CLEVELAND, Ohio - Despite some misgivings, a city design review committee on Thursday voted 10-1 to give "schematic" or early-stage approval to plans for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's proposed five-year, $150 million expansion and renovation.
Several members of the Euclid Corridor Design Review Committee, which advises the City Planning Commission on design of building projects, expressed qualms about the museum's project. (See the complete new presentation at the bottom of this post.)
Committee members questioned the abstracted geological imagery of the expansion, intended to evoke colliding tectonic plates slicing through layers of Ohio shale.
They also questioned whether the expanded building would fit in well on Wade Oval next to the Cleveland Botanical Garden and Cleveland Museum of Art, both expanded with additions and renovations, completed respectively in 2003 and 2013.
The museum received early-stage approval from the city in March to relocate its Perkins Wildlife Center to the south side of its campus, a necessary first step for its project. The museum is back this week for city approvals on the main chunk of its expansion and renovation.
Designed by Fentress Architects of Denver, the project calls for adding a new lobby and exhibit wing that would replace the museum's drab existing facade facing Wade Oval with glassy, angular facades wrapped on their flanks in earth-toned panels of zinc to resemble geological fault blocks thrusting up through the earth's crust.
The angular forms would appear to erupt through windowless areas of the facade covered with precast concrete panels designed to evoke layers of Ohio shale visible alongside creek beds throughout the region.
Fentress is a firm that likes natural imagery. Its famous design for Denver International Airport includes an iconic fiberglass roof whose white peaks evoke the front range of the Rocky Mountains.
But Cleveland architect Richard Van Petten, a member of the design committee, said he was unimpressed with the Fentress proposal for the natural history museum.
He said he'd like to see "if there's not a less zippy treatment of the [building's] forms that would be more in keeping with the other events [building projects] happening around Wade Oval. I think it needs further study."
Commission member Theodore Sande, an expert in historic preservation, said he agreed with Van Petten's comment.
"Why used the pitched roofs, which seem to me to be somewhat disparate?" Sande said at the meeting, held at the Agora in Midtown. "I don't think they create a unified composition."
Sande said he thought the angular forms in the Fentress design conflicted with the shiny sliced conical form of the Shafran Planetarium, which the museum built in 2002, and which is treated as a focal point by the Fentress design.
"It sets up a tension with the planetarium that I don't find very happy," Sande said of the design.
Architect David Mecham of Fentress said in response to Sande's critique that "the goal of the client is to create a bold and striking presence on Wade Oval. The museum said they wished to create an icon not only for themselves but for the city of Cleveland."
Mecham said the firm studied 25 variants for the building's main facade, "from collegiate classical to more contemporary solutions," before settling on a design that he said would be experienced "like rock outcroppings in a forest."
Mecham also said that making any major changes to the design now would knock the tightly scheduled project off its calendar, with first-phase work on the Perkins Center starting this spring.
Architect John Wagner, also a member of the committee, said he disagreed with Sande and Van Petten. So did committee member Richard Pace, a Cleveland developer.
But Pace, although he supported the design, cautioned the architects against creating a building with large, windowless facades. He also said he wanted them to design a 300-space parking garage along East Boulevard as a primary facade, not a spartan afterthought.
Architect Peter van Dijk, another committee member, said he was concerned about whether the quality of the precast panels meant to evoke Ohio shale would live up to the attractive renderings shown by the designers.
Sande softened his opposition after the Fentress designers showed a video depicting the design as it would appear to pedestrians on Wade Oval sidewalks, as opposed to the primary renderings used by the architects, which showed birds-eye views no one could see except from a helicopter or bucket lift.
"These are much more persuasive than the flat drawings," Sande said.
In the end, 10 members of the committee voted for the project, with Van Petten casting the solo 'nay.' Sande said he gave the design "a cautious 'yes.' "
The project goes next on Friday to the City Planning Commission, whose approval is necessary for a building permit.
But Sande said he thought it had been worthwhile to state his objections.
"This gives the architect a chance to consider the questions we've raised here," he said.