PĂ©rez Art Museum Miami
The new Pérez Art Museum Miami, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is currently under construction on Florida’s Biscayne Bay where the three-story structure will, upon completion, stand on a broad plinth with slender columns supporting a louvered roof with long cantilevers and natural hanging vegetation on all sides, providing natural shade for the building and its three exhibition levels. Varied floor layouts resulting in numerous projections and returns in the façade are so designed that the enclosed exhibition blocks jut out and seem to be floating in mid-air. The circulation and exhibition zones between and around these exhibition halls are surrounded by generously glazed floor to ceiling façades permitting views of Biscayne Bay and the adjacent new shoreline city park.
Miami is well known to be located in a region with high wind loads and risk of hurricanes, requiring compliance to demanding hurricane resistant specifications for the glass façades that are being developed in detail by the architects with seele’s help and expertise during an intensive design assist phase. Herzog & de Meuron, known for their innovative handling of materials new and old have chosen, for the main vertical posts, high-strength concrete reinforced with synthetic fibres as an unusual material, but one that is most suited to resisting hurricane wind loads. Then, to play with the use of concrete mullions, in the architecture of the museum, the mullions switch from outside to inside to outside on alternating floors, alternatively exposing and partially hiding their tapered cross section form.
Up until now, the large glass units that are planned– up to approx. 5.20 m high and 2.30 m wide – have not been used in this hurricane region. All the elements of the façade – glass, posts, anchorages and teak doors – must prove their robustness in hurricane tests.
The panes of glass are fixed to stainless steel rails cast into the concrete. The joint is concealed by narrow cover strips only. Owing to the threat of hurricanes, each pane is in the form of two double-glazing units with a reinforcing interlayer in between. Here a demanding owner and even more demanding architects, with the help of seele, are pushing material limits.
Miami is well known to be located in a region with high wind loads and risk of hurricanes, requiring compliance to demanding hurricane resistant specifications for the glass façades that are being developed in detail by the architects with seele’s help and expertise during an intensive design assist phase. Herzog & de Meuron, known for their innovative handling of materials new and old have chosen, for the main vertical posts, high-strength concrete reinforced with synthetic fibres as an unusual material, but one that is most suited to resisting hurricane wind loads. Then, to play with the use of concrete mullions, in the architecture of the museum, the mullions switch from outside to inside to outside on alternating floors, alternatively exposing and partially hiding their tapered cross section form.
Up until now, the large glass units that are planned– up to approx. 5.20 m high and 2.30 m wide – have not been used in this hurricane region. All the elements of the façade – glass, posts, anchorages and teak doors – must prove their robustness in hurricane tests.
The panes of glass are fixed to stainless steel rails cast into the concrete. The joint is concealed by narrow cover strips only. Owing to the threat of hurricanes, each pane is in the form of two double-glazing units with a reinforcing interlayer in between. Here a demanding owner and even more demanding architects, with the help of seele, are pushing material limits.
