04 ACLINIC VEIL

ACLINIC VEIL

PENN MUSEUM ARCHIVE EXTENSION

MUSEUM EXTENSION | Philadelphia, USA Critic: Daniel Markiewicz Individual Work. fall 2019

The neighborhood urban morphology gives the idea of forms. The structural veil acquires territory with flat horizontal bridge sitting on the rooftop of the existing wings of the Penn Museum. This bridge, rather than connecting the wings, aims to create a new entrance of the pre-existing garden below the underbelly.

Surrounded by the South St and the courtyard, the aclinc bridge is designed to adjust accessibility and the compositional thinking of the new entrance. The veil becomes a complex of three zones that act as archive, exhibition space and education rooms. Fluid, organic circulation inside the architecture ensures new air views of the Penn campus from the exhibition level. The language that dominates the project is a result of calibrating what is obstructed and what is connected, a process that assimilates and ultimately ends with a new understanding of the aclinic structural veil.

Structurally supported by three traffic cores, the horizontal construction performs as a new floating horizon of the campus. The triangular framing system minimizes the necessary structural elements and maximize the fluidity of circulations and the sight in the air. Longitudinal Section

The Structural Horizon

Physical Model (Above) / Street Perspective (Above) / Plan & Transverse Section (Right)

An Open Veil Unveiling the Courtyard

The white space serves as a new public entrance of the museum, which unveils the courtyard to open its landscape to the pedestrian from the campus. The ground level landscape, the cores, and the aclinic body contain different programs required by the extension demand, while leaving enough space for the pre-existing courtyard to breathe.