Buildings
OMA Designs Stacked Towers in Louisville
(archrecord.construction.com - 02/17/06)
By Alan
G. Brake
 |
 |
 |
| Images
courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture |
At sixty-one stories, the multi-part
Museum Plaza tower in Louisville will be the tallest building
in Kentucky and one of the tallest in the region. The Office
for Metropolitan Architecture’s (OMA) New York studio
is designing the building, which was unveiled on February
9. And, though it reaches more than 100 feet higher than Johnson/Burgee’s
Aegon Tower nearby, the structure is more like a series of
small buildings stacked on top of each other than a monolithic
tower. “We’ve been interested in the question, ‘Can
something be both a credible whole and a series of parts?’”
says Joshua Prince-Ramus, OMA’s lead designer on the
project.
The mixed-use, 1.2 million-square-foot
structure includes 300,000 square feet of office space, a
300-room hotel, 85 luxury condominiums, and 150 lofts. A contemporary
art museum will be located twenty-two stories in the air,
in a common space the architects are calling “the Island.”
The Island will serve as a sky lobby for the office building
and condos. It will contain conference space, a gym, bar,
and other components. An angled, glass-tube elevator will
carry visitors from West Main Street up to the Island. Artists
and curators will program the museum spaces, and the communal
spaces as well.
While the building’s form may be
unorthodox, it reflects careful consideration of the difficult
site conditions. “We’re reconfiguring known parts,
not inventing typologies," says Prince-Ramus.
The building will be sandwiched between
Interstate 64 along the Ohio River and the historic district
of West Main Street. Downtown Louisville lacks much density,
so the architects sought to maximize the program on the small
site. The project’s diverse commercial components will
pay for the cultural components. The new Muhammad Ali Center,
designed by Beyer Blinder Belle, will be immediately east
of the OMA building, and will share an elevated plaza, as
will the Frazier Historical Arms Museum, the Louisville Science
Center and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
Philanthropists Steve Wilson and Laura
Lee Brown (Brown’s family controls the Brown-Forman liquor
company), developer Steve Poe, and attorney Craig Greenburg
are developing the $380 million project. The city and state
are expected to contribute $75 million for site work, including
relocation of the floodwall and realignment of a block of
Seventh Street. The developers expect to complete the project
by 2010.
|
