SO-IL has unveiled design for a new campus art museum featuring undulating timber ceilings in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States.

The new campus, set to be built as the first purpose-built art museum at Williams College, will be built on the Berkshires landscape with its low-lying structures. The program of the museum will consist of galleries, art storage, auditorium, seminar room and classrooms. 

The development will be a transformative teaching museum for the entire campus, while aiming to become a prominent new gateway to the college and town. 

Designed by Brooklyn-based firm SO–IL, led by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, the museum plans to open the new Williams College Museum of Art in 2027.

"A primary teaching resource for the College across all disciplines and an essential partner of its renowned art history program, the Williams College Museum of Art holds and exhibits an expansive global collection of more than 15,000 works," stated in a press release by the Williams College. 

"Inaugurated in 1926, the museum serves as a creative catalyst for the College and the Berkshires with its innovative exhibitions and programs. Now, for the first time, the museum will have its own freestanding, purpose-built home," the College said.

The 76,800-square-foot (7,135-square-metre) complex will comprise five volumes shaped around a courtyard. Located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas. 

Envisioned like pavilions, the pavilion-like structures are dedicated to accommodate their multiple uses. The program areas are unified through their materials, their openness to the natural setting, their organization around a central gathering place, and a distinctive overarching roof that shelters them all.

"Designing a college art museum is one of the most exciting tasks we as architects can imagine. Orchestrating synergies between the past, present, and future enables us to create a home where students, faculty, community, and collection converge," said Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg, founding partners of SO–IL. 

"We believe space is as much a teacher as the programs it houses, so we are thrilled to partner with WCMA in designing a building in which different modes of art study and appreciation can intersect, coexist, and reinvent one another."

"Walls do not confine the concept of this museum, but rather the inviting gesture of an overarching roof that delineates spaces for these interactions to take place," Liu and Idenburg continued. 

"Contributing to this beautiful landscape, we hope the building will become a welcoming beacon, situated sensitively between campus and the world beyond," the explained.

From the central lobby, there will be two gallery clusters for temporary exhibitions and the permanent collection radiate toward the north. 

These galleries will provide more than 15,000 square feet (1,394 square meters) of display space, accounting for 35 percent of the net square footage of the building. 

Spaces for dynamic programming and community engagement greet visitors from the main south-facing entrance, with an auditorium, art studio space, and a café extending toward the southwest. 

An innovative hybrid gallery-classroom space dedicated to the museum’s signature Object Lab sits to the southeast. 

Reaching toward campus to the east, a study center of approximately 6,400 square feet (595 square meters) includes dedicated areas for works on paper study, storage, two classrooms for object study, a digital humanities classroom, and a seminar room. 

The structures' roofs will be clad in aluminum shingles that cover all five volumes of the museum with curves and peaks that engage with the ridgelines of the surrounding mountains. 

"The roof’s broad overhang creates awnings and porches that surround the building, embracing visitors as they approach while providing temperature regulation to reduce energy use and enhance sustainability," said the College.

At the heart of the building is a courtyard, and north of the central lobby between the two gallery arms, locating nature at the center of the building. 

Views of the landscape is opened from the central lobby toward the main entrances, located on the south and west sides of the building. Seating areas between galleries offer views of the landscape, as does the lounge unifying the research spaces and classrooms in the study center.

"The porosity of the design creates the sense that its architecture is embedded directly into the Berkshires landscape, an expression of the project’s rigorous emphasis on sustainability," explained the College. 

"With a focus on renewable materials and innovative climate control techniques, the building aims to require as little as 30 percent of the current baseline energy usage for art museums." 

The major material of the building is mass timber which is exposed throughout the lobby and echoed by wood ceilings in the galleries. 

Carbon-conscious masonry in both textured and smooth surfaces will clad the outer walls of each pavilion, extending from the exterior façade to the interior gathering spaces and passageways. 

The roof's overhang will not only provide shade for the expanses of glass in the façade but also will be used for a rainwater retention system. 

Outside the building, bioretention basins will catch and treat rainwater, while a cistern beneath the parking lot will hold water back until the brook running north of the site can handle the run-off. 

The landscape around the building, designed by Reed Hilderbrand, will be renewed and reforested, with a flowering meadow and gardens featuring native plants. The main parking area, located north of the building, will be a "park-in-the-woods" experience built into an existing 30-foot drop-off in the topography.

The museum will present an exhibition on the SO–IL design, opening in May 2024.

The firm's appointment to the project was announced in 2022. 

SO-IL and Paris-based firm FREAKS expanded an 18th-century glass factory with an undulating concrete plaza that activates three independent yet interrelated institutions in Meisenthal, France.

Founded in 2008 by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, SO–IL produces buildings, interiors, furniture, and landscapes around the world.

Site plan

Basement floor plan

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Section

Project facts

Design Architect: SO–IL

SO–IL Project Team: Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Kevin Lamyuktseung, Jonathan Molloy, Andrea Fos, Dohyun Lee, Marlena Fauer. 

Executive Architect: PDR
Landscape Architect: Reed Hilderbrand Structural Engineer: Fast + Epp
MEP Engineer: Buro Happold
Sustainability Consultant: Thornton Thomasetti Lighting Designer: FMS
Civil Engineer: Fuss & O'Neill
Code Consultant: Code Red
AV / Acoustics: HMBA
Envelope Consultant: SGH
Storage Consultant: Schwartz Silver Renderings: Jeudi Wang
Construction Manager: Consigli
Owner’s Project Manager: Skanska
Timber Design Assist Partner: Nordic Structures 

Roofing Design Assist Partner: Zahner
Curtain Wall Design Assist Partner: Roschmann

Building size: 76,800 GSF
Building height: 42’

All renderings © Jeudi Wang, courtesy SO–IL and the Williams College Museum of Art.

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