AAM's 24-Hour Opening

John Hill

7. August 2014

The Building is located at the corner of South Spring Street and Hyman Avenue in downtown Aspen, Colorado. Photo: Aspen Art Museum

To celebrate its new home designed by 2014 Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban, the Aspen Art Museum is holding a free 24-hour opening on August 9th and 10th with art, music, performance, film, tours, activities, talks, and food.

Designed by Japan's Shigeru Ban Architects and carried out with New York's Dean Maltz Architects, the AAM is based on five elements: Grand Staircase, "Moving Room" Elevator, Wooden Screen, Wooden Roof Structure and "Walkable" Skylights. The most overt element is the wooden screen, which is made from woven strips and wraps the two street elevations of the corner building. Between the screen and the glass-walled interior is the grand staircase, which provides access to the galleries but also the roof deck and its views of the mountains. On this top level of the three-story building is the wooden structure that recalls some of the work Ban has done with timber structures, such as for Tamedia in Zürich.

One of the AAM's inaugural exhibitions in its new building is Shigeru Ban: Humanitarian Architecture, with an exhibition design by the architect himself. It will be on display until October 5, 2014.