Calder Gardens Museum

Calder Gardens is not a conventional museum. From the beginning, the client wanted a space that would provide a totally new, intimate, and ever-changing encounter with the work of Alexander Calder.

Philadelphia is Calder's birth city and was the home of two previous generations of Calders who, as artists, left their own impressions on the city.

Cutting across this Parkway is the sunken Vine Street Expressway, which, like many of its counterparts in other American cities, sliced through the existing city fabric in the mid-20th century. Calder Gardens is located at the intersection of these two significant streets.

A highway offramp extends along its long southern edge, while 22nd Street to the west and 21st Street to the east are primarily used as vehicular throughways. Despite its central location, the site is a leftover space without much obvious charm.

Form, color, and movement are the most obvious aspects in Calder's art. When the concept for Calder Gardens was conceived, it sought to avoid rather than adopt the use of these characteristics as possible design elements.

With these parameters in mind, it was decided that the face of this project should not be a building. Instead, it is a garden with a building within that reveals itself step by step as a series of distinct, heterotopic spaces.

Pathways from the northeast and northwest corners draw visitors through the garden towards a single central opening where a folded metal canopy covers a wood-lined entry area.

A geometrically pure circular 'Sunken Garden' towards the east and an elongated irregular 'Vestige Garden' to the west are carved into the ground on either side of the disc. They create protected outdoor spaces for Calder's sculptures and bring light into the surrounding galleries. The intersection of the disc and the wall defines the entry.

The lobby is different than the typical large-scale spaces that define most museum entryways. It is domestic in scale and engages the individual as they begin their Calder Gardens experience.

A long, low linear window frames a view of the highway and city beyond; the 'Tall Gallery' is seen below. The Highway Gallery is a mezzanine within this tall space and gives the viewer an opportunity to experience a Calder mobile from an elevated position.

The stair arrives on the main gallery level. Passing through the Tall Gallery, the visitor encounters the daylit 'Open Plan Gallery' below the disc. The geometry of the Open Plan Gallery is orthogonal on the east and west and curved towards the north, reflecting the disc above.

A large window opens towards the Vestige Garden, bringing in natural light and connecting the central space with the garden outside. A small 'Apse Gallery' is created from two offset curved walls – this gallery has no visible corners, which could distract from the view of the art inside.

This space can be used to show Calder's works on paper, light-sensitive sculptures, and the paintings done by Calder's ancestors. The Sunken Garden is at the center of this space; a single stabile will be placed against a densely planted curved wall, offering yet again a different background to experience Calder's work.

Traces of the historical foundations from the city grid, which pre-dated the Parkway, inform the geometry of the Vestige Garden. A 'Quasi Gallery' provides a cave-like, covered outdoor space that mediates between the highly controlled gallery spaces on the interior and the exposed garden spaces outside.

QUOTES

In this unique commission in Philadelphia, from the site to the open brief, to our design process, I focused on space over form, leading me to explore below-grade areas and discover the defining spaces of the structure.

Calder Gardens is the result of an extraordinary collaboration. Together with the Calder Foundation, the Barnes Foundation, and our many partners on the design and construction team, we developed a project that responds both to the surrounding context and to Calder's artistic legacy with a design that has its own specific identity.