Sustainable Design Points of the Pérez Art Museum

Ocean Drive

by Stephanie Dunn

A rendering of the Perez Art Museum Miami.

With Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) set to open this December, museum director Thom Collins and former Miami Art Museum director Terence Riley have joined forces to host a design talk this Friday, September 20 at the Adrienne Arsht Center.

On the agenda for the talk is the museum’s sustainable design, which is as sophisticated as it is strategic. Noteworthy features by Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron include a futuristic, Stiltsville-inspired frame, 70-foot hanging gardens, a massive louvered canopy roof, and the world’s largest impact (read: hurricane)-resistant windows.

“With Miami being an international city very much known for its beaches and weather, locals and tourists alike will most appreciate that architects Herzog & de Meuron have designed a building that will ‘bring the park into the museum’ in new and innovative ways,” says Collins. “Not only does the structure sit below a canopy to create a shaded veranda and plazas where visitors can relax, but the galleries incorporate carefully placed windows to allow for natural light and amazing views of the surrounding park and bay.”

The product of a substantial $40 million gift from real estate developer Jorge M. Pérez—along with a healthy heap of drama that surfaced in the pages of Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood and two-and-a-half years of construction—PAMM will transform downtown Miami’s skyline as a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Located in Museum Park, a bayfront chunk of prime real estate at the southern base of the MacArthur Causeway, PAMM will ultimately join the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science and the One Thousand Museum—not technically a museum, but an ultra-high end residential tower touting architecture by Zaha Adid Architects—to complete a striking trifecta for the city’s burgeoning art and design community.

Read more at http://oceandrive.com/the-latest/talk-of-the-town/postings/sustainable-design-points-of-the-perez-art-museum-miami#B35eHydxzhpbvGpc.99