Adjaye Associates has just been announced to lead the design of the newly-commissioned Perry Center for Native American Art at the Shelburne Museum in northern Vermont.

The project’s brief calls for a “sustainable building with integrated landscape created in collaboration with Indigenous voices whose cultures and people are represented in the works to be stewarded in the space.” 

The extension will be 9,750 square feet in total and created at a projected cost of $12.6 million. Once completed it will join the Shelburne’s stock of 39 other structures, the most recent of which, the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, was designed by Annum (formerly Ann Beha Architects) in 2011.

“Our team is inspired by the potential of the Perry Center to not only enhance Shelburne Museum as a destination for education but also to amplify and empower the Indigenous communities represented by the collection and to reconceptualize the role of a 21st-century museum facility,” David Adjaye said of the project. “As the design architect for the new Perry Center, Adjaye Associates intends to cultivate opportunities for transformation, storytelling and cross-cultural dialogue, ensuring the Perry Center contributes to the unique eclecticism and mission of Shelburne Museum.”

Also in northern New England, the firm was recently in the running to redesign and expand Maine’s Portland Museum of Art. The Shelburne project follows the Princeton University Art Museum and National Museum of African American History and Culture as domestic cultural builds in the studio’s portfolio. No further design details were available at press time.