It is a bizarre and unintended situation that Tacoma's two art museums turned out to be architectural inverses of each other. One works on the outside but not the inside (the 2002 Museum of Glass, designed by Arthur Erickson), while the other works on the inside but not the outside (the 2003 Tacoma Art Museum, designed by Antoine Predock). Seeing art inside the Museum of Glass's cramped galleries has never been particularly pleasurable; finding your way inside the Tacoma Art Museum has never been particularly easy, or attractive.

Here's the problem at TAM: Predock designed the building so it faces Mount Rainier. One whole area of the top floor of the museum is a glass hallway with a gorgeous, genuflective view of the mountain—and this area never seems to hog space away from the generously proportioned, warm galleries.

But facing Mount Rainier means facing away from the center of downtown—means the building turns its back on downtown.

Predock also designed the building with the sky in mind. Specifically, he wanted his silver-gray box to disappear into the gray wintry air. Which it does.

But while the building is busy communing with the sky, the street gets no love from it. The front windows are tinted, which makes it look a little robotic. This is the kind of building you have to know to love. It is not an icon, or a tourist landmark. I love this about it. I like a thing you need to get to know, rather than something that yells at you from the side of the road, and I like that being inside it feels like being inside a secret. But the museum would prefer that people do not get confused about where the hell it is, and I suppose this makes perfect sense.

The museum would also like to improve a couple of other details left rather unfinished by Predock. One is the approach to the museum. Currently, almost all the visitors (according to the museum) park in the lot underneath the building, at which point they scale a set of yeoman-like stairs to a side door, or they ride the elevator to a similar sideways approach. Very few people, then, actually use the front door of the museum, which is where you get a full view of the airiness and the double height of the building, and where you become oriented to the way it's laid out. The only way in the front door is past an entry "plaza" that feels nothing like a plaza. It feels like a span of concrete that leads to a glowering dark-glass door.

Predock didn't mean it this way. What he intended was wild. He wanted the walkway into the museum to be made of grating, with the steep natural grade of the hill falling away under your feet as you approached the door—you'd have to rise into midair as you made your way into the museum. This was nixed because it would frighten people. (It seemed awesome.) Above this Predock planned a giant white twisting sail-like piece of fabric that would provide some shelter on your way in. This was nixed because it cost too much. (It seemed unwise.) After all that nixing, Predock threw up his hands, left the space empty, and called it a plaza. But it's a non-place. (Here's the Flickr page for that non-place.) Predock also, evidently, overestimated the number of people who would be driving to the museum rather than riding the light rail. (People in Tacoma do not like to walk even two blocks; on TAM's blog about the redesign of the plaza, people actually complained that the light rail station that stops in front of Union Station—next door—is not close enough.)

So TAM is making some changes to its building. It checked with Predock first: TAM flew out a representative from Predock's office in New Mexico to see the building and the way the city has changed around it. Predock's firm offered a few ideas, but none that interested the museum. So last spring, TAM put out an open call for concepts from artists, architects, whoever—a process intended to be unconventional, but which yielded an oddly conventional result. The firm that will redesign the plaza and create a new approach alternative to the stairs and the elevator—it probably will be a ramp—is Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects of Seattle. (In January, OSKA will be changing its name to Olson Kundig Architects.)

It's not that OSKA is not a good choice. But why call for the wild and wacky when you intend to go with the standard bearer? OSKA is a fairly large, established firm that was the local architect that worked with Predock on TAM in the first place. Its most recent design is the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham (I haven't seen it yet). Its best-known local museum work is the Frye, and it also did the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

This is the part where I should be able to show you the concept drawing that convinced TAM to hire OSKA, but I can't, because TAM won't let OSKA release it. (OSKA wants to.)

Alan Maskin of OSKA offered this comment over email:

I believe the Tacoma Art Museum is not releasing our competition entry because the project is in its infancy and will likely morph as the museum staff and the community have an opportunity to chime in. As the architects of record working with Antoine Predock on the existing structure we approached TAM's "Request For Concept" design competition with respect for Predock's museum design—particularly the interior.
Our proposal was to try to create a bold new entry by turning the existing plaza into an outdoor room that would allow the museum to move its many program activities, functions and possibly exhibits—(essentially some of the "life" of the museum) into the plaza. We also proposed making urban connections to the surrounding public spaces—like Tollefson Plaza.
Our design was a collaborative effort. The principals in the firm acted as design critics—but the competition scheme was generated by our associate group and many of our architects—with associates Jim Friesz and Kevin Kudo-King heading the design and management of our design proposal.
While the museum is not yet releasing our entry, there will certainly be a rendering of the project in the near future—and we can get that to you as soon as TAM gives us the word they are ready to release it.

Well, yes. Concepts morph and change in the design process. That's no reason to treat the community like a child that gets obsessed with the first toy put in its hand.

TAM director Stephanie Stebich says she plans to hold public meetings to get input from the community about what they want. But they've already made clear what they want, based on surveying TAM did in advance and posted on its blog so that architects could get a sense of how to structure their designs. The upcoming meetings—without any actual images to discuss—will be exercises in abstraction. Then, TAM will release a model and use it to fundraise the needed $3 million. And at that point, the public will probably complain about whatever it doesn't like, but the design will already be set. What a tortured process.

Nevertheless, good architecture happens in all kinds of ways and in spite of all kinds of weird obstacles. I have high hopes and am glad something is happening to TAM's infamous non-place. That building is close to my heart and it needs a front door.