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News Release from: Gensler | Subject: Harold E LeMay Museum
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 October 2003
Gensler museum design for private car
collection
Gensler design for The Harold E LeMay Museum, which will house the largest privately owned automobile collection in the world.
Gensler Architecture, Design and Planning Worldwide, unveiled the design for The Harold E LeMay Museum, which will house the largest privately owned automobile collection in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records To be built on a nine-acre site in Tacoma, Washington, the $100 million, 750,000-square-foot facility includes retail, dining, event, and conference space along with a three-acre outdoor gathering area
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 21 Mar 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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Annual attendance is projected at 560,000 visitors.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2005, with the museum to open to the public in 2007.
Thinkwell Design and Production is the Exhibit Designer; Putnam, Collins, Scott Associates is the Structural Engineer; Notkin Engineering, is the Mechanical Engineer; and Sparling is Electrical Engineer.
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"Gensler is helping us create a new paradigm in museums -one that converges experience, education, and entertainment in an iconic facility that is economically feasible," said David Madeira, LeMay Museum C.E.O.
Experiential features include an amusement park-style ride that simulates speeding down the open road and a restoration shop where visitors can help museum staff restore classic cars.
A library area invites visitors to explore books, memorabilia, and audiovisual materials.
Events sponsored by the Museum and/or the community will take place in a 250-seat lecture hall, three smaller classrooms, and a 1,000-person capacity banquet facility.
A LeMay retail shop and cafandeacute; share space with other dining, shopping, and entertainment retailers.
Gensler worked closely with LeMay officials, city officials, and the entire community to create a space that would fit the community's needs while also serving as a tourist attraction.
Through a series of public meetings held over a seven-month period, Gensler listened to the community's needs and then incorporated them into design plans.
The three-acre grassy public expanse, for example, was created in response to requests for an outdoor gathering place for the community.
"The design process has been the most productive process I've been through in my life," said Gensler Design Director Alan Grant.
"I've never seen so much interest in a building".
"It's democracy at its best." The city also wanted a cultural icon that would also complement the surrounding landscape, so Gensler's design creates a synergy with the adjacent Tacoma Dome.
The museum's gently curved roof both echoes the hump of the Tacoma Dome and resembles the top of a car, while chrome, glass, and steel construction reinforces the automotive theme.
Additionally, the four-story-high structure's glass expanses enable a varied experience of the building over a daily cycle: in bright light it will look like an opaque, titanium building.
Nighttime will render the glass transparent, making the structure luminous.
To showcase the cars in an interactive way and avoid the feel of a giant parking lot, Gensler created an innovative vehicle display system.
Visitors will enter the museum through a dramatic glass wall, cross a spacious lobby pavilion, and find themselves in the Great Hall, which is at the midpoint of a 90-foot-spiral.
Fifty feet above grade and 40 feet below grade, the spiral displays a changing selection of 150 vintage cars.
Hundreds more cars will be showcased in interactive exhibits placed in fluid spaces throughout the museum.
Those not on display will be stored in energy-efficient viewable storage units underground.
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