Gluckman Tang Architects has been selected to design the 32,400-sf Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, a 400-foot-long addition to two historic freight depots in the town’s Western Gateway Heritage State Park, an old rail yard.
Frank Gehry, Gluckman Tang, and Zaha Hadid have agreed to create architectural models for this building’s trainscape diorama, through which the world’s largest collection of O-scale (i.e. 1/48th-size) model trains will travel.
One of the goals of this development is to establish “a cultural corridor” between North Adams and Williamstown, Mass., about seven miles away, whose renowned Sterling and Francine Clark Art Museum completed its latest stage of expansion last year.
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCa), which draws more than 150,000 visitors annually, is in the midst of doubling the gallery space on its North Adams campus to 250,000 sf by 2017, and adding new galleries. The completion date for both museums is 2018.
Thomas Krens, former director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York and a leading force behind the development of Mass MoCa in the 1980s, told The New York Times that North Adams project is still in its early stages. He estimated its overall cost at between $25 million and $30 million. Source by Building Design + Costruction.
