GRAND RAPIDS ART MUSEUM, Grand Rapids, MI
Design Team Leader with William McDonough + Partners
Short-listed team to design the new art museum in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids. The concept evokes the ecological history of the area by emulating conditions now lost. The city was founded at the overlap between two ancient forest systems on the Michigan peninsula. Prior to landfill, the site was on the bank of the Grand River, where white caps gave the city its name. A vegetated roof emerges as an undulating green ribbon tying to the adjacent park (Maya Lin's "Ecliptic"). On the street side, the ribbon mimics the scale of the historic cornice line along Monroe Center Street, one of the few remaining blocks of the older urban fabric. The winning design for the museum (by wHY) became the world's first LEED-certified art museum.