STATUS
IDEA
CLIENT
Kimball Art Center
TYPOLOGY
Culture
SIZE M2/FT2
2,558 / 27,500
SHARE
Park City is the home of the Sundance Film
Festival and a major hub for art, culture, and
winter sports. It was originally settled as a silver-mining town by a large population of Scandinavian immigrants, who brought with them their traditional construction techniques; using interlocking logs to build
cabins, mining tunnels, and grain silos.
The new Kimball Art Center will replace the existing Kimball building which is a horse stable, turned car repair shop, turned museum. In designing the winning proposal, BIG asked – could the iconic Silver King Mining Coalition Building which the city lost in a fire be revived in the design for the new institution? Could the new Kimball Art Center tell the story of the past while still looking to the future?
For more than 80 years, the Silver King Mining Coalition Building was the tallest structure in Park City. It was the most recognizable building, greeting incoming visitors and locals, as they approached from the canyon. When it burned to the ground in 1982, the city lost the last icon linking its mining past, with its skiing present.
The continued success of the museum has given them an opportunity to expand their exhibition and education programs while improving recognition and visibility.
BIGs winning proposal was a quaint volume exactly the same size and silhouette of the Silver King. Built from interlocking logs, the wooden volume is rotated from its wooden base to its roof to greet newcomers from the main access roads.
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A continuous spiral of circulation is expressed
clearly on the interior of the timber façade,
connecting the lower gallery to the roof.
While the Kimball Museum loved the design
and awarded BIG the project, the city didn’t grant the project the necessary dispensations to move forward. BIG designed a second proposal within the tight confines of the existing zoning, working closely with the city officials to make sure the project remained within their interpretation of the rules. After a mixed response from the public and the city officials, BIG embarked on the journey of designing a third proposal.
BIG’s third proposal for the new Kimball Arts center is designed as a series of gabled roofs, oriented on site for best daylight conditions and creating a volume that is compatible with the vernacular of the Park City area. Layering the program and mitigating the height difference between the site edges, the geometry steps back from the busy road at the upper level and extends towards ground plane to create a unified roofscape that houses galleries, classrooms, art studios, restaurant, and administrative spaces.
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Double height spaces create a visual connection between the different programs. The structural approach consists of concrete slabs and timber framing supporting a roof that is draping across the site in peaks and valleys. The landscape around the building provides two larger open entry plazas and a series of outdoor studios spilling out from inside, creating a gradient between softscape and hardscape around the site.
Bjarke Ingels Thomas Christoffersen Finn Nørkjær Beat Schenk Leon Rost Agne Rapkeviciute Callum Nolan Cristina Medina-Gonzalez Jacob Karasik Sören Grünert Terrence Chew Terrence Chew Tracy Sodder Ziad Shehab Carlos Castillo Christian Salkeld Andreia Teixeira Brendan Carr Chris Falla David Spittler Jonathan Russell Kiley Anne Feickert Natalie Kwee Ming Yie Romea Muryn Suemin Jeon Hung-Kai Liao Ho Kyung Lee Mike Munoz
