An Expanded “Western Home” A New Dawn

Snøhetta taps its Norwegian roots for an open-air museum in Iowa. Portland Museum of Art selects LEVER Architecture to design its campus expansion project.

Vesterheim in Decorah, Iowa, houses one of the largest collections of Norwegian-American artifacts, so when the cultural institution was looking to revamp its campus, it naturally selected Norway- and United States–based architecture firm Snøhetta. Vesterheim translates to “western home” in Norwegian, a fitting name for a location that shares the histories and details of Norwegian-American culture and immigration in the U.S. The campus comprises several historic buildings, many of which were built by Norwegian immigrants, as well as facilities for the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School.

The institution’s history and origin trace back to Luther College in 1877. Laur Laursen, the university’s president at the time, began collecting everyday objects from Norwegian immigrants who had settled in the area. His successor, C. K. Preus, turned the growing collection into an open-air museum, showcasing both objects and buildings.

“As a Norwegian-American company, Snøhetta is grateful and excited to play a part in recontextualizing the experiences, art, and crafts of Norwegian immigrants here in Iowa,” Craig Dykers, Snøhetta founding partner, said in a statement. “We hope and expect that The Commons and Heritage Park will create new opportunities for considering and understanding the experience of immigrants to the United States.”

Snøhetta produced a master plan for the site in 2019 that brings together the extant facilities and buildings with a plan for a “unified campus.” Among the additions to the site are a new 8,000-square-foot building dubbed The Commons and a series of green spaces, part of Vesterheim’s reimagined open-air museum, Heritage Park. The additions are respectful in their scale and materiality so as to match the existing historic structures.

“We began working with Vesterheim in 2018 to envision a campus master plan that reunites and enhances the museum and educational facilities through a memorable campus landscape,” Snøhetta partner Michelle Delk explained. “By adding new out- door gathering areas that extend Heritage Park to Water Street, Vesterheim Commons creates new interior and exterior public spaces where people can come together to enjoy the museum’s vibrant collections.”

The Commons takes cues from the surrounding wooded landscape. Its mass timber frame will be constructed using wood sourced from Albert Lea, Minnesota, and will be complemented by a brick volume sourced from Adel, Iowa. At street level a wood canopy with a sweeping curvature will shelter the all-glass lobby volume while also creating a striking point of interest.

Within the lobby, windows surrounding the interior will provide views out to the streetscape and the abutting wooded landscape. At the center of the atrium, a woodclad oculus bathes the interior in natural light. The space doubles as an event venue and has passageways leading off to the Westby-Torgerson Education Center and Vesterheim’s Folk Art School.

On the upper floors of The Commons, exhibition spaces will be equipped with digital facilities and a production studio. Galleries on the second floor will accommodate a study room envisioned to work in tandem with the new technology to augment researchers’ experience with Vesterheim’s collections.

Minneapolis-based landscape firm Damon Farber worked with Snøhetta to revamp the green space for Heritage Park, making it an “urban woodland” with scenery that references Norwegian forests and the Driftless Area, a topographical and cultural region in the Midwest comprising northeastern Iowa that lacks glacial deposits known as drift because of a lack of ice coverage in the last ice age.

The reimagined landscape was completed in August 2021 and features permeable pavers, native plantings, and a runoff mitigation and stormwater management system. As for The Commons, construction kicked off on the building in 2022, and Snøhetta anticipates completion this summer. Kristine Klein

The Portland Museum of Art (PMA), a Mainebased art and cultural institution, has selected the team led by LEVER Architecture to realize The PMA Blueprint, a plan that will more than double the size of the 140-year-old museum located in downtown Portland.

The Campus Unification + Expansion International Design Competition, managed by Dovetail Design Strategists in partnership with the PMA, was launched in June 2022 and garnered over 250 submissions. The submissions were whittled down to four finalists: Adjaye Associates, MVRDV, LEVER Architecture, and a team co-led by Toshiko Mori Architect, Johnston Marklee, and Preston Scott Cohen. The four schemes were unveiled to the public in November, entered a public comment period, and were ultimately evaluated by the design jury, with LEVER’s team coming out on top.

The $100 million PMA Blueprint project comes in response to record museum attendance, a diversified collection, and community feedback. Design competition guidelines asked for submissions to most importantly consider inclusivity. The winning design would be one that considered the campus in its entirety but also thought about the larger city and the state of Maine, with a goal of being inviting for all the museum’s communities.

“We were fortunate to be able to respond to a brief that looks at a museum in a way that foregrounds community and thinks about flipping the narrative of how we traditionally think about museums. That was the original brief: How do you create a museum that’s about art for all?” LEVER Architecture cofounder Thomas Robinson told AN

LEVER tapped a team of codesigners and community resources including Simons Architects as executive architect; Unknown Studio as landscape architect; Once-Future Office as signage, graphics, and wayfinding consultant; Studio Pacifica as accessibility and universal design consultant; and a team of engineers and project consultants including Atelier Ten, Guy Nordenson and Associates, Thornton Tomasetti, Altieri Sebor Wieber, Arup, Woodard & Curran, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Stuart-Lynn, and Openbox.

Also among these consultants was Indigenous Inclusion Adviser Chris Newell, a Wabanaki consultant from the Akomawt Educational Initiative. The Wabanaki people occupy much of the Indigenous-owned land in Maine. In conversations with Newell, LEVER observed the deep connection the state of Maine and the Wabanaki have with “celestial bodies,” in particular their engagement with sunrise.

“Chris Newell, our Wabanaki adviser, talks about Maine being the ‘Dawn Land’ that the Wabanaki people have inhabited for the last 11,000 years; their focus has been to greet the dawn, and that’s been integral to their culture,” Robinson continued.

To replicate this phenomenon within its design, LEVER has proposed a timber addition with a scooping roofline curved to align with the sun’s positioning on the summer solstice. Similarly, during the winter solstice, the sun beams through the facade facing Free Street and Spring Street, allowing light to enter the museum complex through Congress Square and a new cutout arch on the Pei Cobb Freed–designed Payson Building.

LEVER’s scheme doesn’t just expand the museum by an additional 60,000 square feet, offering more public and gallery space: It will also unify the campus, currently marked by four disparate structures built in different centuries in varying architectural styles. The new archway through the existing Payson Building toward Congress Square will allow visitors to circulate into the sculpture garden, bringing the city into conversation with the entire museum campus.

While LEVER’s plan underwent public comment and a jury review, it is still very much a work in progress, with design and material decisions still to be made. The firm is eager to source timber and terra-cotta for the PMA within Maine.

Robinson noted: “There’s an incredible amount of momentum in the Northeast around sourcing regionally. I think this building could be a catalyst for moving that forward.”

In addition to considering low-carbon building materials, LEVER’s scheme includes a closed geothermal loop system that will harvest heat from deep within the earth.

By creating a seamless circulation pattern from the street through to the buildings and the interstitial locations staged throughout, the entire campus will become more connected and flexible. Large glazing installed within the addition allows visitors to see into makerspace studios and community galleries, and a rooftop deck offers a place for hosting events, staging art installations, or observing the serene landscape below.

“We want to sort of create a design where you can see yourself in the museum and can see activity happening. You can see people sitting on the terrace, and you would actually say, ‘Hey, that’s a place that I feel like I belong, that’s really part of my life and the community as a whole,’” Robinson said. KK