Renzo Piano reconfigures Harvard Art Museums around a grand courtyard atrium

Inside, the complex centres around the restored   Calderwood Courtyard, which is conceived as the social heart of the buildings. Photography is by Nic Lehoux, apart from where otherwise indicated. The architects created one art study centre per museum. Other additions include a   winter garden that projects beyond one of the facades and a «lightbox gallery» for art and technology that offers a birds-eye view down into the courtyard atrium. «It will expand the ways in which we use art and art-making as part of the curriculum, and it will invite our neighbours and visitors to enjoy some of the university’s unparalleled treasures.»
Photograph by Michel DenancéThe extension was constructed using modern materials that include concrete, structural steel and wooden louvres, offering a contrast to the brick facade of the 1927 Fogg Museum that the architect has sensitively preserved. Renzo Piano Building Workshop has increased   gallery space by 40 per cent in the three buildings that make up the Harvard Art Museum complex – the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M Sackler Museum – and added new resources that make it easier for visitors to access the collections. Visitors can either enter from a new entrance on this street, or via the original   Quincy Street approach. Photograph by Michel Denancé»Renzo Piano has designed a building that is as beautiful as the works of art it will house and as thoughtful as the people who will work and learn within it,» commented Harvard president   Drew Gilpin Faust. The new 18,500-square-metre facility officially opened over the weekend with inaugural exhibitions dedicated to artists   Mark Rothko and Rebecca Horn. Each one comprises a large reception and two seminar rooms, making it easy to compare   objects and artworks from different cultures and time periods. Italian architect Renzo Piano has upgraded the facilities of the Harvard Art Museums in Boston, Massachusetts, by adding a new gallery wing and transforming a former courtyard into a top-lit atrium (+ slideshow).