BIG Wins Kimball Art Center Competition

by Ian Volner | Tuesday, February 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

An international architecture competition has been underway this season, with a batch of top-flight firms vying to design a new home for the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah. Brooks + Skarpa and Sparano + Mooney were just two of the large-scale practices jockeying for the commission; now, with all the submissions in, and after extensive review by the Kimball jury, Copenhagen-based firm BIG has carried the day, with the near-ubiquitous office of Danish phenom Bjarke Ingels getting the nod for the new complex in collaboration with local practice Architectural Nexus.

“It was hard for the jury to choose between the five excellent finalists,” said one member of the panel, Maurice Cox. ”BIG won the competition by proposing an iconic building that honors the spirit of Park City’s past and looks ahead into the 21st century.”

Balancing contextual sensitivity with contemporary flair, the BIG proposal will be shooting for LEED Platinum rating for energy efficiency. The centerpiece of the design, a helictical staircase that spans the entire height of the building, prompts its strikingly iconic, twisting facade, rendered in striated building components that make it look like a skewed pile of Lincoln logs. The jury’s high opinion was shared by a fair segment of the Kimball-going public, whose opinion was solicited through an online poll.

Renderings courtesy of BIG and Kimball Art Center.

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3 comments

Jim Finchum

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 11:18 am | Permalink

Looks great in renderings and concept, but completely impractical – especially in the shown performance area.

Nice waste of money that will need more funding to enhance it for real world usability.
Kristin Rocke

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 11:54 am | Permalink

Looks amazing! A beautiful addition to Park City and complement to the great work done by talented local professionals!
art busse

Posted Monday, March 19, 2012 at 08:20 pm | Permalink

Outlaw design rides into town, a month late – now what?

Butch and Sundance must surely be spinning in their unmarked Bolivian graves at the sight of Park City, Utah, home of lovable outlaws and independent film makers, rolling out the red carpet to a handful of jet-set starchitects.

If you were one of the millions of designers out there with a go-for-it attitude, a creative outlook and some serious time on your hands, you might have gotten fired up when The Kimball Art Center announced it’s plans for expanding. I sure did. After all, the Kimball sits at the center of historic Park City on an underdeveloped lot that’s crying out for something great to come along and transform the City.

And you might have been just as dismayed as I was to find out that only five concepts would be considered in the invitation-only ‘competition’.

To be fair, there are good reasons for this kind of approach, and the people in charge did an outstanding job of pulling the whole thing off. But do big names guarantee the best design in an era when, with a single keystroke, you can tap into the unplumbed depths of a world-wide pool of creativity and talent for free?

It’s over now, and in a bizarre ‘twist’, the search for a big name produced the name B.I.G., a Danish firm incubated at Rem Koolhaas’ Dutch Office for Metropolitan Architecture. B.I.G., with 85 architects and designers on staff and projects all over the world, has been winning every commission in sight lately with the light dusting of fun they sprinkle over their Soviet-Bloc-Brutalist origins. In case you missed it, their winning design in Park City is the Lincoln-Log-gone-sideways fort where, for the first time in history, Davy Crocket meets Joseph Stalin at the corner of Heber and Main.

Yes, I am getting a little carried away here, and I’d gladly admit to being a bad sport who doesn’t like losing…except I didn’t lose, because, along with every other juiced up, unknown designer on the planet, I was never in the running.

Is this how the West was won? Did Butch and Sundance surrender when it was two guys against the entire Bolivian Army? No, they saddled up and rode out, guns blazing right into the history books. So why should a little thing like not being invited, and going up against the biggest gun in town, keep me from running alongside the limo?

I thought it would be fun and informative to go through the process as if I had been invited to compete. It was. On my own dime, and in my own time, I too came up with a design for the new Kimball Art Center. All it cost me was four weeks, $1,000, and a broken heart, because, as usual, I fell in love with my own design.

So now what? The contest ended a month ago and the confetti is cold on the floor. The winner is wondering what they’ll do with their $1.5 million fee, and I’ve got a kick-ass design that’s all dressed up with no where to go.

You can see it at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2901294297751.2125115.1422240355&type=3&l=b541bfbcf0