Glazing Arizona - Will Bruder's Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, Arizona

Architectural Review, The, June, 1999 by Margaret Seal

Transforming a cinema complex into art galleries was, in some ways, simpler than you might think. But apparent ease of transition has been achieved only with much thought and sensitivity.

Scottsdale, part of the Phoenix conglomeration in Arizona, is not (yet) renowned as a great regional centre of art, but many of its citizens hope that it will become so, and one of the most recent stepping stones on its path to artistic recognition is Will Bruder's Museum of Contemporary Art (formally known as the Gerard L. Cafesjian Pavilion). Created out of a five-screen cinema erected in 1975 on 2nd Street, it faces the city's Center for the Arts built by the architect Bennie Gonzales in the same year. With all their seats removed, the cinema spaces were clearly appropriate for art exhibitions with really quite small alterations to the original fabric.

Bruder took out the ceilings, exposing the industrial timber trusses, and lacing his new service runs through them. The main alterations to the building have been on the east side. Here, Bruder has created a front which is gently curved in plan, and intended to attract visitors into the building. While the cinema building was in a sort of drab dusty buff stucco, the new front glitters. And it bulges at each end in homage to the curves on the neighbouring Gonzales building.

The south end of the new front has been made as a huge glass sculpture by the artist James Fraser Carpenter. Big sheets of dichroic glass enclose a small sculpture court, filling it with ever-changing bands of ravishing green, blue, red and purple light. The rest of the new piece is clad by Bruder in panels of silver galvanized steel which range randomly in width from 1 ft (300mm) to 4ft in an attempt to create what he describes as something reminiscent of 'a handmade quilt'. Like Carpenter's glass next to it, the metal seems to ripple in the clear desert light. Behind this glittering and sparkling front, the old building has been painted a dark purplish grey to make it both undemonstrative and recessive.

Entering, you are drawn down the main axis by curves. The full-height one on the left acts as a kind of noticeboard of donors and sponsors. To the right is the circular metal reception desk and bookstall which is complemented by the curve of the northern end of the building, a warm saffron space which will contain a cafe. The powerful closely-set parallel lines of the wooden ties of the trusses overhead also serve to draw you into the middle of the building. But, on a sunny day, you would be unobservant and certainly insensitive not to be drawn left sideways towards the iridescent magical court created by Carpenter's glass wall.

The galleries themselves are reticent, designed to allow the artworks to speak for themselves. But Bruder has not just produced hermetic white boxes with striped ceilings, or a nicely altered cinema. All openings and changes of space are treated with immense care. And he has arranged roof lanterns of different sizes, so that the curators can choose to let in shafts and pools of daylight, which can be inflected, coloured, or simply obscured.

Judging by their first hang, the curators have learned how to respond to the possibilities offered by the architecture with great verve: at critical points, light splashes over a wall or an object to emphasize a vista or transform an artwork, adding drama to the journey through the spaces. Unlike many contemporary gallery designers, Bruder has created a museum which encourages art and its custodians to speak, and does not try to overwhelm them with the power of his own contribution. Without being in the least meagre or mincing, Bruder has made a building that is both gentle and generous.

Architect

William P. Bruder Architect, Arizona

Design team

Will Bruder, Rob Gaspard, Tim Christ, Ben Nesbeitt, Saskia Harth, Donna Barry

Landscape architect

Steve Martino & Associates Design Todd & Associates Bill Peifer

Structural engineer

Rudow & Berry

Mechanical/electrical/hvac engineer

Baltes/Valentino Associates

Civil engineer

Todd & Associates

Lighting

Lighting Dynamics

Acoustics

Wardin-Cockriel & Associates

Photographs

Bill Timmerman