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Projects   Project Portfolio – January 2007
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Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

Toledo, Ohio
Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA

SANAA’s Sejima and Nishizawa create layers of reflections and perspectives in their Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art  


Photo © Christian Richters
   

By Clifford A. Pearson

Just as theater-in-the-round radically changes the relationship between actors and audience, so the new Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art subverts many of the old rules of displaying art. By using mostly clear-glass walls for both the building’s envelope and its interior partitions, the architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Tokyo firm SANAA have performed the museum equivalent of stripping away the proscenium stage and creating a more fluid dynamic between art and viewer. Materials and boundaries disappear, corners dissolve, front and back no longer apply. The building provides spatial drama using a remarkable economy of means, but at the same time creates a series of challenges for the museum’s curators.

The 76,000-square-foot pavilion houses the museum’s impressive collection of more than 5,000 pieces of glass art and sits in a small park across Monroe Street from the institution’s Neoclassical main building. Placing glass art in a glass building seems like an obvious strategy, but turns out to be quite tricky to pull off. For example, how do you protect artworks from ultraviolet rays? How do you display them when most walls are transparent and traditional mounting techniques are impossible? Usually straightforward decisions—such as where to locate a thermostat—become difficult puzzles in an all-glass gallery.

Sejima and Nishizawa love wrestling with such design dilemmas. In their 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, they figured out how to place square galleries in a circular glass building and move visitors through a mazelike interior with few traditional hallways. And at the New Museum now under construction in New York City, they have devised an intriguing way of stacking metal boxes off-axis to bring daylight into the galleries. When the Toledo Museum picked SANAA in 2000, it gambled on a young firm known by very few people outside of Japan. Today, SANAA is one of the hottest Japanese firms, with projects all over the world, including a recently completed design school in Essen, Germany; a theater in Almere, Holland; a museum in Valencia, Spain; an office building in Basel, Switzerland; and the Louvre II in Lens, France. The Toledo Museum’s gutsy call looks nothing short of prescient now.

The Glass Pavilion’s site imposed a number of constraints on its architects. To the south, it faced the main museum’s 1912 colonnaded front and Frank Gehry’s 1992 Center for the Visual Arts. To the north and west, it needed to address the residential scale of the Old West End, a leafy, affluent neighborhood of Victorian and Edwardian houses.

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the People

Owner
Toledo Museum of Art

Architect's firm name
Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA
7-A, 2-2-35, Higashi-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo, 140-0002
JapanTel: +81.33450.1780
Fax: +81.33450.1757
www.sanaa.co.jp

Personnel in architect's firm who should receive special credit
Principals: Kazuyo Sejima (Registered architect in Japan), Ryue Nishizawa (Registered architect in Japan)
Project architects -alphabetical: Takayuki Hasegawa, Florian Idenburg, Toshihiro Oki (Registered architect in US)
Team –alphabetical: Mizuki Imamura, Junya Ishigami, Hiroshi Kikuchi, Tetsuo Kondo, Keiko Uchiyama

Architect of record, if applicable:
Kendall Heaton Associates, Inc.  (Houston, Texas):
Larry Burns, Nobuhiko Shoga
www.kendall-heaton.com

Engineer(s):

Structural Engineer:
SAPS / Sasaki and Partners (Tokyo, Japan) ; Mutsuro Sasaki, Masahiro Ikeda, Eisuke Mitsuda
www.sasaki.com

Engineer of record:
Guy Nordenson and Assoc. (NYC, USA); Guy Nordenson, Brett Schneider
www.nordenson.com/

MEP Engineer:
Cosentini Associates (NYC, USA); Mark Malekshahi, Carmen Ghenta, Anthony Cirillo, Bobby Jaglal
www.cosentini.com/

Environmental design/CFD Thermal Analysis:
Transsolar (Stuttgart, Germany): Matthias Schuler

Consultant(s)

Lighting:
(concept) Shozo Toyohisa / KILT Planning Office (Tokyo, Japan) ; Shozo Toyohisa

(execution) Arup Lighting (NYC, USA); Brian Stacey, Andrew Sedgwick, Andrew McNeil
www.arup.com

Acoustical:
Harvey Marshall Berling Assoc. (NYC): David Harvey
www.hmb-a.com

Façade/Glass:
Front Inc. (NYC, USA) ; Mike Ra, Marc Simmons, Jeff Kock
www.frontinc.com/

Concrete:
Azzerone (NYC, USA): Alan Bouknight

Graphics:
2x4 (NYC, USA) ; Michael Rock, Alex Lin, Israel Kandarian, Manuel Miranda

Civil:
The Mannik & Smith Group, Inc (Toledo, ohio)
www.manniksmithgroup.com

Geotechnical:
Bowser Morner (Toledo, ohio)
www.bowser-morner.com

Security:
C.H. Guernsey/Layne Consultants (Oklahoma City, OK)
www.chguernsey.com/
www.layneconsultants.com/

Elevator:
Persohn/Hahn Assoc., Inc.

Food service:
Gladieux (Toledo, Ohio)
www.gladieuxhomecenter.com

Glassmaking facility:
Spiral Arts, Inc. (Seattle, WA)
www.spiralarts.com

Lampworking:
Glasscraft, inc.  (Golden, CO)
www.glasscraftinc.com/

Casework:
Imrey Culbert (NYC, USA)
www.imreyculbert.com/

Curtains:
Specialty Drapery (Richmond, VA);
Inside Outside (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
www.thespecialtygrp.com

Other(s)

Project manager:
Paratus Group (NYC, USA):
Andrew Klemmer, Jon Maass
www.paratusgroup.com/

Cost estimator:
Stuart-Lynn Co., Inc. (NYC, USA)

General contractor:
Rudolph/Libbe (Walbridge, Ohio)
www.rlcos.com/

the Products

Structural system:

Steel beam and girder roof;
concrete slab floors

Exterior cladding
Glass curtainwall-custom built:
Pilkington Opti-white (low-iron clear glass)
www.pilkington.com

Glass fabrication:
SanXin Glass Technology (Shenzhen, China)
En.sanxinglass.com

Subcontractor:
UAD Group (NYC)
www.uadgroup.com

Toledo Mirror and Glass (Toledo, Ohio)
www.toledomirror.com/

Anodized aluminum fascia panels:
UAD Group (NYC) – custom built
www.uadgroup.com/

Anodizer:
TBD-Andarn (Paterson, NJ)

Zinc flashing at grade:
VM Zinc
www.vmzinc.com/

Paint on canopy:
Tnemec
www.tnemec.com/

Roofing

Waterproof membrane over insulation:
Carlisle Syntec Sure-Weld membrane
www.carlisle-syntec.com/

Glazing

Skylight in Courtyad-2 –custom built:
Pilkington Opti-white (low-iron clear glass)
www.pilkington.com

Glass fabrication:
SanXin Glass Technology (Shenzhen, China)
En.sanxinglass.com

Subcontractor:
UAD Group (NYC)
www.uadgroup.com/

Toledo Mirror and Glass (Toledo, Ohio)
www.toledomirror.com/

Silicone sealant:
Dow Corning
www.dowcorning.com

Doors

Glass Entrances –custom built:
UAD Group (NYC)
www.uadgroup.com

Glass interior –custom built:
UAD Group (NYC)
www.uadgroup.com

Hollow Metal doors:
Ceco Door
www.cecodoor.com/

Loading dock coiling door:
Wayne Dalton
www.wayne-dalton.com/

Hardware

Glass door Hinges:
Dorma
www.dorma.com

Door Closers:
Rixson
www.rixson.com/

Glass door Exit devices:
C.R. Laurence Co.
www.crlaurence.com/

Glass door Pulls:
C.R. Laurence Co.
www.crlaurence.com/

Hollow metal door Pulls:
FSB and Corbin Russwin
www.corbin-russwin.com/

Security devices:
Securitron
www.securitron.com/

Cabinet hinge hardware:
Blum
www.blumhinges.com

Interior finishes

Acoustical plaster ceilings:
Baswaphon
www.baswa.com/

Acoustical metal pan ceilings:
Hunter Douglas
www.hunterdouglas.com

Cabinetwork –custom built:
Walbridge Woodworks, Inc (Walbridge, Ohio)
www.walbridgewoodworks.com

Paints:
PPG
www.ppg.com

Gypsum wall boards:
USG
www.usg.com

Wallcoverings in basement workshops:
Acrovyn
www.c-sgroup.com/

Plastic laminate:
Formica
www.formica.com

Wall tile (ground floor bathrooms):
Bisazza
www.bisazzausa.com

Resilient flooring:
Armstrong
www.armstrong.com

Carpet:
Bentley
www.bentleyprincestreet.com

Lighting

Gallery lighting:
Litelab
www.litelab.com

Downlights:
Lucifer
www.luciferlighting.com

Exterior:
Louis Poulsen
www.louispoulsen.com/

Conveyance

Elevators:
Otis
www.otis.com/

Plumbing

Toilets/urinals:
Toto
www.totousa.com

Faucets (ground floor bathrooms):
Vola

Drinking fountains:
Filitrine
www.filtrinemfg.com/

Flooring

Ground floor concrete topping –custom mix:
Custom mix design using local aggregate:
Azzerone (NYC)

Installation and grinding:
Hoover Wells (Toledo, Ohio)
www.hooverwells.com

Air grilles:
Titus
www.titus-hvac.com

Seiho
www.seiho.com

Ohio Grating
www.ohiogratings.com/

Electrical devices

Hubbell
www.hubbell.com/

Casework:
Imrey Culbert
www.imreyculbert.com

 
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