New UC Davis museum comes up with a perforated aluminium canopy

More than most buildings, contemporary museums are designed with two aims. The idea is to make a memorable visual statement while displaying art in appropriate and flattering ways. The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, which opened Sunday at UC Davis, is one such contemporary construction engineered following a futuristic design concept. The new facility, at the southern edge of UC Davis in California, U.S., features a striking perforated aluminium canopy held by steel frames, which enhances the sustainability value and aesthetics of the building to a great extent.

The museum is just 30,000 square feet, with walls of grey ribbed concrete and gently curving glass. The roof covers 50,000 square feet in all, with the steel frame holding 952 perforated aluminium Vs lined up in grids of varying shape and width.

At the very least, the canopy serves to filter and soften the sharp Davis sunlight. But there are larger aims as well, according to architect Florian Idenburg of SO-IL, the New York firm that designed the museum with the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. The team was brought together in 2013 by Whiting-Turner, the construction firm that built the $30 million facility

That agrarian concept helped the architects and contractor win the 2013 competition, but visitors won’t likely grasp the symbology of what’s overhead. The canopy feels like what it is, a manufactured system, from the thick white columns required for seismic reasons to the heavy frame necessary to hold the triangular aluminium beams arranged in quilt-like patterns above the plaza.

What the canopy does instead, exquisitely, is bring the structure within it to life. The alternating bands of shade and light shift as the sun moves overhead, a monochromatic and constantly changing tattoo.

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