Contest winner named to design MSU Art Museum

One of architect Zaha Hadid’s biggest challenges in designing MSU’s future art museum was to fulfill the vision held by Eli and Edythe Broad.

When the university named Hadid the architect for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum on Tuesday, the Broads said they were thrilled.

“Zaha Hadid is one of the greatest architects of our time,” said Eli Broad, who donated $26 million and spent more than six months searching for the architect to design his and his wife’s namesake building. “She’s a Pritzker Prize winner and she’s got about 30 (projects) going right now.”

Hadid, 57, became the first female to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. The award is the result of an international architecture competition and is sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

After the announcement of her hiring Tuesday, Hadid unveiled the specifics of her design for the building, which is slated to open in 2010 and begin construction next fall.

The museum will be located on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Collingwood Entrance. It will be constructed out of steel and concrete. It will be three levels, including a basement, totaling an area of 41,000 square feet.

The facility’s lighting will be mostly natural thanks to an aluminum and glass exterior, a design Hadid said will work well with the location.

“I think with a site like that, where you have an open field, it’s not like in a city where it’s very congested,” she said. “I think for a gallery, it could be nice if you can achieve that.”

Broad called the design outstanding because of its 18,000 square feet of gallery space.

“It’s going to be an iconic building,” Broad said. “It functions very well inside. The cost of the building isn’t much higher, frankly, than a traditional building of bricks and mortar.”

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said she and Eli Broad originally discussed expanding the Art Museum at MSU, the university’s current facility in the Kresge Art Center.

When the Broads didn’t think an addition was MSU’s best option and Simon agreed, the concept of building an entirely new art museum came to fruition.

“Sometimes your greatest benefactors are people who force you to think bigger and have a dream for the future,” Simon said.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum turned out to be that dream, and the university committed to making it Hadid’s future.

Hadid, who was born in Iraq, has designed buildings in Germany, Austria, Spain, France and London, where her firm is based.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, an estimated $30 million project, will be her second North American venture – her first being an art museum in Cincinnati.

Although both of her American buildings are art museums, Hadid said MSU’s design was original.

“I think it’s quite a fresh idea, it’s very interesting,” she said. “Each of these museums are quite unique to the situation.”

Joseph Giovannini, an architectural critic who facilitated the architect competition, said the search was a success.

“Everything that could go right, did go right,” Giovannini said. “MSU got its first Picasso, only it’s a Hadid.”