4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design
Through February 21, 2010

wHY Architecture. Time Box (one of four boxes in 4 Salvaged Boxes), 2007. Mixed media, 90 x 90 x 120 in.

Formed in the spirit of good stewardship and conservation, 4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design aims to demonstrate the sustainable design features of the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) which was designed by TMA project architect, wHY Architecture. The GRAM was the first new art museum in the world to receive the Gold LEED certification when it opened in 2007 and has received international accolades for its innovative “green” design. The exhibition opened Saturday, October 10, 2009 and will be open to the public through February 21, 2010 in the Museum’s Bell Gallery.

“The 4 Salvaged Boxes is an exhibition about the approach and process of creative sustainable design,” says Aaron Loewenson, wHY Architecture Associate and 4 Salvaged Boxes team leader. “Each of the 4 boxes was created from materials salvaged from the construction of the Grand Rapids Art Museum and function as a traveling 'cabinet of curiosities', telling the story of sustainable design. When closed, the boxes function as their own traveling crates. When opened, the boxes unfold to present information about the sustainable design features of the Grand Rapids Art Museum and other innovative green projects, through the use of diagrams, models, material samples and video.” The exhibition has traveled from the GRAM to several venues in Asia, back to the United States to the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky and now to Tyler, Texas.

In 2008, TMA Director Kimberley Bush Tomio announced that the Museum’s Board of Trustees hadnamed the award-winning team of wHY Architecture, led by Yo-ichiro Hakomori and Kulapat Yantrasast, as its principal design architect on the new TMA facility. Hakomori and Loewenson will make appearances during special events held in conjunction with the exhibit at the Tyler Museum of Art.

wHY Architecture is a Los Angeles-based firm with a stellar track record in design on projects including Michigan’s Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Art Bridge spanning the Los Angeles River in southern California, and numerous gallery renovations for the Art Institute of Chicago. Yantrasast, the firm’s executive/creative director, previously served as project architect on the team of Pritzker Prize winning design architect Tadao Ando for the 153,000-square-foot Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which opened in 2002 to international acclaim.

Support for 4 Salvaged Boxes: Sustainable Creative Design and Light Footprints: New Museum Site Photography by Robert Langham is provided in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts. Collectors’ Circle sponsors are Marilyn and John Glass. Media sponsors are the Tyler Morning Telegraph and TylerPaper.com.