Designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, the North Carolina Museum of Art's West Building expansion is one of my favorite pieces of architecture. Completed in 2010, the 127,000 sq. ft. building houses the museum's permanent collection and sits within a 164-acre Museum Park. Of particular interest to me is the building's skin, made of 230 overlapping anodized aluminum panels with reflective stainless steel infill. The panels tilt in two directions, creating a building that is incredibly kinetic yet perfectly still. The skin allows the architecture to reveal two distinct expressions based on the perspective of the visitor. From one angle, the soft, satin finish of the panels allows them to bleed together into one, seemingly seamless monolith of grey aluminum. As the viewer encounters the museum from the opposing angle they are treated to a very different sight: as the panels tilt outwards they reveal mirror-like metal insets, reflecting the natural environment in rhythmic distortions, each panel sharply defined until receding into a sheet of polished glass.
From ArchDaily:
“Back outside again, the building skin—a rain screen of pale, matte anodized-aluminum panels—carries on the discourse with the landscape. These aluminum sheets, arrayed like great vertical pleats or shingles, softly pick up surrounding colors and movement. From oblique vantage points, the underlying strips of mirror-polished stainless steel that angle the panels off the facade capture unexpected, fragmented and scintillating reflections. At such moments, the landscape seems to pass right through these flickeringly solid walls, only to reemerge inside, deftly transformed, a luminous foil to the artwork.”
“Our approach to designing the new building for the North Carolina Museum of Art was to emphasize openness and connections to nature. The Museum is designed to sit gently upon a carpet of natural landscape. As visitors approach the campus from a serpentine road or walkway, the structure appears as a single volume that merges into the landscape. The exterior reflects the surrounding land and sky, creating an ethereal effect on its surface of anodized aluminum and stainless steel.”