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Museum
building Architect:
William
P. Bruder-Architect, Ltd.
Will Bruder, Rob Gaspard, Tim Christ, Ben Nesbeitt, Saskia Harth, Donna
Barry, design team
Client:
Scottsdale
Cultural Council
Frank
Jacobson, President
Robert
Knight, Director
Ric
Alling: Project Manager
Consultants:
Rudow & Berry, Inc Mark Rudow, structural;
Baltes/Valentino Associates, mechanical/electrical;
Lighting Dynamics, lighting design;
Wardin Cockriel & Associates, acoustical;
Construction Consultants, cost consultant;
Howard S. Wright Construction Co., general contractor
 The
Gerard L. Cafesjian Pavilion of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary
Art is a complement to the existing Scottsdale Center for the Arts (Bennie
Gonzales, architect, 1975), achieved through the opportunistic adaptation
of the adjacent cineplex, whose five theaters proved to be a logical organization
of perfect scale for 18,500 square feet of versatile temporary exhibition
galleries. This challenging civic work offers its community a portal to
discovery in the experience of art, a linkage with the vitality coursing
thorough the contemporary art of our time.
From the first beckoning at curbside, the familiar world beyond the envelope
begins to fade and an exploration is opened. On this journey the Arizona
sun rarely leaves completely, maintaining a living presence of light and
place. The existing stucco theater block is now clothed in an elusive
eggplant grey chroma likened to the shadows left by fading sunset light
on the western ramparts of the McDowell range to the east. This recessively
dark, somewhat abstract mass is embraced by an oblong service pod of corrugated
and perforated galvanized metal at the west and softly curved arrival
pod of flat-seam galvanized steel on the east, making a gesture of deference
to the bullnosed volumes of the existing SCA and shaping gracefully compact
urban spaces. These reflective membranes embody both the material heritage
of the region and the particular qualities of its sky, changing in time
and season, occasionally dissolving into the ether.
 Street
arrival begins with the luminous Scrim
Wall by James Carpenter Design Associates. Textured glass sheets
shudder around a curve, with joinery of dichroic glass spacers, forming
a vibrant civic lantern and wrapping the volume of the sculpture court
beyond with a sublime field of energy. Shimmering fritted light and shifting
slices of the spectrum play over the exterior of the celebrated James
Turrell elliptical skyspace, Knight
Rise. A scale and material shift occurs as the scrim slips behind
the galvanized wall of the arrival pod. The architectural canyon between
this face and the SCA narrows, only to widen as a folded inflection of
the metal creates an entry compression beneath a plate aluminum soffit.
A mirrored stainless sign backlit with green neon reflects shirts and
faces, its mercury glow leading to the first transparent glimpse of the
interior. The glazed sweep is breached at entry by an inserted box of
Judd-like aluminum assembly containing automated sliding glass doors and
a grating under-lit with molten orange light.
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