Snøhetta has completed work on their $35 million redesign of The Blanton Museum of Art grounds for the University of Texas at Austin.

The debut of the New Ground Initiative comes at the end of a three-year revitalization that saw the Blanton continuously operate during construction. The 200,000-square-foot campus now has a greater permanent presence as the gateway between the university and city of Austin thanks to public art installations and key improvements to the existing landscape design and architecture.

Lead architects and UTSOA alumni Craig Dykers, John Newman, and Elaine Molinar were able to guide the project using their student experiences, resulting in an inclusive new space.

At the center of the project stands a previously completed intervention of petal-like 40-by-30-foot metallic shade structures that was designed to reconcile an open area now referred to as the Moody Patio. Besides providing protection from Texas's relentless summer heat, the multifunctional sculptures also capture rainwater, which is channeled through the columns to an underground filtration system.

Surrounding them are new art installations from Carmen Herrera, Bill Fontana, Gabriel Dawe, and Kay Rosen that frame both Ellsworth Kelly's Austin structure and the distant Texas State Capitol complex.

The redesign carefully incorporates 25,000 new plantings (95% of them native to Texas) as the basis for its new landscape program, which features small gardens that unite the program while contributing to the greater sustainability of the project and campus as a whole.

Overall, the work helps to enhance the Blanton’s reputation as one of the leading university art museums in the country. It joins UCLA and NYU, as other large institutions have invested in such renovations or expansions in recent years.

Further south in Texas, Snøhetta is currently finishing up construction on their El Paso Children's Museum design. They are also one of several dozen competing for the 2024 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, which is expected to be announced next March.