Clark Art Institute

Spanning fourteen years and three phases of construction, our renewal of the Clark Art Institute’s 140-acre campus in western Massachusetts expands public access to its expansive landscape, brings new significance to its natural and cultural resources, and enriches the Clark’s capacity to realize its educational mission. 

The Clark’s mission explicitly links the interpretation of its collection to its landscape context. Prior to our work, however, museum visitors experienced only a small fraction of the 140-acre campus; it was mostly understood as a passive backdrop for viewing its pastoral art. In 2001 the Clark Art Institute assembled a multi-disciplinary team to reconceive its campus. As the lead landscape architect working directly for the Clark, from master planning through construction, we collaborated with and bridged the work of Tadao Ando, Annabelle Selldorf and Gensler to foreground the landscape and unify the campus experience.

Taking cues from the scale and texture in the extraordinary Berkshire context, we built a robust and expressive set of landforms, meandering drives that hug and accentuate the hillsides, and over 2 miles of pathways and trails. Together these interventions embed the architecture — new and old — in something with an identity and scale larger than the buildings themselves. The landscape is now integral to the experience of the collections and enhances the Clark’s ability to realize its mission for visitors and locals alike.  

For the project's first phase completed in 2008, we developed a restored meadow context, circulation and parking for the Ando-designed Lunder Center at Stone Hill. Uniting this new home of the prestigious Williamstown + Atlanta Art Conservation Center with the rest of the museum landscape, the plan allows visitors to arrive via an extensive path network that crosses restored streams and grassland passages, and woodland edges, and brings visitors to intimate terraces and distant views.

Phase 2 debuted in the summer 2014 with the opening of Tadao Ando’s new Clark Visitor Exhibition and Conference Center and the Museum Building, renovated by Annabelle Selldorf. The Clark Center and the Museum now face onto a one-acre tiered reflecting pool. The pool is more than a lens to frame views of the landscape beyond; it’s the functional centerpiece of a deeply connected water system linking foundation and roof drains, HVAC makeup, plumbing, and irrigation. The terraced reflecting pool saves the Clark nearly a million gallons a year in potable water.

As a high performing hydrological system and a compelling place to gather, the landscape is truly the centerpiece of the Clark's dedication to renew and sustain the remarkable natural and cultural that make the Berkshires a destination for visitors from afar and for those closer to home as well.