Peachy the Magazine October/November 2013 | Page 37

ART + ARCHITECTURE

Kimbell Art Museum, Renzo Piano Pavillion, south view. Photo by Robert Polidori.
Copyright 2013 Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
new space to Kahn’s adjacent building creates what the The New York
Times has described as a “civilized
conversation across the ages.” Similar in scale to the original museum,
Piano’s structure is composed of two
parallel wings, connected by two
passage-ways of glass. One wing of
the building has a green sod roof,
while the rest of the museum will
have a glass, steel and wood roof
system. Gigantic laminated wood
beams that seem to hover above
the walls of glass and concrete are
the museum’s most notable element.
The rectilinear tripartite elevation

of the east wing, that faces the Kahn
building, mirrors the curvilinear
tripartite elevation of the Kahn building, a seeming homage by Piano to
Kahn’s genius. Fifty-eight wooden
roof beams span the interior and penetrate the exterior as an overhanging
canopy. These one-hundred-foot long
beams of Douglas Fir add warmth
and gravitas to an otherwise airy
interior. “In its marshaling of light,
materials, scale and plan, Piano’s lean
post-and-beam structure will provide
an enduring counterpoint to Kahn’s
solid, vaulted forms,” says Eric M.
Lee, director of the Kimbell.
OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2013

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