Bruce Museum
The Eskew Dumez Ripple-Reed Hilderbrand team won the 2013-2014 design competition to renovate and expand the Town of Greenwich’s Bruce Museum with new contemporary galleries, education venues, administrative offices, and circulation spaces. The building addition provided an opportunity to re-orient the museum with a new main entrance that opens directly onto Bruce Park. New exterior gathering spaces and a serpentine sculpture walk that threads between rock outcroppings and trees bring the Museum’s unique dual focus on Natural History and Art into dialogue with the coastal Connecticut site.
Our work amplifies this inspiring landscape’s character — undulating topography, impressive rock outcroppings, mature canopy trees — while also embedding within it an expanded visitor experience for the Bruce. A new courtyard at the center of the Great Hall frames for visitors the essential character of Connecticut’s coastal landscape and its vegetation. A multi-purpose entry plaza is a venue for exterior events and a seating area for the new Museum café. A new pedestrian walkway draws visitors through the site and encourages an appreciation for those unique natural features and an expanded exterior art collection. The landscape serves also to re-orient the Museum relative to the surrounding parkland and the wider Greenwich community.
Location
Greenwich, CT
Dates
2013-2023
Size
5.85 acres, 43,000sf new addition within 100 acre town park
Leadership
Team
- Eskew+Dumez+Ripple
- Craul Land Scientists
- Aqueous Consultants LLC
- RSE Associates, Inc
