You might expect the architects for a new building dedicated to the history of the region surrounding Louisville to try and fit the design into its surrounding context. After all, the client, the Filson Historical Society, is almost 125 years old, and the site is in a landmarked district full of well-kept Victorian houses. But the recently completed expansion, the Owsley Brown II History Center, by de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, is clearly of this century: the 30,000-square-foot, five-story structure in Old Louisville has a flat, plinthlike roof and a taut veneer-brick skin with vertical sculptural fins that seem to peel back the cladding to reveal generous expanses of glass. It is decidedly not what M. Ross Primmer and Roberto de Leon, coprincipals of the Louisville-based firm, refer to derisively as “Ye Olde.”
The architects have designed a handsome contemporary structure for the center—named after a late local philanthropist and Filson board member—and have skillfully inserted it into its complicated setting. Even casual observers should be able to detect the underlying logic, rooted in close observation of the site. The most obvious manifestation is the choice of brick, the dominant material of the neighborhood. A more subtle reference to the context is the building’s proportions: its tall and narrow street-facing elevation is of similar dimensions to the fronts of the adjacent houses and echoes their facade rhythm, in which one third of each housefront is distinct from the rest. The architects discovered that these proportions are consistent throughout the district by documenting nine square blocks around the site—one piece of their extensive analysis of the neighborhood and its history.
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