Milwaukee's Calatrava era takes wing - The Business Journal
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From the The Business Journal: http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/1997/09/29/focus1.html
Milwaukee's Calatrava era takes wing Art Museum project challenges local contractors to craft stunning new landmark on the lake The Business Journal - by Mike Dries Date: Sunday, September 28, 1997, 11:00pm CDT By the dawn of the new millennium, construction of the Santiago Calatrava-designed addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum will be complete, forever redefining Milwaukee's built landscape. While it is difficult today to measure what impact the $38 million project will have on the city, the addition no doubt will set a new standard by which public buildings will be judged. "It think it will show that we don't always have to design new old buildings," said David Kahler, the Milwaukee architect who designed the Art Museum's 1975 addition and a principal of Kahler Slater, the Milwaukee architectural firm chosen by the museum's board to translate Calatrava's concept into reality. But getting from Calatrava's concept to the "sculpture" that local professionals will craft involves construction and other challenges most have never encountered. "As I look at this, you're dealing with a world-class building, with features and elements you've never dealt with before," said Christopher Smocke who, as owner's representative on the project, is quarterbacking construction. "You realize this is an undertaking that is truly phenomenal compared to anything else that has been done with private funds, certainly, anywhere in this city." Firsts for Calatrava The addition will represent two firsts for Calatrava, as well. When it opens New Year's Eve 2000, it will be his first structure built in the United States. And it will be the first museum the 46-year-old Spaniard has designed. The addition will be a breathtakingly original, multi-faceted structure with movable parts characteristic of many of the architect's works. One intent of its design is to provide the Art Museum with its own identity. "To date people have had a difficult time conceiving the Art Museum as distinct from the War Memorial," said Christopher Goldsmith, executive director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. "This will give us a physical presence." The addition will encompass two gallerias housing sculpture and other pieces from the
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25/07/2011
Milwaukee's Calatrava era takes wing - The Business Journal
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museum's permanent collection, an 11,000-square-foot changing exhibition gallery, a 90seat restaurant, two meeting rooms, an expanded gift shop and a 300-seat lecture hall. The ceiling of the addition's main entryway will be 20 feet high, enabling the Alexander Calder mobile currently hanging at General Mitchell International Airport to be moved there. The addition will also include a 95-stall underground parking structure, accounting for half of the addition's 120,000 square feet. According to Smocke, the parking level will be a "destination unto itself," resembling a similiar component of another Calatrava design, the Stadelhofen Railway Station in Zurich. But the most stunning components of the structure are the grand reception hall at the addition's south end and the "brise soleil" (pronounced "breeze so lay"), or sunscreen, attached to the reception hall's main support beam. The reception hall, or pavilion, will be cone-shaped, soaring to 60 feet at its apex. Its walls will be made of glass, providing guests with a spectacular view of Lake Michigan. The room will seat 500 for dinner and accommodate two to three times that number for stand-up receptions, Goldsmith said. The light and temperature in the reception hall will be controlled by the brise soleil, which will open and close. When it moves, it will take on the sculptural dimension of an enormous bird taking flight. The "wings" of the brise soleil, measuring 180 feet from tip to tip, will extend out from, and over, the reception hall when open and wrap around the reception hall when closed, functioning as a protective outer skin. Determining what substance will be used to construct the brise soleil's tubular "fins" is one challenge the project's architects and engineers are still working to resolve. "The brise soleil is the biggest challenge," said Steven Chamberlin, president of C.G. Schmidt Inc., the Milwaukee general contracting firm that's serving as construction manager on the project. "Do you go with carbon fiber, aluminum, perhaps a composite material? There's the engineering challenge." Before a decision is made -- and Calatrava will make it -- prototypes will be subjected to wind testing, Smocke said. The mast to which the wings of the brise soleil will attach will extend 30 feet beyond the highest point of the reception hall, or 90 feet in all. That mast will run parallel to the mast of a 14-foot-wide cable-stayed pedestrian bridge. The bridge will extend 300 feet from the terrace level of O'Donnell Park to a point near the main entrance of the addition. The bridge mast will rise 200 feet above the ground, with cables running from it to the bridge, like strings on a giant harp. Many key components While the pedestrian bridge will be the key component of the project's infrastructure, it won't be the only one. The site on which the addition will be built is immediately south of the museum's Kahler addition and encompasses the museum's current parking lot. The site also will include a new road that will parallel Lincoln Memorial Drive, tentatively named Art Museum Drive,
http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/1997/09/29/focus1.html?s=print
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Milwaukee's Calatrava era takes wing - The Business Journal
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and a small park, tentatively named Art Museum Park. Assembling the land for the project was itself a challenge, Smocke said. While Milwaukee County owns most of it, the city of Milwaukee also owns a piece. Additionally, museum officials had to negotiate with the state Department of Natural Resources because of contaminants in the soil -- foundry sand for the most part. As part of the agreement reached with the DNR, the contaminated soil will be used as back fill for the foundation of the Calatrava addition. Preparation of the project's site began the week of Sept. 22. That work, which includes grading, will continue through November. Excavation of the site, to a depth between six and eight feet below the surface level of Lake Michigan, is scheduled to begin in December, following a ceremonial groundbreaking Dec. 10. By the end of September, Art Museum personnel will choose a concrete contractor from a prequalified list of four firms. The concrete contract, expected to be in the $10-million to $12-million range, will be the project's largest, accounting for as much as 30 percent of the cost. "One of the stunning realizations you come to is that you're dealing with the same materials you've always worked with, yet they're applied or used in ways you've never seen before," Smocke said. The first concrete work will involve the foundation. Instead of pilings or piers, the addition will be built on a 3- to 4-foot-thick concrete slab, called a foundation mat, a design feature intended both to support the addition and to enable it to withstand the upward pressure of water. All concrete will be cast in place -- that is, no pre-cast concrete will be used. The way the concrete will be used, moreover, presents challenges of a different sort. "The horizontal and vertical structural elements of the building are integrated into one element, making the cast-in-place concrete work all the more challenging," Smocke said. Whatever the challenges prove to be, the result is expected to be a building that will define the city, the way the opera house defines Sydney, Australia, for example. "The community has needed something like this for a long time," Kahler said. "This is going to be a superior building, the major landmark feature of the city."
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25/07/2011