Kimbell Art Museum Expansion

Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in collaboration with Guy Nordensen Associates, designed the new pavilion that sits adjacent to Kahn’s original Kimbell Art Museum. The desire for controlled, naturally lit gallery space led to the development of a light weight, visually transparent, wood, steel, and glass roofing system. The system required complex steel and aluminum hardware to connect large glulam wood beams into structural pairs, creating Vierendeel-like trusses. A system of compression and tension elements connect the trusses to create rigid bays over the galleries. The final truss assemblies are 52 inches tall, 32 inches wide and 110 feet long.

TriPyramid provided nearly 400,000 pounds of structural hardware and tie rods for the roofing system. The steel assemblies, which support either end of the wood trusses and transfer the loads into the building’s concrete wall structure, weigh nearly 4,000 pounds each when complete.

To create the hardware components, TriPyramid utilized several manufacturing methodologies. Castings, machined parts and large weldments, all with a museum quality paint finish, are featured in the final installation. To guarantee seamless integration of the hardware, TriPyramid worked in close collaboration with the glulam manufacturer, Structurlam, to coordinate all tolerances and geometry. The 30,000-pound beam pairs were fully assembled by StructurLam in Penticton, British Columbia, and shipped to the site in Dallas/Fort Worth.