Kimball Art Center Building Utah, BIG Park City Design, Renovation and Expansion Architect

Kimball Art Center Building

Park City Development, Utah, USA – design by BIG + Architectural Nexus

Feb 13, 2012

Kimball Art Center, Utah

Design: BIG + Architectural Nexus

Kimball Art Center Building

At 80 feet, the new Kimball Art Center matches the height of the formerly neighboring Coalition Building. The building footprint and lower gallery sit in relation to Main St. and the city grid, and as the building rises it turns to greet visitors entering the city via Heber Ave, creating an iconic yet contextual building at the city’s doorstep. Referencing Park City’s mining heritage, the façade is constructed of massive stacked timber elements, creating an open publicly accessible space inside.

rendering : BIG

“The raw charm of Park City and the Kimball Art Center is rooted in a culture of appropriating the structures of past industry to accommodate spaces for cultural life and leisure. The plumes of smoke from the chimneys have turned into clouds of snow from the snow cannons. The old garage is now an art museum.

With our design for the new Kimball we seek to continue this tradition by using the construction technique of the old mines and the railroad trestles that have marinated for decades in the Great Salt Lake to create a raw spacious framework for the art and artists of Park City – a very traditional material and technique deployed to produce a highly contemporary expression. Where the Coalition Building once stood as a landmark for Park City as a mining town– the new Kimball will be a beacon for Park City today as a home for an exploding cultural life and a sprawling creative community.” Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.

images : BIG

The twisting façade of the building encloses a continuous spiral staircase, leading the visitors from the ground floor to the generous roof terrace, which can be used for outdoor exhibitions and events. Skylights allow light to wash down the gallery walls below. In between the two galleries is a restaurant, which spills out onto a sculpture garden on the rooftop of the existing, historic Kimball Art Center building.

The existing building is converted into an educational hub, complementing the function of the new Art Center. At its heart is a flexible double height auditorium for screenings and exhibitions. During summer, the façade towards Heber Ave opens up to the street and exposes the internal activities. The roof of the existing building is equipped with solar thermal panels concealed by indigenous plants. An outdoor sculpture garden loops around the perimeter of the roof.

The new Kimball Arts Center takes advantage of Park City’s climate, with an objective to meet a LEED platinum rating by harnessing sources of natural heat, using natural daylight, maximizing ventilation, and recycling rainwater. Generous skylights and large ribbon windows flood the building with diffused natural light, greatly reducing energy costs for lighting. Operable skylights trigger natural stack ventilation. A ground-coupled heat exchanger is drilled deep into the ground in non-built areas. The heat pumps either extract heat from the circulating water in the winter, or reject heat in the summer.

images : BIG

Kimball Art Center Utah : main page on this building

About BIG

BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group is a New York and Copenhagen based group of architects, designers and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG has created a reputation for completing buildings that are as programmatically and technically innovative as they are cost and resource conscious.

In our architectural production we demonstrate a high sensitivity to the particular demands of site context and program. BIG’s recently completed projects include The Danish Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo (2010) and The 8 House (2010) being recently distinguished with a National AIA Honor Award and Wall Street Journal’s Innovator of the Year Prize . Projects being designed in North America, include the New York City based 600 unit West 57th Tower designed for Durst Fetner Residential which will break ground in the Spring of 2012 and the interactive Valentine’s Heart Sculpture currently on display at the Times Square in New York City.

About Kimball Art Center

Known as Kimball Corner, the original building on the property operated as a livery stable built to serve Park City’s tiny mining community. In 1929, the site transformed into the Kimball Bros garage and for 43 years served Park City’s automotive needs. In 1976, arts enthusiast Bill Kimball and friends transformed the dilapidated garage into a nonprofit community center for the visual arts. Bill Kimball wanted a gathering place for the community to enrich their lives and experience the transformative power of the arts. The Kimball Art Center (KAC) is the heart of Park City’s historic and vibrant arts community. It is a non-profit center for the arts, committed to engaging individuals of all ages in diverse and inspiring experiences through education, exhibitions and events.

Kimball Art Center Design – Building Information

NAME: The Renovation and Expansion of Kimball Art Center
CLIENT: Kimball Art Center
LOCATION: Park City, Utah, USA
SIZE: 2.800 m2, 30.000 sf
COLLABORATORS: Architectural Nexus, Dunn Associates, Van Boerum & Frank Associates, Envision Engineering, Big D Construction

Partner-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Christoffersen
Project Leader: Leon Rost
Team: Terrence Chew, Suemin Jeon, Chris Falla, Andreia Teixeira, Ho Kyung Lee

BIG Slideshow: www.big.dk/kim

BIG Architects

Location: Park City, Utah, USA

Utah Buildings

A recent Utah building on e-architect:

Salt Lake City Design Competition
AIA Utah Design/Build Contest

picture from AIA Utah
Utah Design Competition

American Architecture

Kimbell Art Museum Pavilion Building, KAM, Texas, USA
Design: Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and Kendall/Heaton Associates

photograph : Robert Polidori
Renzo Piano Pavilion Building Kimbell Art Museum