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SO – IL presents designs for their new Williams College Museum of Art expansion

2024-03-08T13:48:00-05:00

SO – IL’s plans for an extension of the Williams College Museum of Art in western Massachusetts have been made public as the institution prepares to house its important collection in a free-standing and purpose-built new home for the first time in its 100-year history.

The project will enhance the museum’s mission as an on-campus educational resource while creating a new gateway between the college and the community of Williamstown.

SO – IL says they envision their plan to culminate in 2027. When it does, the project will yield a total of 15,000 square feet worth of new gallery spaces in a three-story structure that houses a 6,400-square-foot study center, auditorium, art studios, and a café. Reed Hilderbrand will be included to complete the project's landscaping. The project was announced in 2021 following a two-year programming study that was made in consultation with TenBerke through the pandemic.

Image credit: Jeudi.Wang, courtesy SO–IL and the Williams College Museum of Art

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SO – IL will design a new building for the vaunted Williams College Museum of Art

2022-06-03T08:50:00-04:00

One of the leading academic art museums in the country has announced SO – IL will head a new expansion effort that will deliver the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) with the first stand-alone structure in the institution’s storied history.

Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu’s team is now tasked with the tremendous opportunity to develop a concept design for a new structure that will provide upgrade facilities to the museum’s collection, which has been housed since its inception in historic Lawrence Hall. A renovation of the existing building is being explored as well.

The partners referred to it as a “project the brings together our passion for the arts with our commitment to education.” They will look to build upon a cultural portfolio that includes UC Davis’ Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art and the award-winning new Amant Art Campus in Brooklyn and promise the new construction “wi...

Steven Holl working on master plan study for Williams College

2016-04-07T14:08:00-04:00

Who better to master plan the campus of the The Williams College Department of Art and Museum of Art than daily watercolorist (and architect) Steven Holl? In addition to expanding William College's art presence in the region, the study's goals include shaping the campus space to connect interior to exterior as well as making "architecture in complementary relation to the picturesque campus" according to a press release.

Steven Holl Architects has interviewed museum staff, students, and faculty members to get an idea of how they interact with the current campus, and what they'd like to see in a new plan. The stakeholder-intensive process has already apparently inspired notions for possible new building sites on the college's 223-year-old grounds. Holl is no stranger to academic design, having already completed projects for Columbia University, MIT, and the Glasgow School of Art (pictured below in its 19th-century setting), among others.

As Steven Holl noted, "Historically one of the mo...