Harmony in Metals

by Stacy Rinella | November 13, 2023 11:47 am

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First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City, Okla., is a testament to mission and perseverance. It was created to honor the 39 tribes in Oklahoma today, reflecting their history through design metaphors of nature’s elements of earth, wind, water, and fire. Los Angeles architecture firm Johnson Fain, along with associated Oklahoma City firm Hornbeek Blatt and New York City-based landscape architect Hargreaves Jones, created a destination representing FAM’s mission to educate the public about the cultures, diversity, history, contributions, and resilience of Oklahoma’s First American Nations.

Twenty-five years in the making, the design embodies multiple eternal concepts such as time, generations, shelter, and identity.

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Earth, wind, and architecture

Opposed to a museum conceived around conventional notions of form and sequence, FAM acknowledges the elements of nature. The 92.9 m² (1,000 sf) diameter spiral FAM Mound rising to 27 m (90 ft) at its peak became the central element, thanks to a fortuitous gift of 305,822 m³ (10,800,000 cf) of red earth fill from local construction sites.

While the spiral mound represents the earth and nature, the buildings reflect manmade technologies. The structures are clad in light colored steel, which will become even lighter over time. Exterior Corten steel railings will age to become a rust color corresponding with the red earth of Oklahoma. The metal clad roof of the gallery wings follows the curve of the FAM Mound walk; lifted and sloping to recall the appearance of wings on a soaring bird or a First American feather fans.

The entry procession starts from the east to greet the rising sun where a stainless-steel sculpture called A Touch to Above (by father and son Cherokee artists, Demos Glass and Bill Glass Jr.) welcomes visitors upon arrival into the courtyard. Flanking the entrance to the left side is the FAM Center, which features educational activities, and on the opposite side of the entry courtyard wraps the museum’s northern wing.

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Long-term exhibitions can be found in the south wing galleries. On the mezzanine gallery, 114 objects are on loan from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, along with seven FAM-commissioned pieces. These galleries are accessible from the crossroads, a two-story copper wall with a digital screen print illustration, Indigenous Brilliance, by Cherokee artist Joseph Erb.

The signature feature of the museum is the semicircular, 33.5-m
(110-ft) tall prismatic glass enclosure of the Hall of The People. According to Suma Spina, AIA Johnson Fain Principal, The Hall of The People serves both as a starting point for visitors and a central gathering space and the hall’s rounded, spiked design was inspired by the Wichita grass lodge. “Its ten vertical trusses represent the ten miles per day that indigenous people were forced to walk during the expulsion from their lands as a result of the 1830 Indian Removal Act,” Spina says. “The wall assembly includes 33.5-m structural steel trusses with high-performance coating, fabric-wrapped acoustical sunshades, and high-performance screened thermal glass.” Curved vertical structural steel trusses are finished with a white high-performance coating to endure the varying temperatures and climate of Oklahoma.”

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Where physical meets spiritual

The concept for the 16,258 m² (175,000 sf) museum is a spiral, beginning in the earth and ascending to the heavens. It is composed of two arcs: the western arc featuring permanent and rotating exhibitions and the northern arc housing theaters, retail, dining, and other services necessary in modern museums. The arcs intersect at the prismatic glass structure. Three sky terraces (“Sun,” “Moon,” and “Stars”) offer views of the Oklahoma River and downtown Oklahoma City.

The natural world is at the heart of the FAM experience, both physically and spiritually. Spina says transformation is an important concept–whether the weathering of a material or the rebirth of the site itself. “The museum’s grounds were once an oil field and, consequently, an ecological and environmental catastrophe. This toxic brownfield was nurtured back to a healthy and beautiful state by the indigenous people. The First Americans Museum’s design acknowledges the elements of nature and is informed by the earth and the cyclical worldview of our First Americans.”

The spiral mound represents the earth and holds a passageway through which the winter solstice is marked. The entire project was designed to align with the cardinal directions and serve as a cosmological clock, commemorating and honoring the special times of equinox and solstice. The east-facing museum entrance framed by the stone walls aligns with the sunrise of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, with the sun rising directly in the center between the walls. During the winter solstice, the sun sets through the tunnel embedded into the FAM Mound; during the summer solstice, the sun sets at the peak of the mound.

Public spaces are bathed in natural light through full-height glass walls. The museum’s interior palette includes warm wood wall paneling, steel clad circular columns, concrete flooring, and custom wood slat ceilings. Arcs and circles appear throughout in the forms of millwork, seating elements, and railings in harmony with the Native American belief that right angles trap the spirit.

The completion of the First Americans Museum was achieved in part because of the resilience of the project and the people behind it. Symbolically reinforcing the historical context, while providing a neutral canvas for visitors to experience the artifacts, exhibitions, and historical narratives in a new way.

“First Americans Museum is the largest single-building tribal cultural center in the country,” says Spina. “The biggest takeaway we hope visitors experience is the museum’s mission to tell the authentic story of our First American, especially the 39 tribes in Oklahoma today.”

First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City

Size: 16,258 m² (175,000 sf) museum, including 372 m² (4,000 sf) FAM Center; 113-ha (280-acre) campus along the Oklahoma River

Design Architect: Johnson Fain, Los Angeles

Associate Architect: Hornbeek Blatt, Oklahoma City

Landscape architect: Hargreaves Jones, New York City

Curtainwall: Novum Structures (Hall of the People); TEPCOGLASS

Glazing: Vitro Architectural Glass, Solarban 60

Metal wall panels: Architectural Building Components (now McElroy Metal), 200 Series

Standing seam metal roofing: Architectural Building Components (now McElroy Metal), 238T Structural

Awards: For the design, the architects have been awarded honors by chapters of the American Institute of Architects. AIA Los Angeles bestowed awards both when the project was on the boards prior to construction and for the realized building—one of a handful of projects to receive accolades at both stages. Closer to home, AIA Oklahoma also awarded the built design. “The difficult task of marrying the vernacular, the indigenous, and the technological is executed with clear intentions, thus producing an effective outcome,” notes AIA’s L.A. jury panel.

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/features/harmony-in-metals/

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