The Milwaukee Art Museum got a huge boost in greatness in 2001 when Santiago Calatrava came in and added his own work to the museum. The museum had been around for a long time, but it didn’t have the aesthetic appeal that it has now until Calatrava added the Quardacci Pavillion. Besides just looking really amazing and complex, it is very functional and obviously, a lot of thought went into the design to give it more meaning than just looking cool.
The design does immediately make people think of sailboats, which is what Calatrava was going for. He “worked to infuse the building with a certain sensitivity to the culture of the lake – the boats, the sails, and the always changing landscape.” But there is more to the pavilion than just meets the eye. After looking more into the pavilion, I found that there is a lot more to it than just the really looking design. For one, there is a brise soleil, which is simply a really fancy way of saying a sun-blocking device. The device has a wingspan comparable to a 747 and opens and closes several times every day. It has automatic wind sensors that close the sunscreen if the wind speed surpasses 23 miles per hour.
Looking deeper, I became even more impressed with Calatrava as I saw how much effort he put into the structures surrounding the pavilion that made it possible. The footbridge that you take to the museum has a look similar to the museum and is appealing to the eye and very functional. Even the parking garage was made to look fancy and impress people! It is temperature controlled, has painted flowing support ribs, and has skylights in it! It is amazing that he went to the effort to even make the parking garage an attraction and impressive.
The Footbridge
Parking Garage!
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