NEVADA MUSEUM OF ART*

Art Museum
Reno, Nevada
completed in 2003
* work performed while employed with will bruder+partners

The Nevada Museum of Art creates an architecture of dynamic urban presence in downtown Reno, Nevada. The Museum frames a series of well-scaled and formed galleries, choreographed in a sequence for memorable visual experiences. The architecture is shaped by the sun, capturing a unique identity with the geologic formations of the mythical Black Rock Desert. The carefully lapped handcrafted random seam pattern of the Anthra-Zinc applied over the west facades exaggerate the form of the building with a unique organic tapestry of shade and shadow. Entry into the Museum is through a compressed wedge of intimately scaled walls inserted under the raked black ceiling of the first level public spaces. The visitor is at once inside and outside in a glass pavilion and four-story skylight atrium, carving through the entire section of the building. Lifting ones eyes upward, the atrium is an ever-changing chamber of form, light, and shadow. The roof terrace sculpture garden caps the atrium and staircase. This space is formed by the edges of the building as they sweep up on a rake to the sky where random crevices on the west frame the city, the sky, and distant views of the Black Rock Desert.