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Snøhetta completes redesign of the Blanton Museum of Art grounds with rain-capturing shade structures and native plants

2024-07-17T14:31:00-04:00

Snøhetta has completed work on their $35 million redesign of The Blanton Museum of Art grounds for the University of Texas at Austin.

The debut of the New Ground Initiative comes at the end of a three-year revitalization that saw the Blanton continuously operate during construction. The 200,000-square-foot campus now has a greater permanent presence as the gateway between the university and city of Austin thanks to public art installations and key improvements to the existing landscape design and architecture.

Image courtesy Casey Dunn

Lead architects and UTSOA alumni Craig Dykers, John Newman, and Elaine Molinar were able to guide the project using their student experiences, resulting in an inclusive new space.

Image courtesy Casey Dunn

At the center of the project stands a previously completed intervention of petal-like 40-by-30-foot metallic shade structures that was designed to reconcile an open area now referred to as the Moody Patio. Besides providing protection from Texas's re...

Snøhetta's Blanton New Grounds redesign opens at the University of Texas at Austin

2023-05-25T12:20:00-04:00

A recently completed project from three alumni Snøhetta staffers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art has delivered an artistic intervention they say stands as a new gateway between the 51,000-student campus and its host city.

Principal and co-founder Craig Dykers, Managing Director Elaine Molinar, and Director John Newman, each School of Architecture graduates from the late-1980s, collaborated to enact a new canopy-like intervention that’s meant as a centerpiece to the museum’s $35 million Blanton New Grounds initiative.

Photo: Sloan Breeden Photography

Their solution involved a series of 40-by-30-foot metallic shade structures formed in the shape of flower petals to create a canopy of the new landscaped garden entrance to the museum while also framing Ellsworth Kelly’s 2018 monumental stone Austin chapel on the Blanton’s Moody Patio.

Photo: Sloan Breeden Photography

The petals double as a rainwat...

Blanton Museum of Art: Snøhetta-designed New Grounds Initiative unveiled

2021-01-15T13:45:00-05:00

The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin is planning a $35 million campus redesign led by the firm Snohetta. It will feature architectural and landscaping improvements throughout the museum’s 200,000-square-foot grounds like a dramatic biomorphic canopy redefining the entrance plaza as well as a public mural commission by the Cuban-American painter Carmen Herrera.

View of the Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building, featuring the Moody Patio, Carmen Herrera mural, and inverted vault at the gallery entrance. Image courtesy of Blanton Museum of Art.

A virtual groundbreaking celebration will take place on February 18 with completion of the $35 million initiative expected in late 2022.