Magnifying mission and place: our curiosity drives museum design innovation.
Magnifying mission and place: our curiosity drives museum design innovation.
Our architecture is an integrated part of the museum experience, reinforcing the stories held within its walls and heightening the visitors experience of them. Form, place, and memory. One profound journey.
Museums of art, science and culture inspire civic participation, foster lifelong learning, and deepen appreciation for our planet, its history and its future. They enrich our lives and spark wonder and curiosity, reminding us of the joy in the human experience.
Our architecture is an integrated part of the museum experience, reinforcing the stories held within its walls and heightening the visitors experience of them. Form, place, and memory. One profound journey.
Landmark
Our approach to the contemporary museum is to create a landmark architecture which through its form, materiality and sequence heightens the visitors experience of the exhibits and collections. Taking inspiration from their collections, their institutional missions, or their context, we seek to define new and unique architectural identities that support our institutional clients, while at the same time positively contributing to the public realm.
Pulse
A new museum is an opportunity to harness the pulse of the institutions culture, to make its dynamism even more visible, and to allow it to flourish. Ennead has a long history of designing public areas that serve as vibrant hubs for community engagement and inclusivity, nurturing connections and embracing neighboring residents.
Place
A locally sourced and sustainable approach to a museum’s physical attributes, including materials and construction methods, can both enrich its experience and connect it to its surroundings. At every opportunity we engage local partners, fabricators, and suppliers throughout the design process to ensure these details are carefully sourced and crafted. Together, with local participation we harness architecture’s transformative power to evoke emotions, forge connections, and create a lasting sense of place for all.
Museums uniquely ignite creativity and curiosity in visitors – the magic that they create can have lasting impact on their visitors. Our approach to their design focuses heavily on museums being more human-centered.
Discovery
At Ennead, we begin with discovery – a full immersion into a museum’s context, collections, and community – an opportunity to learn through engagement and to define experiences which can frame its architectural expression. Whether a museum for science, history or fine art, the discovery process for each project is meticulously crafted to set the stage for crafting a museum experience which can be embraced by its full community. When designing cultural building’s that process is continuous, while its tone and tenor may be set at the project’s inception, that engagement lasts through out the process as a project’s details evolve and come into focus.
Inclusivity
Addressing the needs of a diverse audience is critical to the success of any cultural institution. In our work, we aspire to instill a sense of belonging to museumgoers. By engaging diverse perspectives throughout design process, the museum experience becomes more relevant to the audiences it serves. Our team has extensive experience in supporting stakeholder and community engagement.
Ennead Architects and staff from The Future Milwaukee Public Museum in conversation with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
Natural History museum of Utah
Flexibility
The Anderson Collection, Stanford University
More diverse audiences mean that cultural spaces need to be flexible enough to accommodate the needs different groups of people. Our planning prioritizes flexibility to ensure that visitors from different backgrounds can fully engage with the museum’s offerings and support their interdisciplinary programming.
The Brooklyn Museum
University of Michigan, Museum of Natural History
Sustainability and Wellbeing
Natural History Museum of Utah
Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park of Rowan University
We continue to evolve our practices as the environmental story continues to unfold before us, and we actively seek to employ new active and passive design strategies and remain at the forefront of utilizing and developing new technologies to tackle issues of the environment.
Creating Civic Space
Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Designing cultural spaces is a human endeavor that extends beyond the confines of museum walls. Our goal is to create spaces that strengthen connections between the museum and its surroundings, fostering engagement, learning, and curiosity.
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Collections and Preservation
Designing cultural spaces is a human endeavor that extends beyond the confines of museum walls. Our goal is to create spaces that strengthen connections between the museum and its surroundings, fostering engagement, learning, and curiosity. We continue to evolve our practices as the environmental story continues to unfold before us, and we actively seek to employ new active and passive design strategies and remain at the forefront of utilizing and developing new technologies to tackle issues of the environment.
Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park of Rowan University
Natural History
Our Museums of Natural History serve as vibrant community hubs, fostering dialogue about both our past and collective futures. By presenting science within broader contexts, museums empower visitors to shape their environments and futures.
Selected Projects
Applied Life Sciences Hub
New York Blood Center
History and Culture
Museums of history and culture play a vital role in preserving and interpreting humanity’s collective memory, ensuring that future generations can learn from the past. By providing access to diverse perspectives, artifacts, and narratives, these institutions foster empathy, understanding, and appreciation for the richness and complexity of human heritage.
Science
Science Centers are increasingly making scientific research accessible, sparking curiosity and deeper understanding. Our design work for these institutions supports their hands-on experiences, engaging visitors in sensory exploration and collaborative learning.
Selected Projects
The Ohio State University
Peter L. and Clara M. Scott Laboratory
Princeton University
Environmental Studies (ES) and The School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS)
Purdue University
Engineering Flex Lab Facility
University of Texas at Austin
Engineering Education and Research Center
University of Oregon
Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact
University of Texas at Austin
Gary L. Thomas Energy Engineering Building
Visual Arts
Our museums of art are crafted to foster curiosity, civic engagement, and innovation. Our gallery designs encourage exploration and flexibility, enabling diverse activities from art viewing to live performances, ensuring each visit is immersive and memorable.
Selected Projects
Applied Life Sciences Hub
New York Blood Center
New York Stem Cell Foundation
Research Institute Laboratory
Huawei Wuhan Research and Development Campus
Wuhan, China
Cape Horn Sub-Antarctic Center
Academic Museums
Our work for academic museums of art across national institutions has given us a glimpse into the efficacy of their museum spaces to support immersive, interdisciplinary, and engaging programming. These museums and galleries create a sphere removed from the pressures of the commercial world where students, artists, curators, researchers, and faculty can experiment.
Selected Projects
Cornell University Weill Cornell Medicine
Belfer Research Building
Memorial Sloan-Kettering
The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care and Center and City University of New York, Hunter College, Science and Health Professions Building
NYU Langone Health
Science Building and School of Medicine
Ennead’s Museum Center Leadership
The Lab Center engages in a wide variety of issues, such as tracking current and best practice laboratory design trends, attending and speaking at national laboratory design conferences, researching lab building typology history, and attending laboratory facility tours and lectures. The Center also compiles benchmark data on our laboratory projects as well as available metrics of other major national institutions. Sustainability is also a high priority in our design of research buildings. Acknowledging that laboratories are notorious for high energy consumption, the Lab Center offers the critical knowledge on how to optimize passive architectural and active mechanical strategies to reduce energy consumption and achieve high performance, flexible, and resilient buildings for science and research. Regularly sharing these strategies and emerging trends with the offices allows us to better inform designers for current and future work as well as illustrate a range of design solutions and innovations.
Richard Olcott
Partner
Museum Practice Leader
Jarrett Pelletier
Principal
Lab Practice Leader
Thought Leadership
National History Museum of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
NJPBS “Keeping the Pinelands”
Edelman Fossil Park Segment with Tom Wong
Site specific installation at Mass Art's Design & Media Center
Rainfield is the first site-specific installation in the College's Design and Media Center. See how the artist and Mass Art student collaborated to see it built.
Chaitan Khosla
Ennead's client at Stanford University describes how the new interdisciplinary research complex works for the Sarafan ChEM-H and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institutes.
Building a Life Science Core in the Big Apple
Leading up to Ennead’s Life Sciences symposium, Ennead partners Peter Schubert and Don Weinreich produced a paper, Building a Life Science Core in the Big Apple.
People Focused Labs
Todd Schliemann and Jarrett Pelletier are presented a webinar for Lab Manager on “What a People-Focused Lab Looks Like.”
A Principal at Ennead, Emily Kirkland has extensive design management experience serving as the project manager on a number of diverse projects. Emily brings extensive expertise in the design and management of research facilities and currently serves as the Project Manager for Ennead’s Princeton University ES & SEAS project. Emily is also the co-leader of Ennead’s Laboratory Center of Excellence, which tracks current and best practice laboratory design trends and compiles benchmark data on our laboratory projects and available metrics of other major national institutions.
Laboratory Experience
The University of Texas at Austin, Cockrell School of Engineering, Gary L. Thomas Energy Engineering Building
Purdue University, Chaney-Hale Hall of Science
Purdue University, Flex Lab Facility
Purdue University, Engineering and Polytechnic Gateway Complex (Dudley-Labertus Hall)
The University of Texas at Austin, Cockrell School of Engineering, Engineering Education and Research Center (EERC)
Princeton University, Environmental Studies (ES) and The School of Engineering Applied Science (SEAS)
Lois Mate, an Associate Principal at Ennead Architects, has applied her vast knowledge of academic, laboratory, and healthcare projects to the planning and programming efforts upon which their success depends. She brings specific experience in programming and planning academic laboratories with undefined user groups, multiple stakeholders, complex programmatic requirements, and site constraints. Lois is also co-chair of the AIANY Science and Research Facilities Committee and co-leader of Ennead’s Laboratory Center of Excellence, focusing on metrics, trends, and innovation in both institutional and private sector research building and master planning projects. Lois is also responsible for helping to develop Ennead’s Lab Cost Drivers Study which the firm undertook to better inform our design process in this typology and maximize cost savings for our clients.
Laboratory Experience
Jefferson Health Specialty Care Pavilion, Philadelphia, PA
University of Oregon, Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, Eugene, OR
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Schwartzmann College of Computing, Boston, MA
UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) Thimann Laboratories Interdisciplinary Instruction and Research Building (IIRB), Santa Cruz, CA
New York University Langone Health, Science Building, New York, NY
New York University, Renovations to Chemical Biology Buildings (NYU Chem Bio), New York, NY
New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), Research Institute Laboratory, New York, NY
Weill Cornell Medicine, Belfer Research Building, New York, NY
New York University Langone Health at Trinity Center, New York, NY
Weill Cornell Medicine, Weill Greenberg Center, New York, NY
University of Michigan, A. Alfred Taubman Biomedical Science Research Building, Ann Arbor, MI
NYU Langone Health, Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine and Residence Tower, New York, NY
Ohio State University, Biomedical and Materials Engineering Complex Phase 2 (BMEC) Columbus, OH
Richard Olcott is a Design Partner at Ennead Architects where over the last four decades he has developed an award-winning body of work for leading educational, cultural, and civic institutions. His work is grounded in the power of architecture as an interpretive medium, one that can communicate the complexities of contemporary society and create a lasting cultural impact. Richard is interested in how architecture can reinvent itself within the existing urban condition through absorption, addition, and transformation. He creates buildings that are at once expressive of their missions and rooted in their uniquely specific contexts. His work has received numerous awards for design excellence, including National AIA Honor Awards, New York State AIA Awards, New York City AIA Awards, and American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, as well as local and regional awards.
Laboratory Experience
Princeton University, Environmental Studies (ES) and The School of Engineering Applied Science (SEAS), Princeton, NJ,
University of North Texas, Cape Horn International Research Park, Puerto Williams, Chile,
Stanford ChEM-H and SNI Building (Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health and the Neuroscience Institute), Stanford, CA,
Stanford University, Bass Biology Buildiobriantng, Stanford, CA,
Vassar College, Integrated Science Center, Poughkeepsie, NY,
To see Richard Olcott’s full bio click here.
Jarrett Pelletier is a Principal at Ennead Architects. He brings a diverse portfolio that includes award-winning projects in higher education, research laboratories, and healthcare. Regardless of project type, Jarrett believes that architecture must reach beyond aesthetics by creating spaces that enhance human interaction, builds communities, and embody wellness and sustainable thinking. As Project Designer on University of Oregon KCASI Phase 1, he oversaw the design work of both the internal team and consultants ensuring the project was consistent with the overall architectural intent. Jarrett also developed design concepts through to detailed designs, including providing support in the production during CA’s and CD’s. His other significant projects included the University of Michigan Biological Sciences Building Weill Cornell Medicine, Belfer Research Building and Olin Hall New Clinical and Research Building, 1101 Chest Ambulatory Care Center, Applied Life Sciences Hub in New York City, and Kuwait University, Health Sciences Campus.