The Penn Museum will get an European touch from the architect charged with overhauling the building's design.
David Chipperfield, a world-renowned English architect, will spend the next year assessing the state of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which was completed in 1899, officials said Friday.
He will decide what can0. be improved, how to make these improvements and what they will cost in order to help determine the path of the museum's development.
According to Director Richard Leventhal, the decision to renovate the museum was based on a desire to make it more visible in the Penn and Philadelphia communities as well as to integrate the museum's numerous branches.
The master planning will begin immediately and should take about a year.
Chipperfield was chosen through a selection process overseen by both the University Museum and the School of Design. Leventhal said that a trip to Berlin during which he saw examples of Chipperfield's designs "sealed my interest to have [him] here."
Chipperfield is becoming a popular architect in the museum world. His credits include the recently announced expansion of the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska.
However, he said that this project is unique because the Penn Museum "is not only a collection of objects but also houses research" and is "embedded in a University."
This combination, however, is also one of the museum's biggest problems, according to both Chipperfield and Leventhal. Although state-of-the-art research is conducted on-site and valuable collections are present, the museum is not very well-integrated -- a challenge that Chipperfield intends to confront.
Through the master plan, he intends to create "a framework for the next 20 years."
"While they are wonderful, original buildings ... the elements are not properly aligned," he said. "Right now, displays and research are at odds with each other."
According to the Web site of David Chipperfield Architects, the practice is "driven by a consistent philosophical approach" rather than a "predetermined house style" with a goal to create buildings "intimately connected to context and function."
This will be Chipperfield's first project in Philadelphia.
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