SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y.- The Parrish Art Museum has released the design concept for its new facility, created by internationally celebrated architects Herzog & de Meuron. The Museum is building a 64,000-square-foot building on a fourteen-acre site, located in the village of Water Mill, in the heart of Long Island’s East End. The unique design concept integrates architecture and landscape in a plan that both respects and reflects the singular natural beauty and rich artistic legacy of the area.

Working in collaboration with the Parrish, the architects have keyed the design concept to the Museum’s plans for the installation of its collection, which will present a narrative of the East End artists who, from the late nineteenth century to today, have been major figures in the art of their times. This narrative will unfold in a light-filled network of separate but connected galleries, simple shapes that evoke the idea of a collection of studio spaces, or an artists’ colony.

Parrish Board Chairman Alvin Chereskin adds, “The Parrish Board of Trustees is absolutely delighted by the design concept for the new Museum, which will transform the Parrish into a dynamic museum for the twenty-first century. We are thrilled to be able to create a superb new cultural center and public resource for the East End community and art-lovers from around the world.”

Trudy Kramer, Director of The Parrish Art Museum, states, “With Herzog & de Meuron’s brilliant design concept, the Parrish will finally be able to tell the important story of the East End artists’ colony and its influence on the development of modern art nationwide and internationally, and to do so in a broad context. Importantly, we will also be able to offer premier exhibitions and the best, most up-to-date programming for a diversity of visitors and schoolchildren. We are grateful to Herzog & de Meuron for designing a facility—one so perfectly suited to our community—that combines dynamism with grace, and poetry with practicality.”

Jacques Herzog, a founding partner of Herzog & de Meuron, says, “We have found the East End of Long Island, with its unique light and iconic landscape, and its history as one of America’s most enduring artists’ colonies, to be an inspiring place in which to design a museum. It is gratifying to work on a project that will offer so much to the region, and to do so with the Parrish, which for over a century has been an integral part of the East End.”

Design Concept

The new Museum, which will be unlike any other museum in North America, is as distinctive as Herzog & de Meuron’s acclaimed designs for Tate Modern, in London; the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis; and the de Young Museum, in San Francisco.

The network of exhibition spaces in which the installation will unfold will be anchored by four galleries that have been inspired by actual artists’ studios, and that will examine in depth the work of a single artist. These galleries will not only anchor the collection, but will also become landmarks and orientation points within the Museum and its surroundings.

The design concept for the new Parrish makes abundant use of the distinctive light that is such a prominent and inspiring feature of the East End. In order to capture the beauty of this light, the galleries will be almost exclusively lit with north-facing skylights. These, along with expanses of window, will provide a remarkable sense of transparency throughout the museum, making the experience of the art intimately intertwined with the experience of the site.

In addition to natural light, the landscape of the East End is an essential component of the design concept and experience of the new Parrish, which is set within a meadow near Montauk Highway. The design encompasses the region’s emblematic fields and meadows, scrub woodland, and coastal dune habitats. For example, visitors will arrive at the Museum via a hidden parking area cut into the grade and embedded in the familiar oak and blueberry woodland of the region. Emerging from their cars, visitors will be immediately immersed in the landscape, as they walk along paths and through gardens, all carved out of the meadow fabric, past sculptures, to reach the Museum.

The new Museum will include ample space not only for the installation of the Parrish’s permanent collection, but also for major temporary exhibitions, site-specific installations, artists’ commissions, and time-based media, and will contain dedicated educational facilities and such public areas as a central lobby, café, and auditorium.

Herzog & de Meuron

The Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron is among the most highly praised architecture offices in the world. The firm, which maintains branch offices in London, Munich, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Beijing, has designed a stunning range of projects, from a railway engine depot, to private houses, the 1998 Dominus winery, in Napa Valley, hospitals, factories, office buildings, and stadiums. In addition to the museums mentioned on page two, they have designed a series of acclaimed buildings for such cultural organizations as the Küppersmüle Museum, for the Grothe Collection, in Duisburg, Germany (1999); the Schaulager Laurenz Foundation, Basel (2003); the Laban Dance Centre, in London (2003), recipient of the RIBA Stirling Prize; the CaixaForum-Madrid, Spain (completion in 2006); the Centro Cultural Museum and Cultural Center in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain (completion in 2007); the National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games, in Beijing (completion in 2007); and the Hamburg Philharmonic Hall, Germany (completion in 2009), among others.

In addition to founders Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog, the firm includes five partners: Harry Gugger, Christine Binswanger, Robert Hösl, Stefan Marbach, and Ascan Mergenthaler, who is also partner-in-charge for the Parrish Art Museum project. Currently, a team of 200 people representing twenty-six nationalities is working on more than thirty projects from San Francisco to Beijing. Herzog & de Meuron projects have appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications worldwide.