Architectural Details: Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Olympic and Paralympic Museum

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Great architecture should reflect a common purpose. At the same time, buildings should engage people and create rich experiences. This is especially in public projects, where architecture should be open to enjoy and engage with. When designing the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, the design practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro wanted to make one of the most accessible and interactive museums in the world. Working with Architect of Record Anderson Mason Dale Architects, as well as manufacturers and building suppliers, they were able to bring their vision to life with an aluminum facade that recalls an Olympic athlete in perpetual motion.

Ten years in the making, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum (USOPM) opened in 2020 as the first building of its kind to pay tribute to Olympic and Paralympic movements. The 60,000 square foot design features galleries, a state-of-the-art theater, event space and café, and was inspired by the energy and grace of Team USA athletes and the organization’s inclusive values.

The building’s dynamic spiraling form allows visitors to descend the galleries in one continuous path. This main organization structure enables the museum to rank amongst the most accessible museums in the world, ensuring visitors with and without disabilities can smoothly share the same common experience.

From the earliest stages of design, the team consulted Team USA athletes, including Paralympic athletes and persons with disabilities, to ensure the most authentic and inclusive experience. Ramps guide visitors down a gentle-grade downhill circulation path that enables easier movement. These ramps have been widened to 6 feet to accommodate the side-by-side movement of two visitors including a wheelchair.

Beyond ensuring all code and ADA requirements were rigorously met, material details including glass guardrails in the atrium for low-height visibility, cane guards integrated into benches, smooth floors for easier wheel chair movement, and loose seating in the café optimize the shared experience.

Outside, a terraced hardscape plaza is at the heart of the museum complex, with the museum building to the south and the café to the north. In addition, the Park Union Bridge is a 250-foot curved steel structure that floats above an active railyard. Two interlocked loops, stretching from either side of the railyard, connect the museum and America the Beautiful Park.

The bridge is an exercise in fitness — both in terms of material and geometry. The hybrid steel structure system functions as an arch and a truss, preserving views from Downtown. Looking out towards Pikes Peak and the Rocky Mountains beyond, the museum was made with over 9,000 folded anodized diamond shaped aluminum panels, each unique in shape and size.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro worked with Lorin Industries on the aluminum panels, as well as MG McGrath and Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope on the curtain walls. Bringing the vision of the building’s exterior to life, the teams wanted to create a building structure and overall exterior visual effect that encapsulated the passion, dedication, and endurance of an Olympic athlete. To achieve this, a system of custom metal panels with integrated gutters wrap the double-curved geometry of the façade.

Lorin anodized aluminum panels were fabricated into an MG McGrath custom rainscreen panel system. MG McGrath Architectural Glass & Glazing provided and installed over 11,000 square feet of Oldcastle Resilience Cassette curtain wall framing with Viracon VE1-85 insulated glass and spandrel. In turn, these worked with the aluminum panels, which were used for their durability, low cost, malleability, environmental qualities, and uniform finish.

Lorin pioneered the coil anodizing process, which protects the aluminum while also improving its aesthetic properties and durability. The panels are 100% recyclable helping to meet the project’s LEED requirements. Lorin’s anodized stainless finish is created by an electro-chemical process that builds an anodic layer from the aluminum, molecularly bonding it to the surface. It protects aluminum from oxidation, scratching, and other hazards far better than natural oxidizing, and it requires minimal upkeep while resisting scratches and finger prints. Even with its light weight, coil anodized aluminum has an exterior surface hardness second only to diamond and is therefore unmatched in abrasion resistance and durability.

The facade became a three-dimensional crystalline structure that reflects and refracts light to transform the building into a living, moving structure. Over 35,885 square feet of these custom, diamond-shaped panels were fabricated and installed on the exterior facade, low sloping walls & roof, as well as the interior vestibule ceiling.

Each diamond-shaped panel is unique and shaped slightly different to accommodate the building’s complex geometry. The clear anodized finish on the 8,500 unique panels that was chosen for the museum exterior ensures the building skin retains its metallic quality. Such a finish provides directionality to the panel surface, further giving life to the design’s vision.

Putting Team USA athletes at the center of the museum experience, the design team created a museum that’s as functional and accessible as it is beautiful. The design rises with the primary structural systems consisting of a steel frame superstructure, drilled shaft caisson foundations, and cast-in-place concrete lateral cores. From this, the exterior shell further accentuates the dynamism of the building concept and purpose, with each metallic panel animated by the extraordinary light quality in Colorado Springs, producing gradients of color and shade that give the building another sense of motion. If great architecture reflects a common purpose and creates rich experiences, this is certainly the case in DS+R’s United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum.

Photography Courtesy Jason O’Rear & Nic Lehoux, Drawings Courtesy Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

Calling all architects, landscape architects and interior designers: Architizer's A+Awards allows firms of all sizes to showcase their practice and vie for the title of “World’s Best Architecture Firm.” Start an A+Firm Award Application today.