Museums are amplifiers of both the community that surround them and the content within them. Whether an encyclopedic museum, a focused institution, or a temporary exhibition space, they prepare the ground for new experience and perceptions through specific conditions and relationships of light, scale and proportion. They are vessels that provide space for change, and at the same time, stand as places of profound memory and beauty that invite continued exploration.
Architecture can create a powerful bridge between the city and the art, offering space for individual discovery and promoting intimate encounters art works. Space for art can also be a catalyst for the artists and curators, an instrument to be explored and interpreted again and again.
Brad Cloepfil, AIA
In 1994, Brad Cloepfil founded Allied Works Architecture as a research-driven practice that works with creative and cultural clients. Some of the firm’s significant work includes the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, and creative workspaces for Wieden+Kennedy and Pixar Animation Studios.
Current projects include a U.S. Embassy Compound in Maputo, Mozambique; new architecture studios for Clemson University in Charleston, South Carolina; the Veterans’ Memorial Museum in Columbus, Ohio; two new campus buildings for the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon; and new design and production studios for the fashion labels Theory and Helmut Lang in New York City. Construction is now underway on the National Music Centre of Canada, a new cultural institution in Calgary that will open to the public in 2016.
Next year, an exhibition will bring Allied Works’ creative production into focus, with a selection of sketches and concept models that are both artifacts of a design investigation and unique works of art in themselves. Opening at the Denver Art Museum in 2015, the show will travel to venues throughout the U.S. and internationally.
