Braced for The Future

摘要

The first large-scale building designed by architect Daniel Libeskind to be constructed in the United States—the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building—opened to critical and popular acclaim on October 7 in the city's new cultural district. Designed by Libeskind in a joint venture with Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects, the boldly angular structure is informed by the cliffs and summits of the nearby Rocky Mountains, incorporating no true vertical surfaces. Without the support of vertical walls or columns—or even a flat roof—to work with, the structural engineers, from the Los Angeles office of Arup, were challenged to design a support system that would hold together the outward-leaning walls and fashion the inherently unstable forms into a perfectly stable structure.