In this episode of our series about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art International Design Competition, As Built co-hosts Brian Jones and Patience Jones speak with competition finalists Elisabetta Trezzani and Kerry Joyce, of the firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
BJ: Hello and welcome to As Built, the podcast from Graphicmachine about architecture firms, buildings, and how both get built. I'm your host, Brian Jones. With me is your co-host, Patience Jones. Today's episode is the next in our series about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art International Design Competition. Our guests today are Elisabetta Trezzani and Kerry Joyce from the firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
Tell us a little about your firm.
ET: Renzo Piano Building Workshop was established by Renzo Piano in 1981, with offices in Genoa in Italy and Paris in France. We are a group of 11 partners and around 40 associates and also the founder/partner that is Renzo Piano. We are a group of around 125 people AF in Genoa and AF in Paris.
I have extensive experience working in multidisciplinary projects and around the world. We are based in Italy and France, but also around all the world where[ever] we have a project. We always have people based there during and following the construction.
Our interest is mainly in cultural projects because it's where we think we can give the maximum of our experience and knowledge.
PJ: What type of work is your firm known for?
ET: It's mainly what I said, it's educational, but in a sense of place for people. For us, we really believe that architecture needs to be at the service of communities. So we like a lot working on projects that create a great connection with the city where they are built and also with the people.
Our main effort is done to create the places where people like to stay and to be coming back, and that become a destination. Not like, just as a piece of architecture, but it's where people can really enjoy and feel together. We have done mainly auditoriums; we have an extensive experience in museums, in libraries, universities, also hospitals. It's all projects that have a very strong connection with urbanity and sense of city. We believe always, for each project, in visiting the site: listen to people, but also listen the site, what the place can tell you to try to build the dream of the client.
BJ: What is one of your favorite projects to have worked on and why?
ET: You know, each project is a story. Our projects are normally about like between five and eight years long, so it's something that you are really connected with – the people and place and city. But probably if I really need to mention one, I will probably mention the Whitney Museum of American Art because it is something that is very related to the city, it was an area of New York City where it was really left on the side.
And between the museum and the experience of the island, we really regenerated all that area. It was a really good experience with the client, the with art, with the artists, with the community, with the city of New York. I really felt that [with] each one, a big group was involved. It was a sense of working together to arrive to the best project as possible, to the dream of the Whitney group. It was really something that you know, it helped me to became a better architect in a way. And also to create this space that - you know, it will be 10 years soon, but it's still full of energy and full of people that want to visit it and come back also, because this is an important thing.
PJ: Why did your firm decide to enter the Nelson-Atkins competition?
KJ: Our firm doesn't enter so many architectural competitions each year. This competition for the Nelson-Atkins Museum, we found the brief and the call for invitations particularly appealing. We felt that the museum's leadership's goals and aspirations were very much aligned with our own.
It seemed to call for a smaller-scale project that seeks to solve a lot of issues, but you know, with a limited amount of program space. It's not calling for really a new huge icon or big new monument, more of a surgical intervention. That was something we found quite appealing. We also saw that the museum is very much beloved by the people of Kansas City, so it is already, in its current state today, a place for people, and the goal of the brief we saw was to enhance that feeling that's already there.
BJ: What have been your impressions of Kansas City so far?
KJ: Elizabeth and I have just been to Kansas City one time in December, and I think that we could both say that the thing that left the strongest impression on us probably due just to the short time we were there, was the people of Kansas City. All the people that we encountered, both from the museum team and also some locals in the area, they had really left, I think, the biggest impression on us.
And we stayed pretty close by the site. We walked from where the new arts district stop is on the [streetcar] line and we walked every day to the site. And just the amount of public art that's displayed along that short path is really quite incredible. You see that the city has quite a devotion to public art, but also maintaining it and exposing it for public view.
ET: Just add, the nature, especially next to a site, through the city, is a very important element for this project and in general for the city.
PJ: What have you found to be a highlight of the museum from your visit? That could be a collection, a particular artwork, the architecture, et cetera.
KJ: You could probably do a whole podcast episode about the collection and how incredible the collection is at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Probably for us, the biggest highlight, the most impressive thing about the museum, is that it's non-ticketed. The entry is free for all the people of Kansas City and all the visitors. We were there on a couple days when the museum was closed and even the landscape around the museum was full of people.
It really feels like it belongs to people, which is a very difficult thing for a museum to accomplish.
BJ: What have you found most compelling and challenging about the competition brief.
KJ: I think it kind of goes to what we said before about trying to do a lot with a small intervention. We don't have a huge amount of square feet to play with. We're also dealing with things that are already quite good. The Steven Holl building is quite good. The landscape is excellent. The Nelson-Atkins building itself is also good. So how to not detract from any of those elements, but to make them all better with a small thing, essentially.
PJ: What has inspired your approach to the competition brief?
KJ: I think again, it's similar to the other responses, but the idea of creating one museum was quite inspiring to us. It's a theme that we've tackled before on other projects, including the Morgan Library in New York and also the Harvard Art Museums where you have a set of disparate pieces that are an institution, but they don't really act as one museum. So that was really inspiring for us.
BJ: What trends do you foresee emerging in museum and or cultural architecture over the next decade?
ET: I think what it's interesting, and it was highlighting this program for this museum, but I see even in other museums, is the relation that educational spaces are taking versus gallery spaces that are more public. There is more and more a need for museums to open up to students, to children, and to create this type of space that is not really divided, but on one side you have a gallery, and on the other side you have this educational space.
The possibility and the flexibility that you can create, manage the adjacency of these spaces, so you can be flexible depending on which type of art you want to show to little children or young adults or just the public spaces. More and more, to create some flexible space that can act as galleries sometimes and as educational spaces with all the related requests about lighting control, acoustic requirements and comfort level, and try to also express with this project and in general for the museum, to be more attentive about sustainability and try to express this in a project. To make the people, the visitors, especially the children, aware of this and the need to be more sensible and taking this type of approach for themselves and for the project and for the nature that you have around you.
Going back to what Kerry was mentioning, this was for sure one of the things that for us was quite important, reading the program and see that the museum's really looking forward to, what will be the future of this museum? You know, they already have had a great addition with the project of Steven Holl, and it's a very nice approach to what a museum should be, but it's part of process and growing up and following the new generation requests.
It's really looking ahead and for institutions like the Nelson-Atkins Museum, it's really a very important element to think about, and for us as architects, it's really quite interesting.
Transcript has been edited for clarity.
Photos of Elisabetta Trezzani and Kerry Joyce courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop
