wHY Architecture Applies “Acupuncture Architecture” to Renovation and Expansion of Speed Art Museum

wHY Architecture Applies “Acupuncture Architecture” to Renovation and Expansion of Speed Art Museum

The first new addition to the Speed Museum will consist of a stack of three cantilevering, offset rectilinear volumes clad in glass. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture.

Set next to the original wing of the museum built in 1927, the material contrast to the masonry Neo-Classical building gives the new addition a feeling of cloud-like buoyancy, though each section is a mostly traditional Modernist glass box with floor to-ceiling windows. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture.

wHY Architecture’s design also adds an outdoor art park and public piazza to the museum. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture.

The interiors of the new museum addition will feature multi-story floor-to-ceiling glass walls that look out over broad landscaped lawns. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture.

Firm principal Kulapat Yantrasast’s additions knit together a fragmented art campus with “acupuncture architecture”--focusing on precise interventions at critical junctures on the site. Image courtesy of wHY Architecture. Photo by Sarah Lyon.

Along with the Speed Museum, the Grand Rapids Art Museum is wHY Architecture’s most well-known cultural commission. Image courtesy of Hendrich Blessing. Photo by Steven Hall.

Unlike the Speed Museum, the Grand Rapids project uses a very different material palette. It’s built with heavy concrete slabs that create a meditative and quiet place for viewing art, while the Speed Museum is much more of an extrovert, featuring glass window walls animated by the surrounding landscape. Image courtesy of Hendrich Blessing. Photo by Steven Hall.

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