In this episode of our series about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art International Design Competition, As Built co-hosts Patience Jones and Brian Jones speak with competition finalists Marion Weiss, FAIA* and Michael Manfredi, FAIA*, of the firm Weiss/Manfredi.
PJ: Hello and welcome to As Built, the podcast from Graphicmachine about architecture firms, buildings, and how both get built. I'm your host, Patience Jones. With me is your co-host, Brian Jones. Today's episode is the next in our series about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art International Design Competition.
Our guests today are Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of the firm, Weiss/Manfredi. Tell us about your firm.
MW: Well, our firm is Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism. So we have a little bit of a handle. And really the intent of that is, when we began our practice together, we were entering competitions that didn't fall in any neat disciplinary category, but brought together what I would call the cultural tapestry of art architecture, landscape and social infrastructures. That's what really got our practice going together. And we were fortunate enough to win a few competitions that enabled those questions to continue and to grow.
MM: Yeah, and I would add that most of our projects are other cultural or educational projects, all of them without exception are public.
And I think that's one of the things that we've made a conscious effort to focus on. We realized that architecture could be many things to many people. But one of the things that it can do is, I think, is open up a kind of a public realm and create a broader definition of a public realm that's not only social, but also environmental. We love the sense that the Nelson-Atkins is actually a very public and very engaged institution.
PJ: Where is your firm based?
MW: We are based here in New York City, right outside I might say the very vibrant Holland Tunnel on Canal Street.
MM: It's in an area that would be called Tribeca.
BJ: What type of work is your firm known for?
MW: Perhaps we're most known for cultural projects that weave together architecture and landscape to create new public realms. The Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, for instance, is exactly that. It's a park that actually wanders from the city to the water's edge, and in that particular case, crosses the highway, train tracks, repairs a failing seawall, a great salmon habitat and really creates a topographically rich setting with a Kunsthal-like museum space as well as a sculpture that in some ways is woven into this new topographically charged landscape.
MM: So that kind of project, I mean, in a way is a dream for us. It's multidisciplinary, it's social, it's ecological, and it's about bringing art to a public that often doesn't know how to interact with art. Museums tend to be very insular. In the Olympic sculpture park, I think a lot like what the Nelson-Atkins is trying to do, is to sort of open up, break down the walls, open up the museum.
At the other end of the spectrum, we're designing the US Embassy in New Delhi, India, which is a very different kind of project, a different kind of public project. But that too is about, in a way, bringing the best of America, the best of American diplomacy, to a very important emerging democracy.
So, different kind of project, but the same ambitions to sort of open up the doors.
MW: And the other element that we're very excited about is drawing threads of history, whether it's cultural, whether it's geological, and seeing how that can actually become public and part of the thread of what people experience.
We're also doing the La Brea Tar Pits Page Museum renovation and the transformation of Hancock Park. And together it's revealing the fact that our paleontological past has revealed, among other things, that the most recent contemporary signatures of climate change have been recorded there in the pleistocene era. So by taking something that had been hidden as a collection and now revealing it to a larger public as part of the Arts District Boulevard, the “everything all at once, but one because of another,” instead of “one after another,” becomes the experience of the landscape and the architecture together.
PJ: What is one of your favorite projects to have worked on and why?
MM: Well, there are two, but Marion will start, I think, and I'll give you another version.
MW: You know, it's like asking, “Who are your favorite children?” All of them. And all of them have been really amazing in so many different ways. For instance, we're working right now on the new outdoor theater for Lincoln Center, and it will be their first theater in 60 years.
That's incredibly exciting, very much underway and in this case, talking about taking down the perceived walls of a cultural destination like Lincoln Center to be one that invites everybody in. Those are the kinds of projects that mean a lot to us. Interestingly enough, at the very beginning, when we began our practice, the Women's Memorial at Arlington Cemetery was about being able to take a community that had been overlooked and over two million women had served in the military and never got benefits. To create a fitting and legible home for their story at Arlington Cemetery involved breaking through the barriers of an old historic retaining wall to create a new open aperture and destination for the world to see. So it's really bringing stories to light and welcoming in communities and recognizing communities that might not have been so legibly celebrated and being seen as part of the public realm.
MM: I think the thread to all three of those projects, and I could go on with four or five –again, it's like your children, they're all special in their own way – but I think the thread that also is, I think, relevant for the Nelson-Atkins is that it wasn't “just” a museum or “just” a memorial. It was more than that, and all of them, I think, had an underlying agenda, which is to kind of open up the storyline to a larger public.
MW: And break down barriers that had been there before.
BJ: Why did your firm decide to enter the Nelson-Atkins competition?
MM: Well, I think a couple of reasons. One is, we knew about the Nelson-Atkins when the Steven Holl Bloch addition was built and we thought, boy, this is a museum with incredible ambitions. Not only do they have a good existing collection, but they are also seeing themselves as very much moving forward.
One of the things that we always try to do is kind of align ourselves or track institutions that are in a way re-inventing themselves. And this is a third chapter, I think, at the Nelson-Atkins. We had the good fortune to do a study about the cultural district around the Nelson-Atkins, the Kemper, you know, a number of really important cultural institutions. We spent a fair amount of time in Kansas City and talking to different folks, the University the Art Institute, and kind of fell in love with the music scene. We love jazz. So Kansas City is, I think one, of the key destinations and historically one of the key places of interchange for music. We also love food -- you can't get good barbecue in New York, so anytime we were in Kansas City... it was many things. I think the thing that attracted us was the fact that the museum was reinventing itself, just as in a way the city is, too. It's a young city that feels, I think, in some ways incredibly ambitious about its future and that is something that is really attractive to us.
MW: Just to add to that, when we worked on the Nelson-Atkins Cultural Arts District, what was very clear is that in the city there's a collection of amazing institutions, and what we had sensed was that everything was on the verge of feeling interconnected, and yet that connection had yet to be brought forward.
What's so amazing about this particular project, is that it is taking the introversion that we often associate with museums and in a sense, becoming the extrovert that in personality, it always has had at its underpinning. Literally giving expression to that is an opportunity now to catalyze even richer connections with not only the community, but the cultural institutions that together make Kansas City in a sense so amazingly blessed with all these arts coming together.
PJ: You've touched on this a little bit, but what have been your impressions of Kansas City so far that you haven't mentioned?
MM: I think it's a young city and we mean that in the best sense of the word. I mean, America's a young country. Kansas City is a young city in the context of the US, and as I had said, there's, I think, a palpable ambition that both Marion and I sensed when we were in Kansas City, that this is a city that very much is about the future.
As I mentioned, we're working on this project in Delhi, India, which is a very ancient city with a very different kind of culture. You have to be very, very respectful and in a way, very thoughtful and deliberate. But with Kansas City, we can be a little bolder. It's a bolder city. It's a city, I think, that is very much about moving into the future. There's something really exhilarating from an architectural point of view to try to translate that.
MW: Just to add to it, when you think about Kansas City, it’s also a city that you could say has been known for its boulevards, it's known for its fountains, it's known for a tremendous number of things, including its diverse neighborhoods. What I think we love is that all of this sort of a collection of identities really come together at the Nelson-Atkins. In many ways, if it can draw, almost like acupuncture, all of those strengths all at once, so that it becomes both physically and symbolically the identity of Kansas City brought to life through the lens of art and community, that's kind of amazing. Just as a small little passion here, a lot of our work has been animated by topography and we have no shortage of it on this particular site. So for us it's really that enduring geological history as well; it's also really interesting.
BJ: What have you found to be a highlight of the museum from your visit? Like a collection, a particular artwork, architecture.
MW: I'll start. For us it really is that it's an amazing collection. It has an encyclopedic ambition, but with amazing strengths, say, in that the Asian art collection is incredible. The outrageous sort of signature of the Claes Oldenburg shuttlecocks, for instance, being something that you can't miss and never forget, shows a level of fearlessness about past and present.
And then certainly the building, the Nelson-Atkins building itself, this kind of proud sort of moment of cultural expression from over a hundred years ago to the Bloch edition, which is beautiful and luminous. You could argue that we're so excited about a potential new chapter that really brings transparency and welcome into this kind of collection of art forms, if you will, expressed through architecture.
MM: One of the great assets when we've looked at other museums or done work in other cities is open space. The Sculpture Park is vast and beautiful and an incredible asset. You know, the Museum of Modern Art has a small garden, a very intimate garden. The Louvre is in the middle of the city, the Uffizi in Florence is also in the middle of the city.
And here, you know, we're in a city, but with an incredible sculpture park that, again, plays with topography. The landscape by Dan Kiley is spectacular. That's really one of the most engaging aspects of the Nelson-Atkins for us, its unique relationship to its site and its open space.
PJ: What have you found most compelling and challenging about the competition brief?
MM: I'll let Marion go.
MW: Well, we're right in the middle of it, and we have discovered that the deeper we dive, the more idiosyncratic the challenges are - the least of which is circulation, clarity and support that might want be less visible in this whole idea. The biggest, I would say, challenge - and opportunity - is to create a more interconnected experience rather than one which has some dead ends are, where you're not quite sure where you are. The other element is connecting with the outside. So much of it is hermetically sealed and the query of what can be connected to nature and what can be connected to natural light are all the things that keep museum fatigue from setting in.
So being able to find that balance of opportunities where light, in some cases, is not welcome, and in other cases where it absolutely is - to tune those things together has been a really interesting question for us. And opportunity.
MM: Competitions are always challenging and we started, as Marion said, our practice doing competitions, because in a way it allows you to kind of deal with broad questions -
MW: Bigger questions.
MM: And sometimes we love competitions that have the biggest questions. How do you engage the community? How do you bring a logical agenda? One of the big challenges of a competition is there's a very specific set of needs that have to be addressed in a short period of time. For us, the overriding challenge and incredible opportunity, particularly with this competition, is how to address those needs, but still maintain a very clear and bold and engaging idea.
To do so in a short period of time, of course, is the biggest challenge. And again, that's what's keeping us all up at night. And hopefully we will be able to share what we think is a very compelling and engaging idea.
BJ: What has inspired your approach to the competition brief?
MW: You know, what inspired us the most is recognizing that this is the moment where the Nelson-Atkins can open its heart and doors up in the expression of architecture, so that all of the things that they do and believe in, which are not always conveyed through the architecture, this is the moment for the architecture really to come forward as an expression of those aspirations.
So we're introducing transparencies where opacities existed. We're taking things that have been retaining walls and turning them into things that are gateways. It's really considering things that have been barriers and turning them into things that are now invitations. That's really, I think for us, one of the most exciting things that we're trying to do.
PJ: What trends do you foresee emerging in museum and/or cultural architecture over the next decade?
MM: Well, I think most cultural institutions that bring value to their community are really in a very intense listening period. No longer is there the idea of the hermetic museum on a hill or the hermetic auditorium for a very specific set of music ambitions. Institutions, I think by virtue of how diverse and how, in a way, fast-paced the production of art is, are really rethinking their role relative to their communities. I think the Nelson-Atkins has an incredibly ambitious educational program, is an incredibly ambitious outreach program, and I think institutions are realizing that the assets they have had, which is the traditional treasure chest of beautiful objects, needs to be opened up and needs to be part of a larger conversation. And that's one of the trends that we're super excited about specific to this project.
MW: Just to build on that, I think the Nelson-Atkins is truly charging forward with this mission and vision, which is that museums, if they remain mothballed, if you will, as these isolated worlds that are static, they're not relevant any longer, and yet if they become places that invite convening, connection, events, gatherings, discoveries, art-making, that they become not only relevant, but they become the heart of the community. And that is really what we see as the ambition of this project. In many ways that the importance of cultural institutions is to change and stay relevant. For us, it's community and convening and building connections that is at the heart of this project.
*Fellow of the American Institute of Architects
Transcript has been edited for clarity.
Photo of Marion Weiss, Michael Manfredi courtesy of Shuli Sadé and Weiss/Manfredi
