GAD Editorial · Published ·
Twice a day, the Milwaukee Art Museum does something no other museum does: it opens its wings. The Quadracci Pavilion, Santiago Calatrava's 2001 addition on the shore of Lake Michigan, is crowned by the Burke brise soleil — a movable sunscreen with a 217-foot (66-metre) wingspan that unfolds in the morning, closes at dusk, and deploys when the wind demands respect. It is equal parts engineering and theatre.
The pavilion was Calatrava's first building in the United States, and it announced his arrival in the most Calatrava way possible: a white, ribbed, ship-prowed structure that treats structure as sculpture. Beneath the wings, a 90-foot-high glass reception hall — Windhover Hall — frames the lake like a cathedral nave frames an altar, with a cable-stayed pedestrian bridge stitching the museum to the city.
The building earned the 2004 Outstanding Structure Award from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering, a rare honour for a museum. But its real achievement is civic: a mid-sized American city got an icon that draws architecture pilgrims the way the art inside draws art lovers, and the wings keep opening, every day, on schedule.
The engineering behind the theatre is serious. The brise soleil's 72 fins — their lengths running from 26 to 105 feet — are driven by sensors that read the wind and close the wings when gusts threaten, a full cycle taking about three and a half minutes. Calatrava, trained as both architect and engineer, has always treated structure as the honest expression of a building; here the honesty moves. The pavilion's reception hall, a single great room of glass and white steel ribs, makes the lake the museum's largest exhibit. Few additions to an American museum have so completely redefined what the institution feels like from the street — or from the water.
Key facts
- Completed: October 2001 (Quadracci Pavilion addition)
- Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Architect: Santiago Calatrava (his first building in the United States)
- Construction: movable Burke brise soleil with a 217 ft (66 m) wingspan
- Recognition: IABSE Outstanding Structure Award, 2004