idea of elasticity and pliability of the architectural grid as one of the fundamental concepts of the firm’s approach to design.
