BIGs third proposal for the new Kimball Arts center is designed as a series of gabled roofs, oriented on site for best daylight conditions and creating a volume that is compatible with the vernacular of the Park City area. Layering the program and mitigating the height difference between the site edges, the geometry steps back from the busy road at the upper level and extends towards ground plane to create a unified roofscape that houses galleries, classrooms, art studios, restaurant, and administrative spaces.
The building consists of four main materials and elements which are also found in the existing structures and natural landscape of the area concrete, steel, glass, and wood. The walls of the exhibition rooms are made of concrete cast onsite, supporting the landscape and carrying the fascinating roof decks that cantilever out m. The largest roof deck weighs approximately , ton a complex roof structure that is engineered by Swiss Lüchinger+Meyer. The main interior materials utilized throughout the gallery spaces are wood and hot rolled steel, which is applied to all the interior walls.
Upon entering The Smile, residents are met by red, blue, green, and yellow tiles, inspired by Harlem’s Puerto Rican and Caribbean murals. The exterior of the building trickles into the interior, with the multicolored mailbox mirrors, colored tiles, and the wooden furniture shaped to mimic the curve of the building form. The material palette, herringbone tile pattern and sparks of color are carried into the elevators and the upper floor residential lobbies, creating a unified experience throughout the building.
BIGs design has evolved over the years to ensure the best possible solutions in function, program, sustainability, and future security. Designed as a piece of social infrastructure, the travel center is shaped for the flow of people and public life. The building celebrates movement and creates a welcoming, warm and transparent mobility hub that will become an important social and economic node redefining the city’s infrastructure and landscape.
To trigger a Dantean turn of events toward the end of the film, the main character constructed a house out of frozen corps. It needed to resemble a child’s idea of a house. Archaic and iconic. It had to be credible as something made in a hurry, but also terrifyingly compelling as an architectural vision of horror. Louis Kahn famously reminded us: “It’s important, you see, that you honor the material that you use ‘What do you want, Brick’ And Brick says to you, ‘I like an Arch.’