Tacoma, Washington, USA
Awards: 2003 Medal, AIBC Awards for Excellence in Architecture + 2003 Honor Award, AIA Southwest Chapter
The Museum of Glass is a museum of the 21st century—an experiential museum, dynamic, spontaneous, and evolving. The vision statement for the museum was to “visualize a centre that pulses with life, light, and fire. It is a place of discovery, surprise, collaboration, and joy that transforms the visitor as profoundly as fire transforms glass.” It is a museum where creativity is celebrated, allowing the public to watch, learn, and participate.
The Museum of Glass contains glass workshops and an artist studio, exhibition spaces, a permanent collection display area, a retail area for the sale of handmade glass art and books, food services area, library, theatre, and classrooms.
The museum’s programs have been designed to give the broadest experience possible to people of all ages and levels of knowledge. The mandate of the Museum of Glass is to recognize the importance and excellence of glass art as a major international art form and to provide a forum for the open and free discussion of artistic creativity.
The heart of the museum is the Hot Shop, shaped as an angled cone. Through the roar and heat of the furnaces, the public can watch the dynamic process of glass art creation unfold. Internationally renowned artists are invited to participate in an artist-in-residence program, which allows the public a unique window into the “behind the scenes” aspect of glassmaking by some of the world’s finest.
Architects: Nick Milkovich Architects with Arthur Erickson
Associated Firm: Thomas Cook Reed Reinvald
Size: 75,000 sf
Completed: 2002