Archinect - News

Safdie Architects shares construction update for Crystal Bridges Museum expansion

2024-04-04T12:41:00-04:00

The multi-year expansion of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is moving forward with an anticipated completion in 2025. Safdie Architects has shared photos of its construction progress via an Instagram post published Wednesday, April 3rd, from the site in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The project adds two new galleries worth a total of 100,000 square feet to the campus, increasing the size of its existing exhibition spaces by 65% while adding another 50% to its overall footprint. Safdie has been working on a master plan for the site, which includes the original pavilions he completed in 2011, for over 25 years.

Watch him speak with the museum's founder, Alice Walton, about its design here.

The project will culminate as his second American museum expansion following his work for the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts in 2003.

Next up, the firm is working on a new ski resort/residential concept in Vermont with PWP Landscape Architecture.

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Moshe Safdie to expand Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art by 50%

2021-04-07T15:42:00-04:00

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas announced today that it is planning an expansion overseen by its original architect, Moishe Safdie, that will allow significantly more room for showcasing its collection and for education, cultural programming and community events.

Ten years after the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, Safdie Architects has been tasked to lead a major expansion project that will increase the size of the institution by roughly 50%, adding new galleries, educational facilities, and community spaces.

Construction is expected to kick off in early 2022 and conclude in 2024.

Watch Moshe Safdie explain the proposed expansion in the video below.

How Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman Wilson House was moved from New Jersey to Arkansas

2015-10-12T18:08:00-04:00

In Bentonville, Arkansas, a house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for a New Jersey couple more than 60 years ago has been painstakingly reassembled, board by board and pane by pane, overlooking the clear waters of the Crystal Spring. When it opens to the public next month on the lushly wooded 120-acre campus of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, it will be the first Wright house in Arkansas—a delicately preserved later example of the so-called Usonian homes [...].

Previously on Archinect:

Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Usonian' house rises again in Arkansas

2014-11-18T13:43:00-05:00

How many truckloads does it take to transport a 2,800 sq. ft house, designed by one of America’s most revered Modern architects, more than 1,200 miles from New Jersey to Arkansas? [...] Staff at the three-year-old Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art put that question to the test recently when Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1950s Bachman Wilson House was moved from its flood-prone location on a riverbank in Millstone, New Jersey, to the institution’s sprawling 120-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Previously: Museum buys a Frank Lloyd Wright house with plans to move it from New Jersey to Arkansas

Museum buys a Frank Lloyd Wright house with plans to move it from New Jersey to Arkansas

2014-01-16T13:52:00-05:00

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has bought a rare Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house, known as the Bachman Wilson House, located in the Borough of Millstone in Somerset County, New Jersey. Museum officials said the plan is to disassemble the house and move it to Arkansas, where it will be reassembled on the museum’s 120-acre grounds, located 25 miles north of Fayetteville.

A year ago a potential buyer wanted to move this house to Italy.

Death Match: Crystal Bridges (private) vs Madrid Río (public) edition

2011-12-27T11:53:56-05:00

But Madrid Río is a project whose audacity and scale, following the urban renewal successes of Barcelona, Spain’s civic trendsetter, can bring to a New Yorker’s mind the legacy of the street-grid plan, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary. That’s because the park belongs to a larger transformation that includes the construction of dozens of new metro and light-rail stations that link far-flung, disconnected and often poor districts on Madrid’s outskirts to downtown.

The NYT features two interesting (when compared side by side) reviews of architectural/urban design projects this week. First, Michael Kimmelman visits Madrid Río, the almost completed freeway to park conversion, designed by a group of local architects, led by Ginés Garrido with help from the urban design and landscape firm, West 8. Kimmelman uses the review as an opportunity to contrast the (typically European) government led, public and relatively speedy approach taken in Madrid, against the slower more incremental, and often not fully public (ie: funded/developed using a public-private partnership [PPP] model) approach taken in NYC and America more generally.

Then Roberta Smith visits Bentonville Arkansas, where the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art designed by Moshe Safdie, opened last month. She writes that the museum funded by private (Walmart heir) money, is "a work in progress", yet it is also "off to a running start". Smith, notes that the project went from concep...