Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum

San Antonio, TX

Stuart-Lynn Company worked with Paris based architect Jean-Paul Viguier on his first project in the United States, the Jane & Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions at the McNay Museum of Art.  The new building is a simple glass pavilion built alongside the original Spanish Colonial structure.  The design strategically maximizes the use of natural light while protecting the art from the damaging effects of exposure to the intense south Texas sun.  The pavilion contains a 200-foot long gallery with south facing glass curtain wall opening out onto an elevated outdoor terrace and overlooking a new sculpture garden.  A steel shed roof system approximately seven feet thick modulates the flow of natural light into the galleries. Fixed louvers, automated horizontal shades, and silk-screened glass panels tune the natural light as appropriate for the changing exhibitions. A deep roof-overhang cantilevers over the façade to protect interior galleries from direct light.  From the sculpture garden, stone partitions align with the building’s grid to delineate outdoor galleries and prolong the experience of the building.  Project challenges included the difficulty of establishing the joint between the new and the existing buildings in the site’s expansive clay soil, and mitigation of a significant slope in the landscape dropping down away from the building.

Size: 38,860 sf

Completion: 2008

Architect:
Jean-Paul Viguier
Ford Powell & Carson Architects, Inc.

Engineer:
Robert Silman Associates (structural)
Cosentini Associates (MEP)