Final plans for the new LEED-certified museum expansion at Penn State have been unveiled this week after years of anticipation for a project with an ultimate price tag of $85 million. 

The project, announced by the school’s board of trustees in 2019, will significantly improve physical spaces for the nearly 50-year-old Palmer Museum of Art, which has been plagued by water damage and an antiquated heating and air system for a number of years. 

Allied Works will partner with designers from Reed Hilderbrand to create a site-specific expansion on the university’s campus that responds to the local environment in Happy Valley via enhancements to an existing arboretum and a duo of walkway-linked pavilion-style buildings made of stone from local quarries.

The new buildings will allow the museum’s collection to be exhibited in more natural surroundings to the over 10,000 student visitors it hosts every year.

The new buildings will allow the museum’s collection to be exhibited in more natural surroundings to the over 10,000 student visitors it hosts every year. 

With 71,000 square feet of new space, the Palmer now is able to feature an education center in addition to gallery spaces that will increase the amount of art on view from 4% to about 8%. 

“This new facility will help to advance the Palmer as a cultural destination and scholarly resource for the University, surrounding communities, and visitors from across Pennsylvania and beyond,” Director Erin Coe said in a statement. 

Additional land has been reserved for a future building at the site, which was originally conceived of as a multi-museum and performance space cultural district, according to a local news site.

The museum is the latest example of localized design for a cultural institution that Allied Works principal Brad Cloepfil has become renowned for nationwide. Once completed, the Palmer will represent Allied Works’ sixth museum project on an already impressive list of clients that includes the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Seattle Art Museum, and the University of Michigan Art Museum, which in 2009 received an Honor Award from the AIA’s Detroit chapter. 

“The work that resonates with me is work where the architecture itself is not the subject,” Coephil told OregonLive in a 2012 interview.  “It exists to bring some kind of enlightenment or understanding to the activity within the building or the environment around it. That's extraordinarily hard to do and something we strive for [at Allied Works].” 

The Palmer will begin construction on the new museum this summer with an anticipated opening in the Fall of 2023.