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Location: Toledo, Ohio, USA Client: Toledo Museum of Art Architect: Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA Team: Toshi Oki, Takayuki Hasegawa, Keiko Uchiyama, Mizuki Imamura, Tetsuo Kondo, Junya Ishigami Built area: 7,000sqm Site area: 20,000sqm Opening: 2006 Structure: Guy Nordenson & Associates / SAPS Glass consultant: Front Inc Lighting: Arup / Kilt Planning Photos: Iwan Baan
The annex to the Toledo Museum of Art is both an exhibition space for the museum’s glass collection, and a glass making facility. Conceived as a single one-story volume penetrated by courtyards with sightlines through layers of transparent walls, the visitorís experience will always involve the surrounding greenery.
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Individually, each space is enclosed in clear glass, resulting in cavity walls that act as buffer zones between different climates; museum exhibition spaces, the glass making hot-shop, and the outdoors.
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The plan is derived from a grid of various rectilinear shapes reflecting programmatic adjacencies, with room-to-room connections achieved using curving glass surfaces. Glass is wrapping the spaces forming continuous elevations, uninterrupted by corners. The visitor flows with the form through a series of interconnected bubbles.
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