More Mill, More Museum: MASS MoCA’s Phase 3

Kicking off 2016 in contemporary style, the HRC welcomes Bruner/Cott Principal Jason Forney AIA, LEED AP and invited colleagues on January 14th for an update on the ongoing MASS MoCA adaptive-use project. In May of 2017, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art will open 130,000 square feet of new gallery spaces. The current Phase 3 is the culmination of a 25-year Museum Master Plan, the final transformation of the 13-acre, 28-building factory site into the largest contemporary art museum in the United States. MASS MoCA is a new museum made from found buildings.

Bruner/Cott has been working on this exciting project for nearly 30 years, beginning with the first phase that opened in 1999. The effort received both the AIA National Honor award and a Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Along the way, the design team has learned a great deal about creatively reusing post-industrial sites. Jason will provide an overview of the museum’s master plan and prior phases and will then delineate the expansion, which includes a series of “museums within the museum” to house works by James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson and Robert Rauschenberg, et al. Jason and his colleagues will discuss the idea of creating an “exploring environment,” the concept of a combined work (where new and old support each other), and the dialogue between the museum program and the historic mill architecture.

About the speaker:

Jason Forney, AIA, LEED AP, is a Principal with Bruner/Cott Architects in Cambridge, MA. Bruner/Cott is a design and planning firm widely known for its award-winning planning and design work in urban environments and on academic campuses. Jason joined the firm in 2002 and became a Principal in 2014. He specializes in the transformative adaptive reuse of historically significant structures as well as the design of high-performing contemporary architecture.

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