Architecture firm Stern and Bucek has come up with this rendering of the Menil Collection’s new cafe, part of the free museum’s long-planned expansion of its Montrose campus. The design for the cafe — which is yet to be named but will be run by Greg Martin (of Cafés Annie and Express and Taco Milagro) — appears to adapt and elaborate upon the gray bungalow at 1512 Sul Ross St., on the other side of that path from the Menil Bookstore; this is the same site, says a press release from the Menil Collection, that architect Renzo Piano originally had in mind for a similar amenity. So there’s that. Whatever it’ll be called, the cafe, it appears, will split the difference between the museum’s main entrance and the parking lot off W. Alabama.
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Directly above: A view of the thing from Sul Ross.
Below: A rendering of the labyrinthine greenery planned by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh for the “campus gateway,” or the paths you’ll walk on to get from the parking lot to all the art and stuff.
- The Menil gets into the restaurant business: New cafe part of ambitious, green-friendly revamp [Culturemap]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Menil Selects Landscape Architect, Closes In on Campus Expansion, Johnston Marklee’s Small, Thin Courtyard Building for Drawings at the Menil, New Menil Building Likely Going South, Replacing Richmont Square: The Low Cost, Bohemian Option, Chipperfield Sculpts the New Menil: Goodbye, Richmont Square, The Menil Looks at Richmond, The Richmond Lights Shall Not Be Moved, What the New Collection of Menil Collections Might Look Like
Renderings: via the Menil Collection