Ennead Architects and Kahler Slater reveal rock formation-inspired design for Milwaukee Public Museum
Cream City residents have been treated with a first look at the design of the $240 million new Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), which was first established in 1882 and serves as Wisconsin’s official natural history museum. Located at 800 W. Wells Street since 1962, the museum will relocate several blocks to the north where its new five-story home will rise at a 2.4-acre site at the corner of Sixth and Vliet streets in Milwaukee’s Haymarket neighborhood.
Guided by the four core principles of community, nature, education, and the preservation of the museum’s collections, the design of the museum was led by New York City–based Ennead Architects, joined by architect of record Kahler Slater, exhibition designer Thinc Design, and Seattle-based landscape architecture studio GGN.
Spanning 200,000 square feet with 80,000 square feet dedicated to exhibition space, the new MPM will boast a substantially smaller overall footprint than its aging and inefficient current home, which encompasses 480,000 square feet with 150,000 square feet of exhibition space. It’s a downsize, for sure, but also a much-needed institutional upgrade that will enable the museum in its modern new home to better serve as an invaluable research hub and public resource within a landmark building set to have a catalytic impact on the surrounding neighborhood. (For those familiar with the lay of the land, the new museum will be located just north of the Populous- and HNTB-designed Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.)
“The Haymarket neighborhood has such rich history in our city and is on the cusp of a new chapter,” said Chris Ludwig, associate principal with Kahler Slater, in a statement. “The site of the future museum will act as a conduit from the entertainment district to the residential neighborhood perched just up the hill. The new location for MPM will be an iconic gateway welcoming guests to the city.”
In addition to exhibition-dedicated permanent and changing gallery spaces that will comprise a bulk of the building, the new museum will also feature a planetarium, office and lab space, classrooms and flexible space, a cafe, and on-site collections storage. A sun-lit atrium will anchor the first floor of building and serve as a place for both the general public and museum guests to congregate in a multifaceted space that’s akin, as a press announcement described it, to a community center.
The complex will also feature two signature new outdoor spaces: a street-level garden near the museum entrance and an urban biodiversity-boosting rooftop garden complete with a butterfly vivarium and permanent open-air exhibits. GGN’s landscape design aims to “redefine the Historic Haymarket city edge, bringing a human scale to this part of the urban core and creating a new and beloved civic space, adding to the lexicon of public urban gathering spaces around Milwaukee.”
In the exhibition areas, guests will be treated with unobstructed glimpses of “collection spaces, objects, and specimens that have typically been concealed behind closed doors,” the announcement added. As reported by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, some objects and artifacts will be relocated to a 50,000-square-foot offsite storage facility due to the more compact size of the new building; the MPM, however, will not part with any components of its vast collection.
Markedly organic in form, the design of the concrete and glass building—MPM chief planning officer Katies Sanders described it as “an iconic, one-of-a-kind monument to Wisconsin and its people”—serves as an homage to the ancient geological formations found in Mill Bluff State Park in west-central Wisconsin with its textured facade and rounded corners referencing the park’s layered sea stack bluffs shaped by eons of erosional forces. (Weathered glacial landscapes similarly inspired the undulating, Studio Gang-led design of the Richard Gilder Center at the Museum of Natural History in New York.) Inside, the design of the museum also pays tribute to the natural features of Wisconsin, with three distinct entrances flowing into the central atrium space in a nod to the convergence of Milwaukee’s three rivers: the Milwaukee, Kinnickinnic, and Menomonee.
“Our team has been so proud to work on this project, which is steeped in the people and place where it will be located – a testament to the strong vision and identity of the people of Milwaukee, the unique cultures throughout Wisconsin, and the natural landscapes in which they live,” explained Todd Schliemann, design partner at Ennead Architects who served as lead designer on the project. “Like the diversity of Wisconsin, the museum building unfolds like a journey, full of surprises and wonder that will inspire visitors’ curiosity and make them peel back layers of understanding as they discover something different each time they come.”
The new MPM is slated to break ground next year with an anticipated opening in 2026. Fundraising for the new building is now underway as is the demolition of the existing structures at the development site. The move was a necessary one for the MPM as it faces $70 million in deferred maintenance projects at its too-big current home. A much-needed top-to-bottom renovation of the building would have exceeded the cost of constructing an entirely new one at an estimated $250 million, according to the Journal Sentinel.