VJAA

Location: Saint Paul, Minnesota
 

The new Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M), through its adaptive reuse of historically significant 19th-century buildings, socially reinvigorates the blighted and neglected former commercial heart of downtown St. Paul. Situated within a culturally and racially diverse midwestern city, the Museum’s mission explores the “diversity of American identities” and experiences through art. The museum leverages the dynamism of its location with its complex layers of past occupations to support the museum’s new mission. Endowed with a significant 130-year-old collection and its legacy of public educational programs, the museum’s contemporary agenda is now intertwined with the site’s history.

The layered qualities of this urban retail block with its embedded interiorized multilevel streets and alley; connect the museum's public spaces back to the city street. The “Art Block“ concept expanded the museum’s vision for outreach and social activation to include the branding of neighboring tenant and residential spaces within the perimeter block of the Pioneer-Endicott complex. The museum overlaps both the Endicott and Pioneer buildings, residing below former offices now converted into housing and a newly activated second level skyway retail space. 

A two-story skylit public space within a former coal yard is crossed by an overhead glass bridge used for access and people watching; interconnecting the 1960’s skyway system above with the 19th century street entry and commercial arcade below. The design recognized the value of Cass Gilbert’s original model of the Paris Arcades with its creative activation of social space. The main permanent collections galleries recreates an arcade-like flow of public space with a restoration of the stained glass arcade ceiling at the center. The sensory rhythm and cross-flow of people reimagines a historic retail street as a space for spontaneous social connection while encouraging a new culture of flânerie.