Archinect - News

Explore photos of OMA and Cooper Robertson's newly opened Buffalo AKG Art Museum expansion

2023-06-23T13:58:00-04:00

OMA has shared photos of the newly-reopened Buffalo AKG ARt Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Gallery) following a special ribbon-cutting ceremony that was held on June 12 in Buffalo, New York.

The culmination of more than three years of construction yielded the renovation of two existing structures and the addition of a new glass-canopied Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building and Ralph Wilson Town Square designed by Shohei Shigematsu in collaboration with Cooper Robertson.

The Buffalo AKG campus looking east along Elmwood Avenue. Image © Marco Cappelletti.

Overall, the renovations add an additional 50,000-square-feet of exhibition space, five studio classrooms, a restaurant, and 350-seat auditorium. The project was funded by a $230 million capital campaign said to be the largest in the region’s history. New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul, who was born and raised in Buffalo, said "The new building and campus are a dramatic work of art that will attract visitors and support the regional touri...

OMA and Cooper Robertson's Buffalo AKG Museum will officially reopen in May 2023

2022-11-24T12:00:00-05:00

An opening date has been set for the restored Buffalo AKG Art Museum following the announcement of the additional $20 million in funding to complete the three-year OMA and Cooper Robertson-led project.

Since Archinect's reporting of the museum's design was shared back in June 2018, the formerly named Albright-Knox Art Gallery will officially open its doors on May 25, 2023. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed off on the remaining monies made necessary by pandemic-related overruns to what she called a “transformative project that will provide a significant boost to Buffalo’s future.”

When it opens, visitors will be enthralled by Shohei Shigematsu’s glass curtain design for the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach building that connects via a transparent pedestrian bridge to the refurbished 117-year-old Elisabeth Wilmers Building, designed in the neoclassical style by influential local architect...

Steel-frame construction tops out for OMA's Albright-Knox museum expansion

2021-07-23T17:01:00-04:00

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has reached a major milestone in its ongoing $160 million expansion project overseen by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA in cooperation with Cooper Robertson.

Construction has topped out on the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building on the soon-to-be renamed museum’s Buffalo, New York campus, clearing the way for a 2022 reopening that will significantly improve the gallery’s historic footprint.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery Expansion, plaza view. Image courtesy OMA.

“This is a remarkable moment,” director Dr. Janne Siren said at a ceremony observing the occasion Wednesday. “We are about one year from the completion of this project that will make Buffalo and our community so proud, will create jobs and prosperity for the people who live here and will be an attraction for people from all across the world who will want to come and visit us,”

With the steel frame now in place, contractors will soon begin the concrete pour for the building with a glass-wall curtain installa...

First designs of OMA/Shigematsu-lead Albright-Knox Art Gallery Expansion revealed

2018-06-26T14:38:00-04:00

In June 2016, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo chose OMA/Shohei Shigematsu to design its ambitious $155 million AK360 Campus Development and Expansion project. Today, two years later, the first set of preliminary schematic designs was released, showing a freestanding building that will add 29,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, overview. Image courtesy OMA.

"In addition to the new North Building, OMA will work on preservation and improvements to the existing campus," reads the gallery's announcement. "Changes include creating a new education wing in the lower level of the 1962 building, transforming a surface parking lot into a green landscape and gathering place, adding a new point of entry and exist on the east façade of the museum’s 1962 building and creating new education wing in the lower level of the 1962 building. A scenic bridge weaving through Olmsted Park will connect the North Building with the 1905 building along with a new roof enclosu...

Shigematsu-led OMA team to design Albright-Knox Art Gallery expansion

2016-06-08T14:19:00-04:00

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture...has been chosen to design the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s first major expansion in more than 50 years...The comparatively delicate and more budget-conscious Albright-Knox expansion project, which is expected to cost about $60 million, will unfold on a small but famous plot of public parkland and will be attempt to fuse the architectural styles of three centuries.

Albright-Knox Gallery announces short list of firms for $80m expansion: Snøhetta, BIG, OMA, wHY, Allied Works

2016-03-02T12:51:00-05:00

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery wants to create a public space that could rival Canalside while expanding and remaking one of the city’s most recognizable institutions. And gallery officials are looking to some of the most respected architects in the world to make it happen. They have narrowed the list of potential architects for the gallery’s upcoming expansion project to five firms with experience building in challenging urban environments.

Located in the historic, Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Delaware Park, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery is one of the major cultural hotspots of New York State's second largest city. Now, the contemporary and modern art gallery plans a major expansion of its facilities, which originally opened in 1905 and later gained an addition designed by Gordon Bushaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

The Albright-Knox Gallery announced a preliminary list of prominent designers, with a plan to select one by mid-June. The firms are:

Unlike with other architectural competitions, the Albright-Knox Galley has not asked the firms to submit a near-finalized design. Instead, they've incorporated a yearlong period into the planning process, in order to foster close collaboration with the chosen architects.

“We’re not in a design competition to choose a design and then build it. We’re in a process of choosing a partner,” Albright-Knox director Janne...

Buffalo’s jewel-box art museum to grow

2014-10-22T13:12:00-04:00

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, is preparing to launch its first major expansion effort in more than 50 years. [...] In 2012, the board commissioned the architectural firm Snøhetta to produce a master plan for future growth, but the details of this project have remained under wraps. Museum leaders told the Buffalo News that they are interested in holding an architectural competition for design proposals following their meetings with the public.

In Buffalo, One Man's Living Museum

2013-01-24T00:16:00-05:00

In 2009, Dennis Maher... bought an abandoned property from D’Youville College for $10,000...After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center...and dollhouse furniture... He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok...You can sense dust bunnies everywhere swelling with importance.