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Pushing the envelope: this new art museum in St Louis is conceived as a flexible shell for experiment that reaches out to its surroundings

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2004 by Michael Webb

Meet me in St Louis, Louis, meet me at the Fair', sang Judy Garland, and the city is celebrating the centenary of that high point in its fortunes, even as it struggles--like so many others in the Midwest--to regenerate its battered core. Progress has been made since Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch was built on the banks of the Mississippi in 1968, and the Grand Center Arts District at the edge of downtown has recently acquired two small but potent gems: Tadao Ando's Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum by Allied Works Architecture. They occupy neighbouring sites and conduct a lively dialogue across a shared courtyard dominated by a Richard Serra torqued steel sculpture.

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What's remarkable is how well these two radically different buildings complement each other visually as well as in purpose. The Pulitzer, which opened two years ago, is a signature work by Ando in the finest in-situ concrete. It has the air of a spiritual retreat: refined, serene, and inward-looking; a place for solitary contemplation of twentieth-century masterworks from the Pulitzer collection, which is open by appointment two days a week. In contrast, Allied Works principal Brad Cloepfil designed the new museum as a flexible shell for experimentation in the visual arts, and programmes that reach out to the depressed neighbourhood and the general public. Concrete walls are clad in tightly woven stainless-steel mesh, and expansive windows open up views from street to courtyard. Galleries for changing exhibitions occupy a quarter of its 2500 sq m; the rest are given over to a large performance space, an education centre and cafe, plus upstairs offices and classrooms. The building cost only $6.5 million, substantially less than its neighbour.

Thanks to the generosity of Emily Pulitzer and other patrons, the CAM has moved far beyond its modest beginnings in a downtown storefront, and it selected Allied Works from a shortlist that included Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Zumthor. It was a prescient choice, for Cloepfil has since won acclaim for prestigious arts projects in New York, Dallas, and Seattle, all of which are characterized by a cool minimalism and sensitivity to aesthetic needs. As he explains: 'In making space for contemporary art, the architecture must first serve the artist; not by attempting to render a background for the art, but by providing the artist with a specific spatial presence, an intentional vacancy that achieves meaning through the art itself.' He also spoke of creating 'a fusion of the city and the arts.'

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Cloepfil has pushed the building out to a curved corner that gives it a distinctive prow, and has restored the original street line--in contrast to the Pulitzer, which is pulled back. The contents of the building are revealed though window walls, so that its role as an art centre is immediately apparent. Concrete walls are sandblasted to dematerialize the surface and distinguish it from Ando's small modules. The mesh is set 100-150mm from the walls, unifying the facade and shading the office and classroom windows. It's a concept that the architect has developed and taken further in the translucent membrane he proposes to wrap around the former Huntington Hartford Gallery in New York, a marble-clad Venetian pastiche by Edward Durrell Stone, to provide a new home for the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design.

Double glass doors open onto the lobby from a setback in the north facade, and steps lead down from this introductory space to the galleries. Cloepfil has played with space and light as though they were liquids, containing and releasing them, allowing visitors to feel they are swimming through galleries that open up to each other and to outdoor areas that are tightly enclosed by the two buildings. There are two levels of wall: 4m high sections at ground level, and a 6m high band that wraps around the upper level in serpentine fashion, tying the spaces together. The steel mesh is carried inside in places to add another layer and a contrasting texture to the white painted sheetrock on the display walls. Ceiling planes float at different levels, admitting light from clerestories and blocking direct sun. The effect is one of interlocking boxes cut away to leave only a few defining edges.

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Paul Ha, the new director of St Louis CAM, made his reputation at White Columns. New York's most adventurous alternative art space. 'It changes one's perception of art to see it in a different setting,' he observes, 'and artists welcome the challenge of responding to the energy of place.' For Cloepfil, the task was 'to make spaces that serve the arts and artists, while allowing for a subtle emotional response from the individual. It was imperative to create a physical environment that visitors would feel comfortable returning to again and again.'