Museum of Contemporary Art / Adjaye Associates

Architects: Adjaye Associates
Location: Denver, USA
Area: 24,963 sqm
Year: 2007
Photographs: Courtesy of Adjaye Assocates

Winning the competition to create a new building for MCA Denver, made this project Adjaye Associates’ first public commission in the US. With 20,000 square feet of exhibition, education and lecture spaces, bookshop and a roof garden area for outdoor art, the intention behind the design is for its architecture to ‘support rather than define the museum’s mission’.

With no permanent collection, the museum is host to a programme of visiting exhibitions and for this reason the brief specified internal flexibility.
The building acts as a receptacle whose contents are subject to considerable variation, hence the materiality of these areas is based on the use of a limited number of monochromes and textures.

On completion, MCA Denver achieved the distinction of Gold Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED), making it the nation’s first LEED certified contemporary art museum; pioneering sustainability and taking a leadership role in the reduction of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and use of raw materials.