In 2016 Allied Works was selected as a finalist to design the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Set within Delaware Park at the heart of the city, the museum houses one of the world’s greatest modern and contemporary art collections. The new expansion honors the institution’s two historic buildings and creates a wholly new type of museum — a building of catalytic spaces that encourages new programming, installations, and connections.
The proposal is an invitation: creating a bridge between the historic buildings and the city, a new entry for the museum, new gathering spaces, and an armature for connecting expansive light-filled galleries to a new sculpture park.
The new building is a dramatic addition, an elongated series of galleries that bridges from the Park’s center on the east side of the site out to Elmwood Avenue and the City, culminating in a double-height gathering space that is the museum’s new entry and lobby at the Western edge of the park. In place of the existing courtyard that lies between the museum’s original building and its mid-century addition, a new double-height Forum space is created. Providing a central hub for the three building suite, this space serves as an event and exhibition hall and creates a new unified identity to the functions of the AKAG. Connecting the Forum space to Elmwood Avenue is an interior street that is filled with art and places to rest and talk. Visitors weave through two levels of galleries, overlooking the spectacular new Sculpture Garden to the north on an art path loop that connects the new entry through the Forum to the museum’s restored original buildings.