Sanford Homestake Visitor Center

Lead, SD, United States

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Sanford Homestake Visitor Center

Lead, SD, United States

Firm

Dangermond Keane Architecture

Type

Cultural › Gallery Cultural Center Museum

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

5000 sqft - 10,000 sqft

BUDGET

$1M - 5M

Photos

Richard Barnes (10), Dangermond Keane Architecture (4)

The Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center is primarily an interpretive center that describes the unique, high-energy particle physics that take place at the newly created Sanford Underground Research Laboratory. The Laboratory itself is located a mile underground in the former Homestake Gold Mine, the largest gold mine in US history, which was decommissioned in the 1990’s. Vast almost beyond comprehension, the mine was the major economic driver for this portion of South Dakota, and its 100-year history is at the heart of the fascinating cultural, political, geological, and mythological stories of the Black Hills since the gold rush. In the 1960’s, the Homestake Mine was also the location of a groundbreaking underground neutrino experiment, the first of its type, which resulted in a Nobel Prize for Physicist Ray Davis. The Visitor Center describes the current science experiments in the context of these larger stories.

Serving also as home for the Lead Chamber of Commerce, the Visitor Center was required to be self-sustaining from proceeds from its gift shop and the regional tours run by the Chamber. As such it needed to be a visible attraction to lure Black Hills tourists off Main Street and into the retail environment.

The historic, physical, and scientific context were important drivers for the architecture. The building is located in an area of town where Lead’s historic fabric of wooden miners’ houses and brick Main Street buildings was literally cleared away to accommodate a late century expansion of the Homestake Mine’s surface portion — a massive open pit mine now referred to as the “Open Cut.” Recent buildings in the immediate vicinity are totally nondescript. The new building takes inspiration from the metal-clad, purpose-built industrial buildings that are the Homestake Mine’s heritage, as well as the techno-inspirational aesthetic of the underground science.

The Visitor Center is entered under a low canopy; the interior space then opens up to dramatic views of the Open Cut. The building’s metallic form is always seen against the jagged exposed geologic backdrop of the Open Cut, and its U-shape cradles a viewing terrace that can be used for special events.