Essence of Arts and Crafts

A large, stone-clad, box-shaped building is broken up with a series of ovoids, metal-framed glazing, metal inlays and wood soffits. Every square inch of the museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., was meticulously designed and built. The result is a building that exudes a modern interpretation of American arts and crafts aesthetics. With extraordinary attention to details, Alfonso Architects Inc. in Tampa, Fla., balanced the relationship between a modern museum design and architecture style from 100 years ago.

Joey Ottman, project manager at Alfonso Architects, says, “The museum is for the American arts and crafts movement, and that is a period of building, furniture, architecture and artwork culminating with the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Luis Sullivan, and so on. Really there was an emphasis on the art of making, putting things together. In a lot of arts and crafts furniture, there’s more of an emphasis on the joinery, exaggerating some of that a little bit. So, we decided from the beginning, we really didn’t want [the design] to compete with the art. We wanted to go modern to create more of a blank backdrop for the very ornate artwork that’s inside of it.

“The building as a whole, and the exterior, was meant to be celebratory in that concept of materiality, that you have different materials you combine to create a whole. And so that’s why when you look at this building, you see everything from the cast-in-place concrete using cedar board forms, to the stone, to the metalwork, to the glass. Those elements all come together, and we were trying to find a way to make those harmonious together. They kind of dance around each other, and in and out of each other. We really wanted that idea that you could kind of pull pieces apart and move things back and forth. It was meant to feel like it was put together.”

Outside Communicates Inside

With its design, materials and construction, the exterior of MAACM is a billboard of sorts for what is on exhibit inside the museum.

“There are hints of what’s inside the building from the outside,” Ottman says. “When you drive by on the street, you can see artwork through the glass at a couple places. And that hopefully makes the public want to go inside of it.

“It’s a very modern interpretation of that art, but when you look at an old piece of furniture that was put together, like a chair, for example, the dowels that were used to put the pieces together, the legs and the spindles and all those things, the way that they’re all joined together, that kind of concept of joinery, if you think about doing that with modern materials, it’s like a pin here, a post here, a dowel here; those things come together like a puzzle box. And if you pull one piece out, the whole thing comes down. But that idea that these components of our building are nested together, and that each component is representing that joinery of materiality is kind of a unique feature that is a very abstract take on how you put things together.”

Strategically placed window boxes reinforce the joinery concept too, Ottman says. “If you look at this building and you squint at it, it’s this giant box of stone. But then you’ve got that component on the far northeast corner with windows into the directors’ offices in the admin suites. We notched out that corner and inserted it with the zinc metal picture frame that comes around that, inset with glass. It almost looks like you could pull that out of the building; it’s a carve-out from this solid box.”

There are three window components on the north façade including a 12-foot by 12-foot box that sticks out about 16 inches from the side of the wall. “That’s metalwork, a 12-foot glass cube,” Ottman says. “Then, up at the top is a very large glass component that, again, projects out of the building. And there’s an idea that that it is like sliding out of the building because as you follow that zinc enclosure across the bottom, up to the top, and then across the top, it then turns into the soffit of the clerestory that wraps around the west side of the building, all the way back down to the stair tower. So, there’s an idea of these things sliding, some things sliding and pushing.”

Strategic Daylighting

Due the type of exhibits at MAACM, daylighting played a more prominent role than it does at other museums. Ottman says, “Museums typically are very dark boxes because light is the enemy of artwork. But on this project, most of the stuff that’s inside is all stuff that was in someone’s house or building. Entire rooms are reassembled inside the building. Those objects are meant to be seen in natural light. So, we placed an emphasis on making sure that there was a fair amount of natural light in the building, but not necessarily direct.

“So when you look at all the glass, you’ll notice, for example, on the north side, that beautiful, 36-foot-high clear span of glass on the fourth and fifth floors. It doesn’t get any direct sunlight, except for one beautiful little event that happens in the evenings in the wintertime when light shines through a little corner that faces west and kind of cuts some light back into the building. It’s a fun little feature.”

On the west façade, glass is covered by a concrete brise soleil, which is illuminated at the bottom on the first two stories. “Inside of that gallery behind that on the second floor is what they call the architects gallery,” Ottman says. “And there are a lot of works in there by Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and [architecture firm] Greene and Greene.

“So, all the artwork in the building, from the clerestory at the top to those windows there, there’s a bathing of natural light that kind of filters through the building, but no direct rays of sunlight are really getting onto anything. We tried to focus on that, but at the same time, make the building inviting.”

High Precision Construction

In terms of construction, Mike McGrath, president at MG McGrath Inc., Maplewood, Minn., says his company worked on the project for four years, including a year and a half in the field. They fabricated and installed numerous metal applications. Communication among trade contractors and a high level of precision were essential to successfully build the museum, McGrath says.

“I think the biggest point of this project is every single piece is completely custom,” he says. “There’s really no standardization of a part or piece. Every piece that we fabricated had its own unique address on the building.

“I think most people never grasp the detail of it, but the building itself, both inside and out, is as much of the art as probably what’s contained and displayed within it. The whole thing is really just a sculpture.”

The level of precision required was extraordinary, McGrath says. “For traditional construction tolerances, we’re splitting 16th of inches. But this required a higher level of precision to execute because, for example, as you walk up the staircase, you’re able to touch it. You’re just a few feet from the coffered ceilings. The metal panels inside that wrap from exterior interior, you can walk up and touch. The traditional of the game of viewing things at a distance just doesn’t apply when you’ve got a work of art that is viewable and seen by the public. It’s not as if you’re installing something four stories in the air, and people drive by it, and it’s nice. It’s really something that people can walk up and touch, and it just requires a ton of finesse.”

In total, more than 43,000 square feet of metal was used for the project. On the exterior of the museum, MG McGrath fabricated and installed more than 12,000 square feet of Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based Petersen Aluminum Corp.’s metal panels. Two types were used. The company installed 12-inch-wide aluminum panels and 22-gauge steel wall panels in Cityscape and Slate Grey.

MG McGrath also fabricated and installed more than 10,000 square feet of Cary, N.C.-based VM Building Solutions USA’s Quartz Zinc interlocking wall panels, and fabricated and installed 1,100 square feet of custom weathering steel interlocking wall panels with a custom van Erp patina finish.

Ovoids

Three ovoid-shaped forms add organic aesthetics to the design. A white ovoid at the entrance on the south side of the building is clad with diagonally oriented, white metal shingles. A second white ovoid on the east side of the building is clad with vertically oriented, white metal shingles. The third ovoid, located at the northeast corner of the building at a restaurant in the museum, is clad with weathering steel panels. The metal shingles continue from the exterior into the interior of the building.

“The two white ones have a super flat lock to them; those are one size format,” McGrath says. “And then the restaurant ovoid looks brown and leathery. One is also just a really, super flat lock with custom shapes and custom seaming. Every shingle is a unique size, laser cut and then folded. We shaped and wrapped them around the form. The nature of the vertical seam being flush was a little different. And then the restaurant ovoid has got a completely custom patina finish. [The architects] wanted a really flush look; they didn’t want it to appear as heavy as a traditional flat lock.”

On the entrance ovoid, MG McGrath installed 13,000 square feet of interlocking, curved metal wall panels. The panels have a custom Delicate White Kynar paint finish.

Coffered Ceiling

Inside MAACM, a large skylight with lattice framing illuminates a coffered ceiling with aluminum extrusions. Hanging light boxes align with the lattice framing on two sides, in many places.

“There’s always at least one side of the light box that appears to be unsupported. We worked with MG McGrath to get the big boxes to structurally support themselves from the lattice work, but look like they’re not supported. The boxes are all at different lengths, and they’re all set in the lattice at different heights so the bottoms of them vary. Again, there’s this whole push and pull, pushing in and out. You see a common theme throughout the whole building. There’s this whole idea that things can slide and that if someone else came along and assembled the building, it would be a little bit different because they may have pushed something in farther than we did, or pull something out a little bit more, that kind of idea.”

To build the coffered ceiling, McGrath says, a series of aluminum extrusions comprise three coffers. Within them, there are hanging light boxes.

“You see cloud elements that are actually metal boxes that are light boxes, and the shape and orientation of them match the lattice framing in the skylight,” he explains. “The skylights got custom mullion spacing that creates that look and aesthetic with what looks like randomly placed boxes. They’re meant to be symbolic of the arts and crafts movement, and the light boxes and grid work all aligns with the skylight.”

Inside, below the skylights, MG McGrath built the lattice and coffered ceiling by fabricating and installing more than 5,800 square feet of extruded aluminum with a custom White and Black Kynar paint finish.

Plaster Staircase

Another unique, organic element that expresses the arts and crafts style at MAACM is a staircase that looks like a corkscrew. It has a structural steel frame with metal composite material (MCM) ribs, and white Venetian plaster shell. The staircase design is inspired by a famous arts and crafts motif, Ottman explains.

“The American arts and crafts movement stemmed from the original European arts and crafts movement. There is a Scottish architect named Charles Rennie Mackintosh. One of the things he’s known for is something called the Glasgow Rose. It is a stained-glass panel that he put in a lot of his buildings. The way he did the rose is essentially a circle with these kind of overlapping, faceted shapes that give the impression of a rose. And the foundation that owns all the art [at MAACM] is the Two Red Roses Foundation, with that rose.

“When you’re beneath the stair, you look up, and see these multiple layers of white Venetian plaster overlap each other, up through the middle, and it resembles the Mackintosh Rose. The stair extends from the second floor to the fifth floor with each flight twisting on itself 30 degrees, which gives the stair a bit of a rotation.”