Palmer Museum of Art

ABOUT OUR WORK ON THE PALMER MUSEUM OF ART

The Palmer Museum of Art, due for completion in Spring 2024, is a new build museum and educational epicentre, situated within the leafy Arboretum at Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.

The building serves as a key link between the core campus buildings and the Arboretum and has been designed to integrate and connect people to the landscape around them.

The building consists of interlocking pavilions, clad in local stone and designed to capture maximum daylight from above, encouraging visitors to view the landscape through ‘lensed’ windows.

The challenge:

The glazed rooflights present throughout the museum presented a number of challenges, including heat gain, glare, acoustics and light exposure levels. Guthrie Douglas and Draper worked together to devise a shading solution that would address these challenges and give museum management precise control over light levels, whilst also being integrated into the roof structure so that the blind would be invisible when not in use.

The solution:

Guthrie Douglas supplied 98 tensioned zip rooflight blinds, some up to seven metres long, with both glare and blackout fabric.

The blinds were also designed with an acoustic rated fabric, rigorously tested by our Engineering team prior to installation.

A bespoke bracket solution was designed for ease of installation and maintenance, and to create space for airflow between the stacked systems.