Reviewing the Norton

Consider the hurdles that Foster + Partners overcame in giving new life to the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida: there was the original 1941 Art Deco design, commissioned to Marion Sims Wyatt, architect of Mar-a-Lago (US president Donald Trump’s Florida golf resort), by Chicago industrialist Ralph Norton and his wife, Elizabeth. There were the two modernist makeovers in the 1990s and 2003, shifting the main entrance away from South Dixie Highway and impairing the original east/west axis in the process. There was the total renovation over a two-year period, while galleries and collections remained open to the public. And there was an 80-plus-year-old Banyan tree out front, the environmental hero of this story.

Clearly, this was not a renovation for the faint of heart. But after nine years, the sleek stucco-and-terrazzo results have created nothing short of spectacular. “2010 was the first site visit by Foster + Partners’ Michael Wurzel,” said Hope Alswang, executive director at the Norton. “We were a 12-year-old Volkswagen, and then someone handed us a Lamborghini.”

She’s not exaggerating. On February 1, the tag-team of Foster and Wurzel walked a crowd of about 200 reporters, editors and interested parties through their rationale for the redesign. “The original entry was on the east side, a courtyard was at its heart, and you entered on axis,” said Foster. “With the additions, somehow you entered on the side – I got to the original main entrance and there was a sign that said: ‘Oops – this isn’t an entrance. Please follow the sidewalk to the south-facing entrance.’”

That would never do for this British architect. The entrance may have shifted, he said, but the most intuitive one was still on South Dixie Highway. “So the first move was to reinstate the entrance – to remove the asphalt and parked cars,” he said. The organizing axis around the courtyard was restored in the process, and suddenly moving through the museum was a breeze again. “We went back to the original Beaux Arts design,” Wurzel said. “It had a cross-ventilation and a lot behind it that we very much liked.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge, though, lay in uncovering surprises while keeping the museum and its collections open to an appreciative public. “The unknown is always hidden away,” he said. “And there was the concept of a museum that remained open through construction for two years, with artwork and the building around it.”

Both architects call that ancient Banyan tree on South Dixie Highway the main protagonist of this renovation. It was there when the original building went up, and it’s thrived ever since. Now the roofline scoops out to meet its branches, and its roots remain intact. “It’s such a signifier,” he says. “No roots were impacted – we did a scanning of them all and looked at how the foundation went out.” Sure, there’s an Oldenberg sculpture out front, and scads of classical and contemporary pieces inside. But this museum’s a gem unto itself – with a Banyan tree that only adds to its sparkle.

Words J. Michael Welton