Center for Asian Art at the Ringling Museum of Art

The Center for Asian Art is an addition and ‘gut renovation’ to the West Wing galleries on the southwest corner of the Ringling Museum a 66 acre complex on the National Register of Historic Places.. The design presents the new Asian Art Pavilion as both an anchor and hinge for the site, providing a circulation hub for the Museum and serving as a monumental new point of entry. The overall goal of the addition was to create an architecturally significant and unique building that would elicit inventive new approaches and responses to Asian art and culture. In consideration of the budget constraints of the project, our strategy was to restrain the building form and focus the design on the development of a high performance, visually striking building envelope. The Pavilion is clad in custom green glazed terra cotta rain screen. The unusual form of the panels is intended to evoke a sculpted non-directional chiseled quality and is reminiscent of the symbolic forms of tiles in ancient Chinese roof architecture. The green color recedes from the color of the original structures and serves to reinforce the initial decision to set back the addition from the face of the original West Wing.