Adaptations

Though Myers is best known for his performance halls and his finely crafted metal houses, a careful examination of his work on existing buildings reveals an architect with a deep knowledge of architectural traditions and an even greater enthusiasm for an urban environment that accepts the past but is unafraid of change. This section looks at adaptive reuse projects.

In the Sacramento Hall of Justice, a beaux-arts building in Sacramento, and the Yorkville Library in Toronto, Ontario, Myers borrowed a strategy from Louis Kahn, connecting the modern addition to the older building with a “hyphen” —a recessive passage that joins but also cleanly separates the addition from the original fabric. These are works of adaptive re-use and of preservation where there is little ambiguity between old and new.

In buildings such as his office and Griffin’s restaurant, both in Toronto; the Indian Paintbrush production offices in Santa Monica, and the Ice House offices in Beverly Hills, Myers began with warehouse buildings, some dating to the 19th century, that gave him more freedom to open up interiors and create Kahnian major and minor spaces within an enclosing shell.

There are many examples of Myers’ bow to history. See especially the Seagram Museum and additions to the Stratford Festival Theatre and the Art Gallery of Ontario in this exhibit.

"The American architect Barton Myers, an unlikely recipient of the moniker preservation architect, is best known for his performance halls and his finely crafted steel houses. A careful examination of his work on existing buildings reveals an architect who has quietly and without a fuss pursued a career that includes master planning and new architecture as well as the adaptation of existing buildings and additions to historic buildings with a sure hand. His building adaptations show a deep knowledge of architectural traditions and an even greater enthusiasm for an urban environment that accepts the past but is unafraid of change." -- exerpted from the essay by Luis Hoyos from Barton Myers: Works of Architecture and Urbanism