Anchorage Museum

Project Name: Anchorage Museum
Construction year: 2009
Website: www.anchoragemuseum.org
Address: 625 C Street, Anchorage, Alaska 99501 , ANCHORAGE-ALASKA - United States

Architect(s) : David Chipperfield Architects (www.davidchipperfield.co.uk)
Project Category: Museums | Cultural

Latitude: 61.2161
Longitude: -149.885

Anchorage Museum

The new 8,000 m2 Anchirage Museum Expansion also creates a new entrance to the museum. The organisation of the new building is based on five linear volumes of varying length and height arranged along the western face of the existing building. This arrangement forms a new facade and entrance facing downtown Anchorage.

The new building offers windows through which the activity of the museum is observed. The visitor, from within, is reoriented to the city context and its extraordinary natural setting beyond. The gless facade of the new four-storey building is fritted with a striped mirror pattern, providing views out of and into the museum and reflecting the sky and surrounding mountainous environment.

The interior design concept exposes the concrete structure as part of the character of the internal spaces. Walls are constructed between columns to establish a series of rooms within the new building. The main public spaces - the entrance lobby, circulation atrium, cafe, and exhibition spaces - use different colours and materials to give each its own identity.

The Anchorage Museum Expansion will also house the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, exhibiting 600 Alaska Native ethnograohic artefacts from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian. The Common created in front of the museum will provide a new public space for the downtown Anchorage.

(text from architects' website)

Contributed by ArchiTeam