Stanley Museum of Art University of Iowa

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When the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, built its first art museum in the 1960s, it offered visitors a spectacular view of the Iowa River, in addition to modern art, ceramics, and African and indigenous art. The building’s proximity to the water was a threat that went unrealized until 2008, when unprecedented river levels caused the evacuation of the entire collection—more than 14,000 works of art. When the waters receded, the beloved museum was no longer deemed a suitable location for the University’s collection. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wouldn’t fund rebuilding and no company would insure the artwork if it returned to the flooded building. The collection was without a home for 14 years.

The Des Moines, Iowa, office of BNIM helped realize the museum’s vision for the future in a new location next to the University’s Main Library. The devastation of the flood and the abrupt closure it caused had not been forgotten. “We elevated the building up so that even the soffit condition underneath the first floor was well above that 500-year flood plain,” explains Carey Nagle, Principal, BNIM, Des Moines. “We designed the parking garage with permeable materials to allow it to passively flood and the slab to be porous to allow flood waters to pass through it.” Aside from ensuring that history didn’t repeat itself, the new 63,000-sq.-ft. building needed to also reflect and support the mission of a teaching museum, invite the community in, provide flexible gallery space, and ensure the conservation of the works it displayed and stored.

ARCHITECTS

Carey Nagle aia, ncarb, leed ap, Principal, BNIM, Des Moines, Iowa, has strong experience in cultural arts & higher education design. His projects are recognized with multiple national awards from the AIA.

Levi Robb aia, Associate, BNIM, Des Moines, Iowa, has a deep knowledge of design excellence. As Project Architect, he was a critical design resource for the Stanley Museum of Art project.

PROJECT SPECS

Project: Stanley Museum of Art, University of Iowa

Opened: Iowa City, Iowa

Architect: BNIM

Photography: © Nick Merrick 2022, Courtesy of BNIM

Exterior

The exterior form of the building is a rectilinear mass that is quite simple in its presentation but is elevated through a series of voids that have been carved away. At the ground level, it’s the large daylight-filled lobby. Peek inside and you’ll see the three-story lightwell that rises with the stairwell to be a vertical pathway connecting all the spaces and functions within the museum. On the third floor, the voids are two exterior terraces that provide the ideal place to lounge or get a bird’s eye view of one corner of the University’s campus. “Rather than that kind of bold iconic design that might be particularly showy, [the Stanley Museum of Art] absolutely was an exercise in restraint and elegance,” says Nagle.

The façade is both an homage to traditional academic buildings and brick architecture of greats like Alvar Aalto, Louis Khan, and Eero and Eliel Saarinen. “There are different layers of tactility that show up just from the brick coursing and the way the protruding brick shifts into an inset brick to a flush brick,” explains Levi Robb, Associate, BNIM. “The brick we chose, which is an ironspot brick with a manganese wash, reflects light and then it also turns dark in shadow.”

The effect is both striking and subtle. “The placement of texture on the building provides articulation and depth, but it has a secondary codification program,” explains Nagle. “It reveals within the overall mass, where the collection spaces are.” BNIM laid out and modeled every single brick and where it laid on the building.

The design of the new University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art doesn’t upstage the works highlighted inside, but brilliantly stands apart as its own study in form, texture, and mass.