The museum is located in the cultural center of Denver, near the city museum of fine arts of the 1970s, built by Joe Ponty and supplemented in 2006 by Frederick S. Hamilton's deconstructivist building designed by Daniel Libeskind, as well as near the Michael Graves public library and an obligatory element of such ensembles - an extensive parking for visitors to these cultural institutions.
The current museum project for Allied Works Architecture is not the first in this genre: the bureau is known for its Museum of Modern Art in St. Louis and the redevelopment of the Museum of Art and Design in New York. The main task in the design of the museum in Denver was to create a "space for the expression" of a single artist: it is supposed to house up to 90% of the creative heritage of Clifford Still.
Allied Works Architecture aimed to make the architecture of the museum proportionate and similar in feel to the art on display. The facades of the building are made of rough concrete with a grooved surface, as if damaged by time, forming an expressive texture in the spirit of brutalism.
Despite the location of the museum in the center of Denver, an atmosphere of seclusion has been created around its ascetic building: it is separated from the rest of the city by a dense grove of deciduous trees. The concrete contrasts with the light glass facades of the foyer, which seem to bring greenery into the interior of the building. Vegetation becomes the only bright spot in the monochrome space of the entrance zone. The main halls of the galleries, like the outer volumes, form extremely simple geometric shapes from rough concrete. Concrete walls and ceilings retain the rough texture of facades. However, all this, undoubtedly, is only a background for the exposition itself and does not acquire an independent meaning and sound.
The only complex element of the interiors was lighting: natural light penetrates the galleries through the intricate perforation of concrete "screens" like suspended ceilings. Smaller rooms with lower ceilings and artificial lighting are provided for exhibiting the graphic works of Clifford Still.
N. K.
