A Clear Winner

edited by Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 8/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

SANAA's first completed U.S. commission, a $30 million glass pavilion for Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art, seemingly defies the laws of physics. For ultimate transparency on a wooded site across from the main museum building, some of the pavilion's largest curved walls are 100-square-foot panels of 3/4-inch-thick laminated glass, which only appears to hold up the roof. It actually sits on 36 barely-there steel supports ranging from 3 to 6 inches in diameter.

Besides galleries for the museum's extensive glass collection, the 76,000-square-foot pavilion contains glassmaking facilities: two hot shops as well as areas for cold-working, casting, slumping, fusing, molding, and sandblasting. Of course, not all the walls are transparent: Gypsum board sequesters some back-of-house spaces and the restrooms. Opening August 27; 419-255-8000; toledomuseum.org.