In
1988 The Minneapolis Institute of Arts began a ten year renovation,
its mission was to break down perceived barriers to the museum and to
extend the museum beyond its walls and into the community. Damon Farber
Associates role was to create a renovated landscape that supported the
museum's unique vision of community outreach and to bring art into the
fabric of the surrounding neighborhoods.
Our design attitude was shaped by this noble mission to create outdoor,
public spaces which would serve both as art and as galleries for art.
The landscape vocabulary employed a variety of aspects to define these
galleries including the orchestration and organization of architecture,
planting, grading, lighting and site furnishings to create a sense of
place where art would be accessible to the larger community.
The first design effort addressed an area known as Target Park and which
was made viable through the generous donation by Target Corporation.
The concept for this area suggests a green framework of trees within
which a series of gardens are set apart from, and bordered by, the strong
architectural boundaries. Target Park, is comprised of four individual,
interconnected gardens each with its own character. Our challenge was
to provide distinction between gardens without obscuring the sense of
the garden composition as a whole. This was accomplished through the
definition of clear, distinct circulation patterns within the context
of subtle grade changes, walls, planting, and lighting, each adding
texture and changing color to the landscape composition.
The second focus of the master plan addressed the two museum entrances.
The first of these entries, on Twenty-Fourth Street, is dominated by
a Beaux-Arts facade. This facade is linked on the East and West by two
glass-curtain walls designed as a part of a later post-modern addition.
Design principles strongly recommended the integration of an adjacent
park into a grand public forecourt, this concept was first illustrated
in the City Beautiful movement for the City of Minneapolis, as part
of the creation of a cohesive exterior environment.
Earlier landscape treatments of the Third Avenue Entrance did not adequately
address the buildings' scale or the oblique approach to this main entrance.
The design accommodates an interim solution which plans for future expansion
of the Children's Theatre Company balanced with the need to upgrade
the main entry on Third Avenue. The layering of an elegant vocabulary
of elements gives scale and texture to the otherwise monolithic white
brick facade.
