A paean to art, not the architect

SEATTLE — American museums, still flush with expansion fever, have become more convinced than ever that real estate is destiny. Every museum in the country seems to be opening a new wing or a satellite building or scouting locations for one. And the recent news that the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has hired Renzo Piano brings the number of American museum jobs the Italian architect has won to 63. OK, to nine. But still.

Few museums, however, can hope to match the double expansion pulled off in just 3 1/2 months by the Seattle Art Museum. In late January, the museum -- known as SAM -- finished the waterfront Olympic Sculpture Park by the New York firm Weiss / Manfredi. And this weekend it will open a spacious, crisply proportioned new building downtown by Allied Works Architecture, a Portland, Ore., firm run by Brad Cloepfil.

Separated by about a dozen blocks, the two projects have little in common save their obvious ambition. The park, with zigzagging paths leading down to a small beach littered with driftwood, doesn't try to smooth over its rough edges; the backdrop for its pieces by Alexander Calder, Roy McMakin and Richard Serra is formed not just by ferries churning across Puget Sound but also by train tracks, signage ("Bavarian Meats: Family Owned Since 1961") and idling SUVs.

The $86-million downtown building, an extension to SAM's 1991 home by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is by contrast coolly restrained. It was planned as a refuge not just from the life of the city but also from the aggressive exuberance of some recent museum architecture.

Room to grow

Wrapped in glass and stainless-steel panels, Cloepfil's wing is a vertical design -- 18 floors altogether -- that will allow the museum to expand in phases as it grows. It is part of a complex developed jointly with Washington Mutual, which is based in Seattle. For the opening, the museum has moved into the lower four floors of Cloepfil's building, which is nestled into the side of Washington Mutual's new world headquarters (a 42-story skyscraper by the Seattle firm NBBJ Architects). In future years, SAM can move up into the eight floors above, which are now being leased by the bank but were designed with the kind of mechanical systems required for showing art.