Breaching the Boundary SubsurfaceBuildings.com

Breaching the Boundary

The Arizona State University Art Museum ignores the boundary of the earth's surface, extending above it and below it to take advantage of both environments. The sturdy planes and crisp angles of the building define a massive, solid structure. The sturdy building almost seems to have been shoved downward by a giant hand, forcing it through the pavement of the surrounding plaza and pushing the entrance level down into the cool earth to shield it from the intense desert heat. This is clearly not an underground building. An angular arch towers above the building's two-story facade, calling attention to powerful architecture. And yet it is anything but an aboveground building with a basement.

A visitor walks across the concrete plaza, refusing to let the triple-digit temperature interfere with plans to visit the art museum. The intense sun rays seem to ricochet off walls, windows, and pavement like fierce guardians of a treasure house. By the time the visitor approaches the building, perspiration has nearly drowned the resolve to press onward. But desert flora in large planters offers encouragement that the searing heat is survivable. With relief, the visitor sees relative darkness through an open portal--shade beckons from within the structure.

No doors shut out the heat, yet the temperature in the open-air hallway is noticeably more bearable than in the oven-like outdoors. The sound of surging water fountains rises to greet the visitor through metal grillwork. Stairs lead down toward the refreshing, gushing noise. With each step downward, the temperature decreases. At the end of the staircase (and an accompanying elevator shaft), twin fountains flank the visitor, soothing and inviting the refugee to enter a place of comfort and enjoyment.

On the subterranean entrance level of the museum, a spacious lobby offers an information desk, a store, and a few tantalizing pieces of art. Museum staff enjoy offices on this sheltered level. And a gallery invites the visitor to begin exploring the treasures of this storehouse of aesthetic treasures.

The building's interior seems to be a succession of stairs, halls, and doors that beckon the visitor to move up and down, inside and outside between interior galleries and exterior sculpture courts. On the second and third levels of the partially submerged building, small outdoor courtyards lure the visitor out to view three-dimensional art under the expansive blue sky. Spacious indoor galleries invite the visitor back inside to investigate more sculptures as well as paintings, sketches, and photographs.

After a pleasant interlude of wandering in, out, up, down, and through the labyrinthine building, the visitor ultimately returns to the comfortable, subterranean lobby. A glass wall separates it from the underground entrance courtyard that is sheltered but open to the air. Called a nymphaeum (an enclosure with aesthetic features like a fountain, statues, or flowers), this courtyard soothes and refreshes the visitor, who begins to climb the stairs for a return to the unrelenting sun.

Architect Antoine Predock designed the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University (ASU), which includes the art museum. He is a master at celebrating the stark beauty of the desert while providing visual and physical comfort to people. In downtown Phoenix, a few miles from ASU's Tempe campus, another Predock building embodies a similar strategy. Surrounded by a heat-reflecting concrete plaza, the four-story Arizona Science Center is also sunken one level into the ground. To reach the entrance, a visitor walks down stairs flanking a terraced wall leading to a broad patio furnished with picnic tables and trees. As inviting a scene as that may be, the relief from the sun is not as immediate or obvious as it is when entering the sheltered passages of the art museum.

Predock's willingness to blur the boundaries of the earth's surface contributes to the beauty and practicality of these two buildings--and to others he has designed. One example is the Flint River Center, an interpretive nature center currently under construction in Albany, Georgia. The building will encircle a "blue hole," a small, spring-fed lake that supports a variety of plants and animals. Following the instructional path through the building brings visitors down as far as 13 feet below the surface while giving them a clear view of the complex environment through underground and underwater glass walls.

The essence of architecture is creating boundaries--walls--between inside and outside. Widely acclaimed architect Antoine Predock's approach introduces another dimension to this interplay of boundaries. He proves that a building can successfully be both a surface and a subsurface entity.