Architecture News

Herzog & de Meuron Tapped to Create Campus Plan for San Antonio Museum of Art

The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) has announced that Herzog & de Meuron has been selected to helm a comprehensive campus plan for the relatively young institution, which was established in 1981 within the city’s historic former Lone Star Brewery complex. Referring to the project as a “transformative opportunity to develop a visionary blueprint” for the museum’s 13-acre, citadel-like campus along San Antonio’s River Walk, SAMA director Emily Bellew Neff said in a statement that the aim of the plan is to “enhance the visitor experience and strengthen our connection to the community.”

The Swiss firm, founded by Pritzker Prize winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, was selected for its expertise in overseeing both major cultural commissions and ambitious, adaptive reuse–focused transformations of disused buildings. Many of the firm’s best known projects sit at the intersection of those two areas, such as London’s Tate Modern, the Park Avenue Armory in New York, Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, and Museum Küppersmühle in Duisberg, Germany.

While the full scope of Herzog & de Meuron’s plan is forthcoming, the museum says it will “prioritize accessibility, enhance art storage facilities, improve outdoor spaces, and foster a sustainable, community-centered environment.”

Opened by Adolphus Busch in 1884 as the first large-scale mechanized brewery in Texas, the Lone Star Brewerly complex is located at a key point on the San Antonio River between the city’s downtown to the south and the fast-growing Pearl District to the north. Herzog & de Meuron will play up this strategic location by “amplifying the charm and significance” of its assemblage of Romanesque masonry buildings and outdoor public squares, ensuring that they remain a key part of the museum experience. (CambridgeSeven led the original conservation of the brewery into a museum space in the late 1970s/early ‘80s.)

“We are thrilled to collaborate on defining an inclusive, sustainable and forward-looking vision for SAMA, which takes full advantage of its generous outdoor spaces, its landscape, its impressive historic buildings and its wide-ranging art collection,” said Ascan Mergenthaler, senior partner at Herzog & de Meuron.

The firm’s Austin-based team will lead the project, working in collaboration with executive architect Page. Herzog & de Meuron’s first Texas project, a mixed-use district in Austin incorporating mass timber called Sixth&Blanco, broke ground in October 2024. Page is also a collaborator on that project.

In other Herzog & de Meuron-related museum news, earlier this month the Vancouver Art Gallery revealed that it had invited 14 firms to formally submit proposals for a new, purpose-built home for Western Canada’s largest art museum. Herzog & de Meuron was originally appointed for the project in 2014. However, late last year, with construction already underway, the museum nixed the firm’s winning design due to concerns over swelling costs, leading the firm and the museum to officially sever ties. Diamond Schmitt, Hariri Pontarini Architects, KPMB, Patkau Architects, hcma, and 5468796 are among the (exclusively Canadian) firms asked by the museum to participate in designing an altogether new building.

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KEYWORDS: San Antonio Texas

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Matt Hickman is senior news/digital editor at Architectural Record. Previously, he served as Senior Editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and has over a decade of experience as a freelance writer and editor specializing in historic preservation, public space, and the intersection of the natural world and built environment. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Matt holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from The New School.