A design and construction team led by New York City-based architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro has completed work on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum (USOPM) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

The 60,000-square-foot museum complex is designed with accessibility at its forefront due to its relationship to the United States Paralympic organization, and is organized as a four-lobed gallery complex that descends from the top floor down via a continuous ramp configuration. 

Regarding the accessibility elements of the design, the architects write that "from the earliest stages of design, the team consulted a committee of Paralympic athletes and persons with disabilities to ensure that, from entrance to exit, all visitors with or without disabilities could tour the USOPM facility together and share a common path."

The galleries offer vantages over a 40-foot-tall central atrium space topped with a series of perforated Glass Fiber Reinforced Gypsum panels that dapple the sunlight as it enters the space, giving the atrium  even lighting. 

Ramps situated within the complex measure six-feet in width in order to "accommodate the side-by-side movement of two visitors including a wheelchair," and the building comes complete with material details that include "glass guardrails in the atrium for low-height visibility, cane guards integrated into benches, smooth floors for easier wheel chair movement, and loose seating in the café [to] optimize the shared experience," according to the architects. 

Further, the building's 2,000-square-foot, 130-seat theater is designed with two rows of removable seating so that "a full Paralympic hockey team to sit together" during presentations. The theater sits opposite the main museum structure, with the two masses connected by a shared terrace.

Outside, the building's cuboid form is rendered supple as opposing, angular facades are blended together, the building's 9,000 folded, anodized, and diamond shaped aluminum panels forming a sort of digital drapery atop the overlapping gallery volumes. These Gumball tactics are utilized by the architects to accentuate the vertical windows that light each gallery and help to simultaneously highlight and obscure the building's internal organization.

For the project, Diller Scofidio + Renfro served as design architect, Anderson Mason Dale Architects served as Architect of Record, Gallagher & Associates served as exhibition designer, and KL&A in collaboration with Arup served as structural engineers. NES, Inc. in collaboration with Hargreaves Jones, served as landscape architects, while GE Johnson was construction manager and general contractor. 

Due to COVID-19, in addition to holding a conventional building opening, the complex will debut digitally, as well via a walk-through video highlighted below.