Pub. 4 2016 Directory

26 THE MONTANA ARCHITECT | 2016 | www.aia-mt.org Honorable Mention Tippet Rise Art Center Fernau & Hartman Architects, Inc. I t was a random phone call with an odd request. We’d like you to design a building to be used as a backdrop for a famous sculptor’s on-site commission for a new art center we are developing in Fishtail, Montana. And we’d like it to feel like an authentic schoolhouse that has been there for 100 years. Um, OK. The program requirements for this project, to be installed at the newly established, 11,500-acre Tippet Rise Art Center, were very simple: replicate a late-1800s one-room Montana schoolhouse to provide a relatively protected interior space for housing a sculpture made of saplings. The true purpose of the project was to inspire internationally-renowned Patrick Dougherty, who would design and create his sculpture while on-site. Situated on a working ranch, it was important the project be con- structed to minimize disturbance of the landscape. This involved maintaining a small job site footprint and using eco-friendly solutions, such as corn cob grit blasting, for weathering the exterior wood. With few interior lights and no mechanical or plumbing systems, the project has nearly no impact on its environment. It is a passive inhabitant of its ecosystem. It was also important the schoolhouse – and the overall installation – create authenticity, a fact Dougherty acknowledged in a Tippet Rise video interview. “Building a sculpture is building an illusion,” he said. “You want to make it a powerful enough illusion so that people, in fact, really want to come running.” The most difficult task was determining the level of protection needed for the sculpture while creating a building that looks like it has been beaten by a century of weather. Dougherty creates ephem- eral sculptures out of native saplings, so long-term deterioration of his work was assumed. However, he requested we determine a way to protect the interior from water infiltration so as to maximize the potential for its longevity. This is typically not particularly difficult, but when replicating a more than 100-year-old deteriorated school- house, the task becomes more challenging. One element then-Tippet Rise director Alban Bassuet wanted to preserve was the look of a deteriorated roof allowing natural light to filter into the interior through gaps in the skip sheathing. This was achieved by sandwiching acrylic sheets between two layers of 1x planks in a seamless application invisible to the untrained eye. A secondary challenge was creating interior and exterior finishes closely matched to those of nearby historic Stockade Schoolhouse. The first step in achieving this was thoroughly documenting the details of Stockade – noting layers of paint and elements of detailed deterioration such as subtle discoloration from differen- tial rates of water damage, ghosted “memories” of since-removed built-in shelving, and rows of rusted nails once holding shingles.