Tyler

Tyler Museum of Art is one step closer to building its new home.

The museum’s board of trustees named wHY Architecture, led by Yo-ichiro Hakomori and Kulapat Yantrasast, as its design architect, Director Kimberley Bush Tomio announced.

wHY Architecture is a Los Angeles-based firm whose projects include Michigan’s Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Art Bridge spanning the Los Angeles River and galleries for the Art Institute of Chicago, said TMA officials.

Yantrasast, the firm’s executive/creative director, has served as project architect on the team of Pritzker-Prize winning design architect Tadao Ando for the 153,000-square-foot Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which opened in 2002.

Yantrasast joined with Hakomori to form wHY (Workshop Hakomori Yantrasast) in 2003, and landed a contract to design the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). The 135,000-square-foot facility was praised by Newsweek as a “calm and cool modernist building” and opened in October 2007 to favorable reviews from national publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Architect Magazine.

“This talented young team created a building beyond our expectations. In every detail, the facility was better than we had hoped,” GRAM Director Celeste Adams said. “They were sensitive to our objectives and knowledgeable about art museums, and we found it to be an extremely satisfying experience to work with them. They are great architects, and are destined for a great future.”

Eleanor Cameron, chairman of TMA’s building committee, said the board took heed of the acclaim Hakomori and Yantrasast received for GRAM — bolstered by the Building Committee’s trip to Grand Rapids to view the team’s most recent project — and grew confident the Tyler museum was on the right track to selecting an architect who would envision a marriage between the museum and its community, and to let the building emerge from its environment.

“In wHY, we know we have hired the right team to work with our vision of what we want the TMA to be for future generations; to find that elusive balance between the needs of the museum, the possibilities of our building site and the goals of the city of Tyler,” said Mrs. Cameron, who is also one of the museum’s founding members. “Each of the internationally recognized, award-winning candidates we considered and interviewed brought impeccable credentials and a compelling vision to the table. But what put the team from wHY over the top for our board was its tremendous record of achievement in design for cultural institutions throughout the country — and the firm’s level of sensitivity to the context of our project. It came down to who could manage the goals we laid out — and wHY was it.”

GRAM is also the first museum in the United States to receive Gold certification by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED?) Green Building Rating System, which provides verification that a building project meets the highest green building and performance measures.

TMA also plans to pursue LEED certification.

“The new Tyler Museum of Art must emerge as a civic symbol from the context in which it grows to reflect the history and nature of the local community of Tyler,” Yantrasast said

In September 2007, TMA purchased 3.5 acres of wooded land, on the southeast corner of University Boulevard and Lazy Creek Drive, as the site of its new facility.

The museum has engaged the services of Mark G. Anderson Consultants (MGAC), to provide project management services for the design and construction of the new facility, which will aim to achieve LEED certification for its sustainable design and construction.

The current facilities for TMA are located in a 15,000-square-foot building adjacent to the Tyler Junior College campus.

The museum was designed by E. Davis Wilcox and completed in 1971 with funds raised by the Junior League of Tyler, which then donated the building to TMA, and sits on land leased from Tyler Junior College.

“We would love to stay where we are,” Mrs. Tomio said, “but the building, which itself was an award-winner when it opened, is landlocked from expansion on the north, west and east sides by the TJC campus and by property to the south.

Once a conceptual design is completed and costs are determined, the museum will announce the campaign goal and construction schedule.

“The new TMA will enable us to provide more programming in myriad ways, and better fulfill our mission not only to serve the community — but to provide a cultural destination for the entire region,” President of the TMA Board of Trustees Steve Manley said.